Pfizer (PFE) beat Wall Street consensus on its earnings Tuesday for the first quarter, largely boosted by the company's COVID-19 portfolio. Though the company has several new drugs in the pipeline, investors are leery on the company's outlook given its reliance on the pandemic.

"We are assuming in our model that even in a 'trough' scenario, the COVID-19 products still contribute revenues to (Pfizer). In the event both products generate lower volumes than we expect, this would present further downside to our valuation," said Goldman Sachs analysts in a note Tuesday.

Pfizer remains the only vaccine company whose stock didn't get the same boost as its balance sheet did from the pandemic, even as it enjoyed market domination globally.

CEO Albert Bourla told Yahoo Finance in an interview Tuesday he is not happy with the stock price, currently trading at about $39 per share, but knows that uncertainty spooks investors.

"The multiple that is assigned to our stock is the bottom of the range," Bourla said.

While demand for the company's COVID products is uncertain, there is also risk in the company's 2023 outlook as it prepares to launch 12 products in the second half of the year. That's because they still require FDA action and approval.

"We understand the setup: anything following Pfizer's COVID success looks like a rough patch, M&A misses loom larger than home runs. Investors may view Pfizer's risk aversion, despite >$100B deal capacity, as a frustrating miscalculation—not Merck frustrating, but frustrating nonetheless," BMO Research analysts said in a note in February, prior to the company's $43 billion acquisition of Seagan, a global biotech company that focuses on cancer research and treatments.

COVID products

Bourla has noted that 2023 will be a transition year for the company's COVID-19 products, as vaccine uptake and Paxlovid treatment use will vary based on U.S. government decisions. That includes FDA's decision on when Paxlovid will be fully approved and what the needs will be for the COVID vaccine, Comirnaty.

The company, like others which benefitted from the pandemic, is seeing a reduction in its COVID-19 suite of products, which alone accounted for a significant boost to the company's bottom line in 2022, helping it achieve $100 billion in revenues for the year.

By comparison, 2023 is starting off slower, as evidenced by negotiations with the European Union and the 26% decline in COVID revenue compared to the same quarter last year. In addition, CEO Bourla said that the supply of doses that were already purchased by governments last year are expected to last through the year.