Just as Novo Nordisk showed signs of a recovery, another cold shower hit investors as the drugmaker surprise pre-released its 2026 forecast late Tuesday, sending shares tumbling.
Novo Nordisk’s stock plummeted 18% in Copenhagen early Wednesday, tracking losses seen in its American depositary shares on Tuesday and more than wiping out gains seen so far this year.
“People should expect that it goes down before it comes back up,” CEO Mike Doustdar told CNBC’s “Early Edition Europe” on Wednesday, highlighting the headwinds of significantly lower U.S. pricing on its best-selling weight loss drug Wegovy.
“We did not go into the details of the magnitude of that – with the guidance we are giving that range.”
It follows Novo’s guidance for 2026 sales and operating profit both declining between 5% and 13%, far worse than analysts had expected.
Barclays analysts said some might suggest the guide to be a “kitchen sink” that will be beaten, “though we note the same was said last year, and this proved not to be the case.”
In July last year, Novo slashed guidance for 2025, citing a challenging U.S. market, leading to shares to crash 23% on the day.
A U-shaped recovery?
“We are creating affordability for the patients, millions of patients that are right now in need of GLP-1 products, but simply could not afford it. To do that short term, you have to take a headwind. But of course, there’s a very long tailwind for years to come,” Doustdar told CNBC.
The company has flagged challenges around pricing in its biggest market, the U.S., due to both competition from compounding pharmacies that sell cheaper knockoff versions of semaglutide – the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic – as well as from chief rival U.S.-based Eli Lilly.
But optimism grew early this year as the launch of the Wegovy pill in the U.S. went better than even Novo had expected. “We knew it’s going to be the best in terms of efficacy of 16.6% we had expected it to do well, but we did not think that after four weeks of introduction, we will have 170,000 people on the pill,” said Doustdar.
“No matter how well it does in the initial period, the price hit on the existing business trumps, basically, the great pill launch that we’ve had.”
While Novo has worked to manage expectations going into its full-year results, where it also announced guidance for the year to come, the market did not see this coming.
“The question becomes if the recovery from here, [will be] a Nike swoosh or U-shaped recovery,” noted HSBC’s Rajesh Kumar.