Albert Bourla, chairman and CEO of Pfizer, speaks at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival in New York City, U.S., May 22, 2024.
Andrew Kelly | Reuters
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on Tuesday said uncertainty around President Donald Trump’s planned pharmaceutical tariffs is deterring the company from further investing in U.S. manufacturing and research and development.
Bourla’s remarks on the company’s first-quarter earnings call came in response to a question about what Pfizer wants to see from tariff negotiations that would push the company to increase investments in the U.S. It comes as drugmakers brace for Trump’s levies on pharmaceuticals imported into the country – his administration’s bid to boost domestic manufacturing.
“If I know that there will not be tariffs … then there are tremendous investments that can happen in this country, both in R&D and manufacturing,” Bourla said on the call, adding that the company is also hoping for “certainty.”
“In periods of uncertainty, everybody is controlling their cost as we are doing, and then is very frugal with their investment, as we are doing, so that we are prepared for remit. So that’s what I want to see,” Bourla said.
Bourla noted the tax environment, which had previously pushed manufacturing abroad, has “significantly changed now” with the establishment of a global minimum tax of around 15%. He said that shift hasn’t necessarily made the U.S. more attractive, saying “it’s not as good” to invest here without additional incentives or clarity around tariffs.
“Now [Trump] I’m sure — and I know because I talked to him — that he would like to see even a reduction in the current tax regime particularly for locally produced goods,” Bourla said, adding a further decrease would be would be a strong incentive for manufacturing in the U.S.
Unlike other companies grappling with evolving trade policy, Pfizer did not revise its full-year outlook on Tuesday. However, the company noted in its earnings release that the guidance “does not currently include any potential impact related to future tariffs and trade policy changes, which we are unable to predict at this time.”
But on the earnings call on Tuesday, Pfizer executives said the guidance does reflect $150 million in costs from Trump’s existing tariffs.
“Included in our guidance that we didn’t really speak about is there are some tariffs in place today,” Pfizer CFO Dave Denton said on the call.
“We are contemplating that within our guidance range and we continue to again trend to the top end of our guidance range even with those costs to be incurred this year,” he said.
The Pfizer logo is seen outside the pharmaceutical company’s manufacturing plant, in Newbridge, Ireland February 10, 2025.
Clodagh Kilcoyne | Reuters
Pfizer on Tuesday expanded its cost-cutting efforts and reported first-quarter profit that topped estimates, even as the company’s sales fell, largely due to dwindling revenue for its antiviral Covid pill Paxlovid.
The company previously said its cost-cutting program would deliver overall net cost savings of roughly $4.5 billion by the end of 2025. On Tuesday, Pfizer said it now expects additional savings of roughly $1.2 billion, primarily in selling, informational and administrative expenses, by the end of 2027.
The company said that will be driven in large part by “enhanced digital enablement,” including automation and artificial intelligence and streamlining business processes.
The expanded cuts also include expected research and development reorganization cost savings of around $500 million by the end of 2026, the company added. Those savings will be reinvested into Pfizer’s product pipeline.
Pfizer has a separate multiyear initiative to slash costs, with the first phase of the effort slated to deliver $1.5 billion in savings by the end of 2027. With the added cuts announced Tuesday, Pfizer now expects to deliver around $7.7 billion in savings by the end of that year from the two cost-cutting efforts.
The cuts aim to help the pharmaceutical giant recover from the rapid decline of its Covid business and stock price over the last few years, and appear to be paying off.
Here’s what the company reported for the first quarter compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:
Earnings per share: 92 cents adjusted vs. 66 cents expected
Revenue: $13.72 billion vs. $13.91 billion expected
‘Volatile external environment’
The results come as drugmakers brace for President Donald Trump‘s planned tariffs on pharmaceuticals imported into the U.S. – his administration’s bid to boost U.S. manufacturing of medications.
Unlike other companies grappling with evolving trade policy, Pfizer did not revise its outlook.
The company maintained its full-year 2025 outlook, forecasting sales of $61 billion to $64 billion, with a similar performance from its Covid products as seen in 2024, however Pfizer noted in its earnings release that the guidance “does not currently include any potential impact related to future tariffs and trade policy changes, which we are unable to predict at this time.”
But on the earnings call on Tuesday, Pfizer executives said the guidance does reflect $150 million in costs from Trump’s existing tariffs.
“Included in our guidance that we didn’t really speak about is there are some tariffs in place today,” Pfizer CFO Dave Denton said on the call.
“We are contemplating that within our guidance range and we continue to again trend to the top end of our guidance range even with those costs to be incurred this year,” he said.
On the call, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the company established a team to analyze a range of potential outcomes and develop strategies to help mitigate the potential impact of tariffs on its business in the short and long term. That team is managing current inventory levels in certain jurisdictions and leveraging Pfizer’s domestic manufacturing footprint, among other efforts.
“Should we be impacted by further tariffs in the future, we will assess the impact of the policies enacted and provide information at the appropriate time,” Bourla said.
He added that uncertainty around Trump’s pharmaceutical tariffs is deterring the company from further investing in U.S. manufacturing and research and development.
More CNBC health coverage
Pfizer still expects that changes to the Medicare program resulting from the Inflation Reduction Act will hurt sales by $1 billion, dampening growth by approximately 1.6% compared with 2024.
Stripping out one-time items, the company expects 2025 earnings to be in the range of $2.80 to $3 a share.
“With the underlying strength of our business, we believe we can be agile in navigating an uncertain and volatile external environment,” Bourla said in a release.
For the first quarter, the company booked net income of $2.97 billion, or 52 cents per share. That compares with net income of $3.12 billion, or 55 cents per share, during the same period a year ago.
Excluding certain items, including restructuring charges and costs associated with intangible assets, the company posted earnings per share of 92 cents for the quarter.
Pfizer reported revenue of $13.72 billion for the first quarter, down 8% from the same period a year ago.
Covid sales
The company said the decrease in sales was primarily driven by a decline in revenue for Paxlovid, which posted $491 million in sales during the first quarter, down 76% from the same period a year ago, in part due to lower Covid infections worldwide and reduced international government purchases of the drug.
The drop in sales also reflects a boost Pfizer got in the first quarter of 2024 from a final adjustment related to a previously recorded revenue reversal for Paxlovid.
Analysts had expected Paxlovid to generate $769.7 million in sales for the first quarter, according to StreetAccount estimates.
Meanwhile, the company’s Covid shot, Comirnaty, booked $565 million in revenue, up 60% from the same period a year ago. That’s above the $352 million that analysts were expecting, according to StreetAccount.
The results come as shot makers like Pfizer face uncertainty over immunization policy and regulation under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent vaccine skeptic who now oversees the nation’s federal health agencies.
As secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy has pursued a sweeping overhaul of different agencies, cutting staff, consolidating or eliminating offices and taking actions that could ultimately undermine vaccines.
Larry Ellison, co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle Corp., speaks during the Oracle OpenWorld 2018 conference in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Monday, Oct. 22, 2018.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Oracle engineers mistakenly triggered a five-day software outage at a number of Community Health Systems hospitals, causing the facilities to temporarily return to paper-based patient records.
CHS told CNBC that the outage involving Oracle Health, the company’s electronic health record (EHR) system, affected “several” hospitals, leading them to activate “downtime procedures.” Trade publication Becker’s Hospital Review reported that 45 hospitals were hit.
The outage began on April 23, after engineers conducting maintenance work mistakenly deleted critical storage connected to a key database, a CHS spokesperson said in a statement. The outage was resolved on Monday, and was not related to a cyberattack or other security incident.
CHS is based in Tennessee and includes 72 hospitals in 14 states, according to the medical system’s website.
“Despite this being a major outage, our hospitals were able to maintain services with no material impact,” the spokesperson said. “We are proud of our clinical and support teams who worked through the multi-day outage with professionalism and a commitment to delivering high-quality, safe care for patients.”
Oracle stock this year
Oracle didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
An EHR is a digital version of a patient’s medical history that’s updated by doctors and nurses. It’s crucial software within the U.S. health-care system, and outages can cause serious disruptions to patient care. Oracle acquired EHR vendor Cerner in 2022 for $28.3 billion, becoming the second-biggest player in the market, behind Epic Systems.
Now that Oracle’s systems are back online, CHS said that the impacted hospitals are working to “re-establish full functionality and return to normal operations and procedures.”
Oracle’s CHS error comes weeks after the company’s federal electronic health record experienced a nationwide outage. Oracle has struggled with a thorny, years-long EHR rollout with the Department of Veterans Affairs, marred by patient safety concerns. The agency launched a strategic review of Cerner in 2021, before Oracle’s acquisition, and it temporarily paused deployment of the software in 2023.
In an aerial view, Ford Broncos are seen for sale on a lot at a dealership on April 18, 2025 in Austin, Texas.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
At car dealerships across the country, consumers are rushing to buy new vehicles ahead of tariff-related price hikes. Some shoppers have also replaced iPhones early.
Yet when it comes to other items, retailers aren’t seeing widespread stock-ups or huge waves of early purchases due to tariffs — or at least not yet. Instead,U.S. shoppers seem hesitant to spend and inclined to delay purchases rather than speed them up, according to consumer surveys by market researchers and early reads from the Federal Reserve.
Consumer spending, excluding autos, was lower overall across the country, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest Beige Book report on economic conditions released on Wednesday. Five of the Fed’s districts saw slight growth in economic activity, four districts had slight to modest declines and three reported relatively unchanged trends since the central bank’s previous release in early March.
Most districts saw moderate to robust sales of vehicles and some nondurable items, which the report attributed to “a rush to purchase ahead of tariff-related price increases.” Yet both leisure and business travel were down, and the report noted that “uncertainty around international trade policy was pervasive across [district] reports.”
Beyond some of the pricier purchases that stand to cost a lot more even under a 10% tariff on imports, early data suggests the duties have intensified consumers’ desire to watch their wallets closely as they wait to see how Trump’s trade policy unfolds. Companies from Chipotle to PepsiCo and American Airlines said this week that they’re seeing pockets of slower spending.
U.S. shoppers have adopted “a conservation mentality” for their cash as they follow fast-changing headlines and see wild swings in the stock market — and their savings and retirement accounts, said Steve Zurek, vice president of thought leadership at NielsenIQ.
“There’s so much uncertainty right now that shoppers just don’t know what to do,” he said. “There’s nowhere to hide here — all they can do is control the household economics they have.”
Some survey results have backed up a theory that shoppers are kicking the can rather than accelerating purchases: about 35% of U.S. consumers said they planned to put off a major purchase, such as a home, car, appliance or furniture because of tariffs, according to a NielsenIQ survey. That compares with just 7% who said they anticipated making a major purchase now to avoid the possibility of a higher price later. The market researcher conducted the survey in late March, days before Trump unveiled steep tariffs on dozens of countries, almost all of which he later lowered for 90 days.
In another reflection of consumer caution, along with higher mortgage rates, home sales in March fell to the slowest pace since 2009, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Retailers, airlines, car manufacturers and more will be watching consumer behavior closely as they try to predict demand and buy inventory. Some of those companies have accelerated their own orders of longer-lasting and pricier durable goods, such as equipment, to beat tariff-related price hikes.
Here’s a look at what we know so far about consumers’ early response to tariffs.
Early buying
In tariff fear-buying, one category stands out: cars.
The auto sector outperformed the rest of the retail market in March, as sales excluding motor vehicles and parts increased 0.5%, while sales in the auto sector jumped 5.3%, the Commerce Department reported last week.
While Trump eased additional tariffs on many countries that export goods to the U.S., he has kept a 25% levy on all imported vehicles.
Consumers are rushing to showrooms to try to save thousands of dollars on a new vehicle.
Cox Automotive estimates the 25% tariff on non-U.S. assembled vehicles will increase the average cost of imported vehicles by $6,000, while the cost of vehicles assembled in the U.S. will rise by $3,600 due to upcoming 25% tariffs on automotive parts. Those are in addition to $300 to $500 hikes as a result of previously announced tariffs on steel and aluminum.
Automotive executives and dealers reported significant gains in showroom traffic and sales once Trump confirmed the tariffs late last month and into April.
“Concerns about potential future vehicle prices due to tariffs led to a surge in March sales, and April began with similar robustness,” said Charlie Chesbrough, senior economist at Cox Automotive.
New vehicle sales were running 22% above the seasonally adjusted pace of last year and were up more than 8% through early April on a volume basis, according to Cox.
“It’s been busy. Everybody’s buying now because they’re afraid the prices are going up,” said Craig DeSerf, executive manager of Gulf Coast Chevrolet Buick GMC in Texas. “There’s kind of been a little bit of a buying frenzy, like almost a replay of Covid.”
Michael Bettenhausen, a dealer in Illinois and chair of the Stellantis dealer council, said there’s “no doubt” there has been a big pull ahead in sales due to the tariffs.
“It’s taken a little bit extra effort … to get the consumer to understand that the tariffs haven’t impacted us yet,” he said. “Our inventory on the ground is tariff-free. Obviously if you’re in the market and you’re looking to buy in the next 30 to 60 days, you’ll probably want to be doing it sooner rather than later.”
Higher sales are good for the automotive industry, after many analysts expected them to be roughly flat heading into the year. But there’s concern that sales could come to a grinding halt once automakers and dealers sell out of their tariff-free inventories.
“Inventory levels have declined substantially over recent weeks, likely pushing vehicle prices higher, so the end of April may not be as strong,” Chesbrough said. “With economic concerns rising and consumer confidence declining, the outlook for new auto sales from here is more troubling.”
Automotive vehicles topped the list of purchases that U.S. consumers reported that they made earlier than they otherwise would have because of tariffs, according to a survey by GlobalData of nearly 5,800 adults across the country in late March and early April.
Nearly 12% said tariffs had sped up their car purchase, followed by close to 10% of people who reported buying furniture earlier than planned and nearly 9% who reported purchasing large electronics.
Stockpiling
Yet when it comes to a wider range of merchandise like paper towels, clothing and more, there hasn’t been a meaningful rush to stock up.
Walmart Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey told reporters earlier this month at an investor day in Dallas that the nation’s largest retailer hasn’t seen “pandemic-like buying from our customers.”
He said the company saw consumers bulk ordering in some stores ahead of the port strike last fall, but hasn’t seen that now. But he did tell investors that the big-box retailer’s sales patterns have become less predictable week to week and even day to day.
“It’s just more volatility than what we typically see in our business,” he said, adding that bumpier consumer spending continued into April.
He attributed that to a mix of factors, including weaker consumer sentiment in February, poor weather in March and delayed timing of tax refunds.
Chris Nicholas, CEO of Walmart-owned Sam’s Club, told CNBC in an interview earlier this month that the warehouse club has not seen “any material change” when it comes to early purchases of items like appliances and consumer electronics.
A later Easter than a year ago has muddled sales results, too. Total spending rose to 3.8% for April through April 15 compared with about 2.7% in March, according to data from JPMorgan. A note from the bank attributed that to the “Easter effect,” since the holiday fell on March 31 a year ago.
That made the sales jumps look bigger leading up to this year’s Easter onApril 20, since consumers tend to shop more ahead of the holiday.
Walmart’s Rainey said at the investor day that the discounter anticipated April would be its strongest month of the quarter because of the timing of Easter.
Even so, tariffs may have fueled some early purchases in April. Along with Easter’s timing shift, JPMorgan’s note credited “possible ‘binge’ purchases in anticipation of tariffs.”
Store visits increased year over year the first two full weeks in April at superstores, grocers and clothing retailers, according to Placer.ai, which tracks retail foot traffic. Yet store visits declined year over year at home improvement and furniture stores, the company found.
Delaying purchases and seeking deals
Whether consumers are shopping for everyday items like laundry detergent or booking an airline ticket, tariffs have made them reluctant to spend and more likely to hunt for deals, executives have said.
Procter & Gamble CFO Andre Schulten on Thursday said on a call with reporters that tariffs have led to “a more nervous consumer” who pulled back on spending in the last two months of the quarter.
“It’s not illogical to see the consumer adopt the ‘wait and see’ attitude, and we saw traffic down at retailers,” Schulten said. “We saw consumers basically looking for value, migrating into online, bigger box retail, into club [retailers].”
Outside of retailers’ aisles, more price-sensitive customers are pulling back on domestic airline bookings, industry executives said thismonth. Carriers are turning to fare sales to fill seats on domestic flights and trimming their schedules to shed excess capacity, though some warn revenue could fall this quarter from last year.
Airfare fell 5.3% in March after a 4% decline in February, according to the latest federal data.
Airline CEOs went into 2025 optimistic for a blockbuster year, but some have recently said demand started to weaken among government, corporate and economy-class leisure travel segments in February. Executives say economic uncertainty is keeping some customers on the sidelines.
Some industry executives noticed the weakening of business travel demand in recent months amid the trade war, volatile markets and mass government layoffs. Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said on April 9 that in addition to weaker domestic leisure bookings, corporate travel demand — which started the year up 10% from 2024 — had turned flat.
Delta reported earlier this month that its domestic unit revenue fell 3% in the first quarter from a year earlier, while trans-Atlantic unit sales rose 8%. International flights make up a smaller share of the carrier’s overall ticket sales than domestic trips, however.
American Airlines on Thursday joined Alaska Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Delta in pulling its 2025 financial outlook. United Airlines took the unusual step of offering two forecasts, one if things are stable and one if the economy shrinks. But either way, it expects to make money this year.
American’s vice chair and chief strategy officer, Steve Johnson, said Thursday on an earnings call that the carrier has logged “significant weakness in the part of our business that’s very sensitive to economic conditions … for whom travel is really discretionary.”
“In those circumstances, you do see prices that are lower,” he said. “That’s going to continue to be the case until we understand … which direction the economy is going.”
Alaska Airlines warned Wednesday that weaker demand will eat into second-quarter earnings.
CFO Shane Tackett told CNBC that demand hasn’t plunged, but the carrier has lowered some fares to fill seats.
“The fares aren’t as strong as they were in the fourth quarter of last year and coming into January and first part of February,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “Demand is still quite high for the industry, but it’s just not at the peak that we all anticipated might continue coming out of last year.”
Retailers will kick off earnings season and share their latest numbers starting in mid-May.
NielsenIQ’s Zurek anticipates that U.S. consumers will spend less and save more in the coming months because of skittishness about the economic outlook and prices. During the pandemic, personal savings rates spiked as Americans had fewer ways to spend their money, according to the St. Louis Fed.
“When a shopper or a consumer is not sure what kind of financial punches they’re going to be taking in the future, they’re going to try to hoard cash,” he said.
Dallas residentTiffany Armstrong is an example of that. The attorney said she is delaying a planned kitchen remodel until she has a clearer picture of how much new kitchen appliances and construction-related materials will cost.
“Between the uncertainty with pricing and the [stock] market, it doesn’t seem like a wise time,” she said.
Still, she made one exception by running to a nearby AT&T store to spring for an earlier-than-planned purchase of a new iPhone.
Days later, in a move that underscores how hard it is for consumers and businesses to plan,those Apple iPhones were exempted from tariffs.
Airline CEOs this month warned Wall Street that passengers’ appetite for domestic trips is coming in lighter than they had hoped when they set forecasts high at the start of 2025.
On a series of earnings calls, they said the reasons range from President Donald Trump‘s whipsawing tariff policies to volatile markets and, most notably, economic uncertainty.
“Nobody really relishes uncertainty when they’re talking about what they could do on a vacation and spend hard-earned dollars,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said on a quarterly earnings call on Thursday.
That means airlines have too many seats on their hands — again. Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines said they will cut back their capacity growth plans after what they still hope to be a strong summer travel season.
Delta, Southwest, Alaska Airlines and American Airlines pulled their 2025 financial outlooks this month, saying the U.S. economy is too tough to predict right now. United Airlines provided two outlooks, one if if the U.S. falls into a recession and said it expects to be profitable in either scenario.
That is leading to cheaper plane tickets. Airfare fell 5.3% in March from last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest data. Easter, a peak travel period that coincides with many school vacations, fell in March of last year, though fares also dropped 4% in February this year.
Adding to pressure, executives said, is slower-than-expected growth from corporate travel, which is facing the same challenges many households are. Government travel plunged, too, amid the Trump administration’s cost cuts and mass layoffs this year.
“If uncertainty pops up, the first thing that goes away is corporate travel,” said Conor Cunningham a travel and transportation analyst at Melius Research .
Delta CEO Ed Bastian said on April 9 that corporate travel was trending up 10% year on year at the start of 2025, but that growth has since flattened.
Business travel is key to major carriers because those customers are less price-sensitive and often book last minute when tickets are likely to be more expensive.
The overhang of seats in the domestic skies is forcing airlines to cut prices to fill their planes.
Alaska Airlines warned Wednesday that weaker-than-expected demand will likely eat into second-quarter earnings. Chief Financial Officer Shane Tackett told CNBC that demand has not plunged, but the carrier has lowered some fares to fill seats.
“The fares aren’t as strong as they were in the fourth quarter of last year and coming into January and first part of February,” Tackett said in an interview Wednesday. “Demand is still quite high for the industry, but it’s just not at the peak that we all anticipated might continue coming out of last year.”
At the front of the plane, executives say demand is holding up far better, while U.S.-based customers are still flying overseas in droves.
But lingering concerns are still weighing on the industry.
“Certainty will restore the economy, and I think it will restore it pretty quickly,” Isom said.
Flags with the logos of Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk, maker of the blockbuster diabetes and weight-loss treatments Ozempic and Wegovy are pictures while the company presents the annual report at Novo Nordisk in Bagsvaerd, Denmark, on February 5, 2025.
Mads Claus Rasmussen | Afp | Getty Images
Novo Nordisk scored a huge legal victory that largely restricts compounding pharmacies from marketing or selling cheaper, unapproved versions of the drugmaker’s blockbuster weight loss drug Wegovy and diabetes treatment Ozempic.
A federal judge in Texas late Thursday rejected a bid by compounding pharmacies to keep making copies of Ozempic and Wegovy while a legal challenge over the shortage of those drugs unfolds. That came in response to a February lawsuit from a compounding trade group against the Food and Drug Administration’s determination that the active ingredient in those drugs, semaglutide, is no longer in shortage in the U.S.
Patients flocked to the cheaper copycats when Ozempic and Wegovy were in short supply over the last two years due to skyrocketing demand, or if they didn’t have insurance coverage for the costly treatments.
During FDA-declared shortages, pharmacists can legally make compounded versions of brand-name medications. Many telehealth companies, such as Hims & Hers, also offered those copycats. But drugmakers and some health experts have pushed back against the practice because the FDA does not approve compounded drugs, which are essentially custom-made copies prescribed by a doctor to meet a specific patient’s needs.
“We are pleased the court has rejected the compounders’ attempts to undermine FDA’s data-based decision that the shortage” of semaglutide is resolved, said Steve Benz, Novo Nordisk’s corporate vice president, legal and U.S. general counsel, in a statement.
“Patient safety remains a top priority for Novo Nordisk and the extensive nationwide legal actions we have taken to protect Americans from the health risks posed by illegitimate ‘semaglutide’ drugs are working,” he said, referring to the company’s more than 100 lawsuits against compounding pharmacies and other entities across 32 states.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman specifically denied the Outsourcing Facilities Association’s bid for a preliminary injunction that would have prevented the FDA from taking action against its members for making copies of semaglutide.
That decision upholds the FDA’s previous determination that the semaglutide shortage in the U.S. is over and means the FDA can now immediately go after so-called 503A pharmacies that are making compounded versions of semaglutide according to individual prescriptions for a specific patient.
Those pharmacies are largely regulated by states rather than the FDA.
The decision also means the FDA can start targeting federally regulated 503B pharmacies, which manufacture compounded drugs in bulk with or without prescriptions, after May 22. The agency’s actions can include product seizures and warning letters to pharmacies.
More CNBC health coverage
The decision on Thursday follows another win for Novo Nordisk. A different federal judge in Texas earlier this week ruled in favor of the drugmaker against a 503A pharmacy, MediOak Pharmacy, permanently prohibiting the business from marketing or selling compounded semaglutide.
Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have aggressively cracked down on compounding pharmacies over the last two years as they benefit from the soaring popularity of their weight loss and diabetes drugs.
Eli Lilly has gone through a similar legal process with tirzepatide, the active ingredient in its weight loss drug Zepbound and diabetes treatment Mounjaro. The FDA declared the U.S. shortage of tirzepatide over last year, prompting the same compounding trade group to sue the FDA over the drug.
In March, a federal judge denied the compounding group’s request for a preliminary injunction on the FDA’s enforcement against its members for making copies of Mounjaro and Zepbound. The compounding group has appealed.
Comcast on Thursday outlined changes to its broadband strategy as the business continues to shed customers in the face of heightened competition.
The discussion came amid the company’s first-quarter earnings call with investors. Despite the customers losses, Comcast’s earnings surpassed analysts’ expectations.
Comcast shares closed down nearly 4% Thursday.
Here is how Comcast performed for the period ended March 31, compared with estimates from analysts surveyed by LSEG:
Earnings per share: $1.09 adjusted vs. 98 cents expected
Revenue: $29.89 billion vs. $29.77 billion expected
While domestic broadband revenue was up 1.7% to $6.56 billion, Comcast lost 199,000 total domestic broadband customers, reflecting the continued pressure on the cable giant’s cornerstone business. Competition has ramped up in recent years due to the rise of alternative home internet options, including 5G, or so-called fixed wireless.
“In this intensely competitive environment we are not winning the marketplace in a way that is commensurate with the strengths of our network and connectivity,” said Comcast President Mike Cavanagh on the company’s earnings call.
Analysts peppered Comcast executives with questions on Thursday regarding its Xfinity-branded broadband and mobile, and how the company will pivot the business.
Cavanagh said that the company had identified a “disconnect” that’s translated to slowed growth despite a strong broadband network and related products. He noted the two primary headwinds are “price transparency and predictability and the level of ease of doing business with us.”
During last quarter’s earnings call, Comcast executives alerted investors that they would shift the company’s focus to growing its mobile business following continued losses in broadband.
Comcast’s less-than-10-years-old mobile business remained a bright spot during the quarter. Revenue for the unit was up roughly 16% to $1.12 billion, and it added 323,000 lines. There are now roughly 8.15 million total Xfinity Mobile lines.
On Thursday, CEO Brian Roberts said the company is “clearly facing some challenges, but as you’ve heard, with a lot of passion.”
“The team has a sense of urgency, energy and focus to getting customer pain points resolved,” Roberts said. “While this may take a little time to fully take hold, our history of operational execution success would tell you that while sometimes we may not move first, once we get in motion we do it extremely well.”
‘Elevated competition’
Igor Golovniov | Lightrocket | Getty Images
On Thursday, Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong said the company is “in an incredibly strong position to successfully execute on tough decisions we’re making in the face of elevated competition in certain areas.”
Broadband bloomed as a growth engine for cable companies like Comcast as the cable TV business began its decline. Comcast on Thursday reported 427,000 cable TV customer losses during the first quarter.
Following years of consistent broadband customer growth, especially during the early Covid pandemic lockdown orders when many Americans used home internet for work and school, the green shoots of competing offerings began to take hold.
The key competitive force has been the rise of fixed wireless offerings from Verizon and T-Mobile. There’s been the so-called overbuilding of fiber internet, as well as 5G, a fixed wireless high-speed internet offering.
In 2022, Comcast and Charter Communications each reported their first quarterly losses in broadband customer growth.
Last September, Charter unveiled a strategy shift, which centered around new pricing, internet speeds, a push to grow mobile and making customer service changes. CEO Chris Winfrey told CNBC the goal was to remove the longtime negative perception around cable companies.
When Comcast noted the need to shift strategy earlier this year, executives said they would follow Charter’s lead in these areas. Comcast recently started to introduce changes to its mobile plans and pricing, and made a new hire.
Comcast Cable President Dave Watson on Thursday said new offers — such as adding a mobile line for free for one year — that were introduced toward the end of the first quarter have already shown benefits.
“It resulted in a great quarter to start with. We’re rolling here, and we expect continued acceleration in coming quarters,” he said.
Watson also noted upgrades to services for existing customers as “a core piece of our strategy is innovation.”
Despite the lack of growth, revenue for the broadband unit is consistently up due to strength in average revenue per user, or ARPU in industry jargon. Analysts questioned if that would take a hit with the strategy shift.
“What we’re trying to do is really focus on the pain points in this market,” Watson said. “We can execute this tactically, surgically and do not view it as a broad repricing of our base. We think we can still drive healthy broadband ARPU growth, but these initiatives will require some investment, which in turn will impact our ability to grow EBITDA in the near future. But we view the impact as very manageable.”
Bigger picture
Guests ride the Stardust Racers rollercoaster in the Celestial Park area, at the Epic Universe theme park in Orlando, Florida, US, on Saturday, April 5, 2025. Epic Universe, the $7 billion attraction from Comcast Corp.’s Universal Destinations & Experiences division, offers five distinct lands and opens to the public on May 22.
Bloomberg | Getty Images
For the first quarter, Comcast’s net income was down 12.5% to $3.38 billion, or 89 cents a share, compared with $3.86 billion, or 97 cents per share during the same period a year earlier. Adjusting for one-time items including income tax expenses and costs related to the value of assets, among other items, Comcast reported earnings per share of $1.09.
Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, were up nearly 2% to $9.53 billion.
The company’s revenue was down slightly to $29.89 billion compared with $30.06 billion in the same period in 2024.
Revenue was helped by what Comcast refers to as its “growth businesses,” including mobile, streaming platform Peacock, the business services unit, residential broadband, studios and theme parks. Comcast is in the process of spinning out its portfolio of cable networks, including CNBC, in a transaction that’s expected to be completed this year.
Revenue for the media segment, which includes NBCUniversal, was up about 1% to $6.44 billion, and revenue in the film studios unit rose 3% to $2.83 billion.
The media unit got a boost from Peacock, with adjusted EBITDA for the segment up 21% to $1 billion driven by the streaming platform. Revenue for Peacock itself was up 16%. The streamer’s quarterly loss narrowed to $215 million, compared with a loss of $639 million in the same quarter a year prior.
Peacock had 41 million paid subscribers, beating analyst estimates of 37.21 million for the quarter, according to StreetAccount.Peacock ended last fiscal year with 36 million paid customers.
Competitors including Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have each seen their streaming platforms reach profitability in recent quarters. Streamers have shifted gears to focusing on ad-supported business models and cracking down on password sharing in a bid to reach profitability as Wall Street investors shifted focus to the metric rather than subscriber additions.
NBCUniversal’s theme parks revenue was down 5% to roughly $1.88 billion – driven by lower guest attendance during a quarter plagued by the Los Angeles wildfires– weighing down the overall business.
The company is gearing up for the debut of Universal Epic Universe on May 22, which will be the first major theme park development in Florida in 25 years. In Thursday’s release, Comcast called the new theme park its “most ambitious parks experience ever created,” with more than 50 attractions.
In August it will also open Universal Horror Unleashed in Las Vegas. NBCUniversal also recently announced plans to build a Universal Theme Park and Resort in the U.K.
Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.
Merck on Thursday lowered its full-year profit guidance, citing $200 million in estimated costs for tariffs and a charge tied to a recent deal.
The company now expects its 2025 adjusted earnings to come in between $8.82 and $8.97, down slightly from a previous outlook of $8.88 to $9.03 per share.
The company said the expected tariff charge primarily reflects levies between the U.S. and China, and Canada and Mexico to a lesser degree. Merck has built a robust presence in China, which is considered one of the company’s most important markets and is home to some of its partners and manufacturing and research and development sites.
Merck noted that the new outlook does not account for President Donald Trump‘s planned tariffs on pharmaceuticals imported into the U.S., which are prompting some drugmakers to bolster their U.S. manufacturing footprints.
That includes Merck, which has invested $12 billion in U.S. manufacturing and research and development and expects to put more than $9 billion more into the country by the end of 2028.
On an earnings call on Thursday, Merck CEO Rob Davis said that “as you look at 2025, we’re well positioned with inventory to be able to mitigate anything we could see in the short term.” He added that in the medium to long term, “we’ve already started to identify where we can either reposition our own manufacturing,” which could look like changing the priorities of existing plants, or bring on external manufacturing to “bridge gaps” and build internal production further.
“In many ways, we are aligned with what the administration is wanting to do, and feel that we’re in position to be able to do that quite effectively,” he said.
The new guidance does include a one-time charge of roughly 6 cents per share related to the company’s license agreement with Hengrui Pharma, which it announced in March.
Merck reiterated its full-year sales forecast of between $64.1 billion and $65.6 billion.
Also on Thursday, the drugmaker reported first-quarter revenue and profit that beat expectations, as it said it saw strength in its oncology portfolio and animal health products.
Merck also cited “increasingly meaningful” sales contributions from two recently launched drugs. They are Winrevair, which is used to treat a rare, deadly lung condition, and Capvaxive, a vaccine designed to protect adults from a bacteria known as pneumococcus that can cause serious illnesses and lung infection.
Sales of those drugs will likely be critical to Merck’s efforts to offset losses from its top-selling cancer therapy Keytruda, which will lose exclusivity in 2028.
Here’s what Merck reported for the first quarter compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:
Earnings per share: $2.22 adjusted vs. $2.14 expected
Revenue: $15.53 billion vs. $15.31 billion expected
The company posted net income of $5.08 billion, or $2.01 per share, for the quarter. That compares with net income of $4.76 billion, or $1.87 per share, during the year-earlier period.
Excluding acquisition and restructuring costs, Merck earned $2.22 per share for the first quarter.
Merck raked in $15.53 billion in revenue for the quarter, down 2% from the same period a year ago.
Pharmaceutical, animal health sales
Merck’s pharmaceutical unit, which develops a wide range of drugs, booked $13.64 billion in revenue during the first quarter. That’s down 3% from the same period a year ago.
Keytruda recorded $7.21 billion in revenue during the quarter, up just 4% from the year-earlier period.
That increase was driven by higher uptake of Keytruda for earlier-stage cancers and strong demand for the drug for metastatic cancers, which spread to other parts of the body. Still, sales came under the $7.43 billion that analysts had expected, according to StreetAccount estimates.
Notably, Merck continued to see trouble with China sales of Gardasil, a vaccine that prevents cancer from HPV, the most common sexually transmitted infection in the U.S.
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In February, Merck announced a decision to halt shipments of Gardasil into China beginning that month and going through at least mid-2025. Investors will likely be looking for updates on that effort during the earnings call on Thursday.
The Chinese market makes up the majority of the blockbuster shot’s international revenue. Merck is hoping that Gardasil’s expanded approval for men ages 9 to 26 in China will help boost uptake of the vaccine.
Gardasil raked in $1.33 billion in sales, down 41% from the first quarter of 2024 primarily due to lower demand in China. That’s below the $1.45 billion that analysts were expecting, according to StreetAccount estimates.
China has retaliated with tariffs of 125% on goods from the U.S. Some experts said China’s tariffs on U.S. products could lead to increased prices or limited supply of some popular Western medicines for Chinese patients, Reuters reported.
Merck’s animal health division, which develops vaccines and medicines for dogs, cats and cattle, posted nearly $1.59 billion in sales, up 5% from the same period a year ago. The company said higher demand for livestock products and sales from Elanco’s aqua business, which it acquired last year, drove that growth.
A Chipotle store stands in the Bronx on April 23, 2025 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
From Procter & Gamble to Chipotle, consumer companies are slashing their forecasts, projecting that tariffs will weigh on their profits and put more pressure on an already shaky consumer.
At least a dozen companies have cut or pulled their full-year outlooks so far this earnings season, with several more weeks of quarterly reports still on deck.
For many companies, tariffs mean higher prices on key commodities, like Peruvian avocados or saccharin to make toothpaste, which will eat into their earnings. But the uncertainty bred by the trade war is just as damaging to businesses’ bottom lines as consumers pull back their spending.
The cautious projections come in the middle of a 90-day pause of the higher rates under President Donald Trump‘s so-called reciprocal tariff plan. Until early July, most imports will face a duty of 10%, excluding goods from China — which are subject to 145% duties — along with aluminum, cars and other nonexempt items.
Still, the situation changes almost daily. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told investors in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday he expects “there will be a de-escalation” in Trump’s trade war with China in the “very near future.” The White House also said Wednesday that automakers could win exemptions for some tariffs.
Higher prices to fight lower profits
Packages of Cascade Platinum Plus dishwasher detergent are stacked at a Costco Wholesale store on March 11, 2025 in San Diego, California.
Kevin Carter | Getty Images
Under the tariffs in effect now, coffee, board games and aircraft are all more expensive for companies to make. Many executives will likely choose to raise prices to mitigate the dent to profit margins.
“Aircraft cost too much already. I don’t want to pay any more for aircraft,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said Thursday. “It doesn’t make sense. And certainly, we’re pulling guidance. Certainly, this is not something we would intend to absorb. And I’ll tell you, it’s not something that I would expect our customers to welcome. So we’ve got to work on this.”
Tariffs worldwide, including retaliatory ones and not just those in the U.S., will “really pressure” progress in improving the industry’s supply chain, Airbus Americas CEO Robin Hayes said at a Wings Club luncheon in New York on Thursday. The U.S. aerospace industry has a trade surplus, helping soften the country’s overall deficit.
Calls are growing among airlines and aerospace suppliers to reinstate the terms of a more than 45-year-old agreement that allows the industry to operate mostly duty-free. Other industries are also pushing for exemptions from tariffs.
But barring cuts in tariff rates or new carveouts for goods, travel isn’t the only sector that will see price hikes. P&G, Keurig Dr Pepper and Hasbro all said Thursday that they could raise prices in the near future to offset higher costs.
“There will likely be pricing [changes] — tariffs are inherently inflationary — but we’re also looking at sourcing options,” P&G CEO Jon Moeller said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Though it predicted costs to produce its coffee and sodas would rise, Keurig Dr Pepper did not lower its full-year forecast. The company posted strong earnings growth for the first quarter, bolstered by the sale of its minority stake in coconut water maker Vita Coco, giving the beverage giant the flexibility to reiterate its outlook.
A ‘nervous’ consumer
shopper scans coupons in a grocery store in Washington, D.C.
Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
The tariffs will take time to affect the prices on grocery store shelves and inside malls. But they’re already taking a toll on shoppers’ mentally.
Earlier this month, U.S. consumer sentiment tumbled to its second-lowest reading since 1952. Shoppers are already pulling back their spending as they fear accelerated inflation, job losses and a potential recession, companies said this week.
“The main driver, I would say, is a more nervous consumer reducing consumption in the short term, and the impact on the cost structure and our ability to deliver the earnings a lower growth rate,” P&G CFO Andre Schulten said on a call with media on Thursday, explaining the company’s reasoning for cutting its forecast.
P&G, which owns top household brands like Charmin and Tide, lowered its outlook for core earnings per share and revenue for the full fiscal year, which is in its final quarter. Its third-quarter sales fell short of Wall Street’s estimates.
“It’s not illogical to see the consumer adopt the ‘wait and see’ attitude, and we saw traffic down at retailers,” Schulten said.
PepsiCo, another grocery store staple, cited a “subdued” consumer — along with tariffs — as the reason it cut its forecast for full-year core constant currency earnings per share.
The anxious consumer is also weighing on Chipotle, the first of the major publicly traded restaurant companies to report its results.
The burrito chain lowered the top end of its outlook for full-year same-store sales growth. Executives said traffic started slowing in February as diners began worrying more about their finances. The trend has continued into April.
“We could see this in our visitation study, where saving money because of concerns around the economy was the overwhelming reason consumers were reducing the frequency of restaurant visits,” Chipotle CEO Scott Boatwright told analysts on Wednesday.
For its part, Hasbro opted to reiterate its forecast, which gives a wide range of a $100 million to $300 million headwind to its business from tariffs. The toy company’s outlook assumes that the China tariffs could range from 50% to the current rate of 145%.
Executives also warned of potential job losses tied to the increased costs.
Airlines, too, are seeing weaker demand, particularly in their economy cabins. Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC in an interview earlier this month that Trump’s tariff policy at the time was the “wrong approach” and that it was hurting both domestic economy-class demand and corporate travel because of the uncertainty.
FILE PHOTO: The Bristol Myers Squibb research and development center at Cambridge Crossing in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Dec. 27, 2023.
Adam Glanzman | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Bristol Myers Squibb on Thursday beat first-quarter estimates and hiked its revenue and profit guidance for the year, as the drugmaker cuts costs.
The company now expects 2025 revenue to come in between $45.8 billion and $46.8 billion, up from a previous outlook of around $45.5 billion. Bristol Myers also projects full-year adjusted earnings of $6.70 to $7 per share, which compares with its prior forecast of $6.55 to $6.85 per share.
Notably, the company said its guidance revisions include the estimated impact of current tariffs on U.S. products shipped to China. China is a critical market for Bristol Myers. The company has previously outlined its “China 2030 Strategy,” which is a plan to bring more of its medicines to the nation to address unmet medical needs in areas like gastric cancer and include more Chinese patients in clinical trials.
But the new outlooks do not account for any of President Donald Trump’s planned tariffs on pharmaceuticals imported into the U.S., Bristol Myers said.
In an earnings call Thursday, Bristol Myers Squibb CEO Christopher Boerner said the company appreciated the Trump administration’s efforts to increase U.S. manufacturing, but noted that it “needs to be done in a very thoughtful and deliberate way” in the pharmaceutical sector.
He added that it is “simply too early to provide a lot more” on the company’s expectations for pharmaceutical-specific tariffs. Still, Bristol Myers is continuing “mitigation efforts” to reduce risks of any disruption to the supply chain and shortages, Boerner said.
“We have a tremendous amount of flexibility to be able to move our manufacturing around should any potential tariffs come up,” said the company’s CFO David Elkins on the call. He added that Bristol Myers has a broad global manufacturing network, which includes a significant presence in the U.S.
Bristol Myers said the outlook hike reflects strength in its portfolio of newer drug brands, and better-than-anticipated first-quarter sales from its legacy portfolio of older medications.
The results come as Bristol Myers moves to slash $2 billion in expenses by the end of 2027, which is on top of $1.5 billion in planned cost cuts by the end of this year.
It also comes just days after Bristol Myers’ recently approved schizophrenia drug, Cobenfy, disappointed in a large clinical trial, leading some Wall Street analysts to substantially lower their multibillion-dollar sales forecasts for the treatment.
The company is banking on Cobenfy and other so-called growth portfolio drugs to offset the loss in revenue from top-selling treatments slated to lose exclusivity on the market, including its blockbuster blood thinner Eliquis and cancer immunotherapy Opdivo.
Boerner said “there’s a lot of uncertainty, whether related to tariffs, a potential economic downturn or restructuring at the FDA and HHS.” He is referring to the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul the Food and Drug Administration and other federal health agencies under the Department of Health and Human Services.
But the company remains confident in its ability “to deliver for our patients, employees and shareholders,” he said.
Here is what Bristol Myers reported for the first quarter compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:
Earnings per share: $1.80 adjusted vs. $1.49 expected
Revenue: $11.2 billion vs. $10.7 billion expected
Bristol Myers posted net income of $2.5 billion, or $1.20 per share, for the first quarter. That compares with a net loss of $11.9 billion, or a loss of $5.89 per share, for the year-earlier period.
Excluding certain items, it reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.80 for the quarter.
The pharmaceutical giant’s revenue fell 6% from the same period a year ago to $11.2 billion.
Eliquis booked $3.57 billion in sales for the quarter, down 4% from the year-ago period. That is above the $3.34 billion that analysts were expecting, according to estimates compiled by StreetAccount.
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The blood thinner, which Bristol Myers shares with Pfizer, is expected to lose market exclusivity by 2028.
Sales of Eliquis could also take a hit in 2026, when a new negotiated price for the drug goes into effect for certain Medicare patients following negotiations with the federal government. Those price talks are a key provision of the Inflation Reduction Act.
The second round of negotiations targets 15 additional drugs and will set new prices that will go into effect in 2028. That includes the Bristol Myers medicationPomalyst, which is used to treat a blood cancer called multiple myeloma and a different cancer that develops in people with HIV.
Pomalyst brought in $658 million for the period, down 24% from a year earlier. Revlimid, a drug used to treat adults with multiple myeloma, took in $936 million in sales for the first quarter, down 44% from the same period a year ago.
Revenue from the company’s so-called growth portfolio was $5.56 billion for the first quarter, up 16% from the year-earlier period.
Opdivo brought in $2.27 billion in revenue for the first quarter, rising 9% from the year-earlier period. That is above analysts’ estimate of $2.16 billion for the quarter, StreetAccount said.
Meanwhile, Cobenfy booked $27 million in sales for the first quarter.
