Evidence shows BD’s Veritor antigen testing system did perform very well commercially in the years after the July 2020 prediction.

Key points:

• Very strong early demand and scale-up (2020–2021). In BD’s Q3 2020 earnings call, management reported “very strong demand” for the Veritor Plus system and said they shipped more Veritor readers in the first month than in a typical full year, with U.S. government orders (e.g., 2,000 analyzers and 750,000 test kits) and plans to scale to 12 million tests per month by February 2021. (fool.com)

• Large Veritor revenues in FY2021. For BD’s fiscal Q1 2021, COVID‑19 testing revenue was about $867 million, including $688 million from Veritor Plus system sales in that single quarter. (bioworld.com) In its May 2021 earnings call, BD said it expected BD Veritor revenues toward the higher end of a $1.0–$1.5 billion range for FY2021, underscoring that Veritor was a major revenue driver. (fool.com) In Q3 2021 alone, BD reported COVID‑19 testing revenue of $300 million, including $212 million from Veritor Plus. (investors.bd.com)

• Installed base and market penetration. BD’s own releases note that by July 2020, more than 25,000 Veritor instruments were already in use across U.S. health‑care settings, which were then leveraged for the SARS‑CoV‑2 antigen assay. (news.bd.com) By early 2021, BD’s CEO said there were over 70,000 Veritor analyzers globally, indicating rapid adoption and expansion of the platform. (medtechdive.com)

• Product line extensions and retail/at‑home expansion. BD launched combination COVID‑19/flu antigen tests on the Veritor platform in 2021 and obtained EUA for them, broadening the use case for the system. (news.bd.com) They also launched the BD Veritor At‑Home COVID‑19 Test, distributed via Amazon, Everly Health, and grocery chains, further monetizing the Veritor antigen technology in consumer channels. (investors.bd.com)

• Ongoing, though declining, revenue as pandemic waned. As COVID‑only testing demand normalized, BD’s filings show COVID‑19 testing revenues (including Veritor) fell from $185 million in the prior‑year quarter to $32 million in the quarter ended December 31, 2022, reflecting industry‑wide decline rather than a failure of the product. (sec.gov) Even so, the Veritor SARS‑CoV‑2 test remained important enough that BD pursued and obtained full FDA 510(k) clearance in 2025, transitioning from EUA to a long‑term, CLIA‑waived point‑of‑care product. (news.bd.com)

Taken together, the Veritor antigen testing platform generated well over a billion dollars of revenue in FY2021 alone, saw its installed base nearly triple, expanded into combination and at‑home tests, and secured permanent FDA clearance. That constitutes clear commercial success for the COVID‑19 antigen testing system in the “subsequent years” after mid‑2020, consistent with Friedberg’s prediction that the company would "do well" with this protein (antigen)‑based testing system compared with RNA‑based alternatives.