Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, concluded the somewhat turbulent 2024, reporting profits and revenues on Wednesday, comfortably beating Wall Street's expectations. However, the drugmaker said it expects sales growth to slow down in 2025 as competition increases.
Novo Nordisk holds the title as Europe's most valuable company, but peaked last June as analysts worry about uncertainty in demand for obesity drugs and the performance of new drugs in trials. Since reaching the stock price has fallen by around 40%.
“Last year was two half stories,” said Emily Field, analyst at Barclays. In the first half of 2024, we offered “a lot of overall excitement.”
However, data since then suggest that obesity drug prescriptions are growing slowly in the US, with field adding that the results of several trials of drugs in the company's pipeline were lower than expected. . President Trump's elections have also generally focused on pharmaceutical companies amid the potential changes in healthcare policies.
“Many uncertainty” is concerned about whether obesity drug sales can truly meet the industry's high expectations for a market that exceeds billions of dollars in the future. there was. Novo Nordisk's main competitor is Eli Lilly, an American drug manufacturer that sells obesity drugs.
On Wednesday, Novo Nordisk saw its revenues rise 25% last year, and its revenues rise to 290 billion Danish cloners, or $40.6 billion, along with rising US sales, with more than 100 billion Danish cloners. He said he reported.
Due to rising competition and pricing pressures, sales growth is expected in 2025 of 16-24%. However, the company said it still sees strong demand for obesity treatment.
“The number of people living obese is so, so many, that's the market we're just starting to serve,” said Lars Flugaard Jorgensen, the chief executive of drugmakers, on Wednesday. He spoke on a phone call with a reporter. He added that the 2025 guidance envisages “a very important lamp” in US sales.
The company's share price rose about 5% on Wednesday.
Novo Nordisk has repeatedly plunged into the spotlight in recent weeks by Trump and his new administration.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who said he doesn't like obesity pills, is a candidate for Trump's health secretary, a post that gives him power over access to medicines. And last month, Trump attacked Greenland and threatened tariffs in Denmark, Novonordisk's home country. The Novo Nordisk manufacturer is a part of the US drugs, but still imports the active pharmaceutical ingredient Semaglutide, for some of the most popular injectable drugs.
Karsten Munk Knudsen, the company's chief financial officer, said in an interview Wednesday that the company has a lot of optimism in 2025. “Geopolitics is probably more volatile than it is in the past few years.”
Over the past few weeks, tariff threats and imposed taxes have created a lot of uncertainty for business leaders around the world. Trump has postponed tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico this week, but he has advanced additional tariffs on Chinese goods, warning that tariffs on the European Union “will definitely happen.”
This year, Novo Nordisk began recovering from the unfortunate court case results for the next-generation weight loss drug Cagrisema. After missing out on predictions in late-stage exams, the company's stock price plunged 20% in a day in late December. However, Jorgensen said the company is “confident in the biology of Caglycema.”
Novo Nordisk also said it is expected to apply for Cagrisema's first regulatory approval in early 2026. Last month, the results of early-stage trials for the new drug Amycretin worked well, boosting the company's stock.
