Dive Brief:
- Pfizer will close its office in Peapack, New Jersey, early next year, impacting 791 employees, according to a state Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act filing.
- The vast majority of employees will be moved to the company’s New York headquarters, with a small portion transitioning to the drugmarker’s site in Parsippany, New Jersey, a Pfizer spokesperson said in an email.
- The closure is part of a broader multi-billion dollar cost cutting plan Pfizer announced last month amid falling revenue.
Dive Insight:
Pfizer is in the midst of laying off staff and closing locations in a bid to cut $3.5 billion in spending by the end of 2024. The plan comes after the company saw dim Q3 results that pushed it to lower its yearly revenue forecast by $9 billion.
In addition to the New Jersey job cuts, Pfizer confirmed on Nov. 3 that 200 employees will be let go in Kalamazoo, Michigan, according to local news reports. The company also announced the layoff of 69 employees at an Illinois site in July, according to the state’s WARN database. Lastly, the company announced the layoff of an undisclosed number of employees at a Colorado research facility in early October.
The company will close two sites in North Carolina, including a clinical manufacturing facility in Durham, as reported by The News & Observer late last month.
Much of Pfizer’s financial woes stems from steep declines in revenue from its COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty and treatment drug Paxlovid. Revenue for Comirnaty was down 70% year-over-year in Q3, while Paxlovid was down 95% YoY. In 2022, more than half of Pfizer’s record revenue of $100 billion came from sales of the two drugs.
The majority of Pfizer’s $9 billion revenue adjustment is due to the return by the U.S. government of nearly 8 million treatment courses of Paxlovid labeled under the drug’s emergency clearance. Distribution of the drug will be stopped this month as Pfizer shifts to selling Paxlovid commercially.
