Medical bottles and syringe are seen with Novo Nordisk logo displayed on a screen in the background.
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Shares of Novo Nordisk rose on Wednesday after the company reported better-than-expected net profit in the fourth quarter amid soaring demand for its Wegovy obesity drugs, but forecast a slight slowdown in sales for 2025.
Net profit at the Danish pharmaceutical behemoth rose 29% annually to 28.23 billion Danish kroner ($3.98 billion) in the fourth quarter, versus the 26.09 billion Danish kroner anticipated.
Full-year net profit climbed 21% to 100.99 billion Danish kroner, also beating estimates of 99.14 billion Danish kroner for 2024.
Shares pared gains slightly to trade up 4.18% by 9:00 a.m. London time.
The drug maker posted a 107% year-on-year increase in Wegovy sales to 19.87 billion Danish kroner ($2.76 billion) in the three months to the end of December, slightly missing the 20.02 billion Danish kroner forecast by analysts in a Factset poll late Tuesday.
Overall sales at the company — which also produces diabetes and rare disease treatments — increased 30% in the fourth quarter and 26% on the year at constant exchange rates. That growth was driven primarily by demand from the North America and Europe, Middle East and Africa regions.
Novo Nordisk, however, forecast slower sales growth for 2025 of between 16% to 24% at constant exchange rates, below the 18% to 26% forecast for 2024. This forecast, the company said, reflected “intensifying competition and continued pricing pressure within Diabetes and Obesity care” market.
Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the wide range in guidance indicated that Novo Nordisk’s current market share could be slowing. She added that there was nevertheless still “a long way to run” for obesity drugs given their broad perceived health benefits.
“A further acceleration will depend on more expanded use cases being approved by health regulators,” she added.
Novo Nordisk has ridden a wave of rising global demand for GLP-1 agonist obesity treatments. GLP-1s, which form the basis of Novo’s Wegovy and rival Eli Lilly‘s Zepbound, work by mimicking a hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1, which suppresses appetite.
Investors are now watching for updates on the company’s other obesity drug candidates, including its hotly anticipated experimental CagriSema treatment. Late-stage CagriSema trial results disappointed markets in December after demonstrating average weight reduction of 22.7%, below the 25% Novo had previously forecast.
The trial results dealt a blow to expectations that CagriSema would emerge as Novo’s next-generation obesity drug, combining semaglutide — the active ingredient in Wegovy — with amylin analog Cagrilintide, a nascent form of weight loss treatment.
However, positive early-stage results for its once weekly Amycretin obesity drug, which similarly employs the amylin pancreas hormone, led the stock higher last month.
Novo Nordisk said Wednesday that it would conduct a further study of CagriSema in 2025 with a view to filing for regulatory approval in the first quarter of 2026, according to Reuters.
