Pfizer is raising its revenue expectations for the year with a huge rollout of its Covid-19 vaccine as well as strong performances from other parts of its business.

The company reported first-quarter earnings of 4.88 billion dollars (£3.52 billion), or 86 cents per share.

Per-share earnings were 93 cents with one-time costs or gains removed. That is far above the 79 cents Wall Street was looking for, according to a survey by Zacks Investment Research.

Revenue was 14.58 billion dollars (£10.51 billion), also easily exceeding forecasts of 13.49 billion dollars from industry analysts.

Pfizer expects full-year earnings in the range of 3.55 to 3.65 dollars per share, with revenue in the range of 70.5 billion to 72.5 billion dollars.

The New York company is manufacturing hundreds of millions of doses of the Covid-19 jab and pushing forward on research gauging its effectiveness in different patient groups, such as teenagers and people with compromised immune systems.

Pfizer has said that this year it can produce two billion doses of the vaccine, developed with German partner BioNTech.