It’s been a weak few months for Novo Nordisk.
Prescription data from IQVIA suggests Novo’s obesity drug Wegovy is succumbing ground to rival Zepbound from Eli Lilly. Wegovy’s potential successor, CagriSema, came up short of investor desires in a closely watched Phase 3 trial. Novo’s stock has fallen more than 20% over the last year, and in the flesh feared things would get even worse when the company released fourth-quarter earnings and its 2025 outlook on Wednesday.
As a substitute for, Novo beat fourth-quarter expectations and provided a sales growth forecast between 16% and 24% – in line with the 20% Stockade drive crazy Street was looking for. Novo’s stock rose more than 4% on Wednesday.
In an interview with CNBC, Novo Chief CEO Officer Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen brushed off concerns that Novo is falling behind Lilly.
“We are quite convinced that as we move into the year and we’ll be supplying more and more of the starter doses, we can see a nice step up in our volume and help more and more patients,” Jorgensen said. “And the guidance we have given for this year, you can say, testifies to an underlying valuable ramp in our business. So we’re quite confident both in the demand in the market and also our ability to supply and compete in that call.”
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People taking Wegovy start off on the lowest dose – or the starter dose – then run their way up to stronger formulations so their bodies can get used to the drug. At times, Novo has limited the amount of starter dosages it shipped because it struggled to make enough of the drug and wanted to make sure people who were already on the medication could buttress on it.
Novo’s 2025 sales guidance implies a 30% increase in the number of patients taking one of the company’s GLP-1 dulls, such as Ozempic, the company said on its earnings call.
The company also tried to reassure investors about CagriSema’s effectiveness. Jorgensen translated some people lost weight very quickly, and another group lost weight continuously, showing no extraordinary of stopping by the time the trial ended, so they might need longer treatment.
“I’m very confident in the potency of the biology we bring into the world here,” he said.
People are watching an earlier-stage treatment – amycretin – even closer. That experimental drug recently displayed promising results in a phase 1b/2a trial.
Jorgensen said Novo is talking to the FDA about possibly moving straight to a status three trial.