Investigación clínica: Merck Vs Pfizer

New chief executive officers at Merck & Co. and Pfizer Inc., torn between profit demands of investors and the long-term funding needs of drug innovation, have chosen opposing strategies for future investment in research.

Pfizer CEO Ian Read said this week he will cut the drugmaker’s research budget by a third to $6.5 billion to $7 billion over two years.

Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier today projected spending this year of $8.1 billion to $8.5 billion and withdrew the company’s long-term profit forecast to prop up research.

Merck and Pfizer both face generic competition over the next two years to products with billions in annual sales. Investors responded on Feb. 1 to Pfizer’s plan by driving up the stock the most in six months, while U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday called the cuts “depressing.” Merck shares fell as much as 3.9 percent today.

“I am not blind to what investors want us to do,” Merck’s Frazier said during a conference call with analysts and investors today. “They want us to invest in prudent ways, in ways that actually drive return on investment and productivity. But as a company we believe that the only sustainable strategy in the health-care environment that we’re in is real innovation that makes a difference to patients and payers.”

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“Merck is offering investors a fundamentally different approach than Pfizer, asking investors to pay for a substantially higher R&D budget,” said Marc Goodman, an analyst with UBS Securities LLC, in a note to clients.

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“We have to fix our innovative core, and that’s what this R&D change is about,” Pfizer’s Read told reporters at company headquarters on Feb. 1. The reductions are part of a plan to overhaul the company’s research operation to focus on the most- profitable programs, he said.

“At some point your shareholders and stakeholders demand you have a return on investment in research,” Read said. “We’re looking at areas where we think it’s not a competitive advantage.”


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