It’s been a rocky few months for Novo Nordisk.
Prescription data from IQVIA suggests Novo’s obesity drug Wegovy is losing ground to rival Zepbound from Eli Lilly. Wegovy’s potential successor, CagriSema, came up short of investor expectations in a closely watched Phase 3 trial. Novo’s stock has fallen more than 20% over the last year, and people feared things would get even worse when the company released fourth-quarter earnings and its 2025 outlook on Wednesday.
Instead, Novo beat fourth-quarter expectations and provided a sales growth forecast between 16% and 24% – in line with the 20% Wall Street was looking for. Novo’s stock rose more than 4% on Wednesday.
In an interview with CNBC, Novo Chief Executive Officer Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen brushed off concerns that Novo is falling behind Lilly.
“We are quite confident 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 serving more and more patients,” Jorgensen said. “And the guidance we have given for this year, you can say, testifies to an underlying significant 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 market.”
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People taking Wegovy start off on the lowest dose – or the starter dose – then work their way up to stronger formulations so their bodies can get used to the drug. At times, Novo has limited the amount of starter doses it shipped because it struggled to make enough of the drug and wanted to make sure people who were already on the medication could stay on it.
Novo’s 2025 sales guidance implies a 30% increase in the number of patients taking one of the company’s GLP-1 drugs, such as Ozempic, the company said on its earnings call.
The company also tried to reassure investors about CagriSema’s effectiveness. Jorgensen said some people lost weight very quickly, and another group lost weight continuously, showing no sign 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 have here,” he said.
People are watching an earlier-stage treatment – amycretin – even closer. That experimental drug recently showed promising results in a phase 1b/2a trial.
Jorgensen said Novo is talking to the FDA about possibly moving straight to a phase three trial.
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