Following Eli Lilly’s disappointing earnings showing last week, Novo Nordisk’s latest report on the performance of its GLP-1 stalwarts Ozempic and Wegovy is more mixed.
For the third quarter, Novo’s semaglutide-based diabetes blockbuster Ozempic generated 29.8 billion Danish kroner (around $4.3 billion), charting commendable year-over-year growth of 26%. However, according to a Wednesday note from ODDO BHF, the number still fell short of analysts’ expectations.
Ozempic’s performance—coupled with a particularly weak earnings period for Novo’s GLP-1 predecessor Victoza—contributed to Novo’s overall third-quarter sales haul of 71.3 billion kroner (about $10.3 billion). That figure was up 21% year over year but again fell short of the performance analysts had been hoping for.
Novo blamed the GLP-1 sales blip primarily on negative adjustments tied to discounts.
The silver lining for Novo was no doubt Ozempic’s sister drug Wegovy, which grew sales by a whopping 79% year over year to 17.3 billion kroner ($2.5 billion) and came out some 8% ahead of expectations, the ODDO team pointed out.
To hear the analysts tell it, Wegovy’s strong showing in obesity should help allay some of the fears around overall GLP-1 demand after Lilly reported a weaker-than-expected quarter for its own GLP-1 meds, Mounjaro and Zepbound, last week.
Novo’s long-standing insulin franchise “continues to be a good surprise,” the ODOO team pointed out elsewhere. Novo’s total insulin sales in the third quarter were 12.5 billion kroner ($1.8 billion), down slightly from the previous three-month stretch.
In light of the results, Novo is narrowing its guidance slightly for the year. The company now expects 2024 sales to grow at a range of 23% to 27%, compared to a previously stated range of 22% to 28%.While industry watchers have long held high expectations for the sales potential of GLP-1s like Ozempic and Wegovy, consistent supply hurdles, off-label prescriptions and an influx of telehealth companies and compounding pharmacies seeking to soak up demand for the drugs have caused some to question their predictions.
Last week, Novo’s chief rival Eli Lilly reported $3.11 billion in sales of its diabetes GLP-1 Mounjaro, falling well short of analysts’ $3.7 billion estimate. The story was much the same for Mounjaro’s obesity counterpart Zepbound, which reached sales of $1.26 billion during the third quarter versus consensus of $1.7 billion.
The sales readout prompted Lilly to remove $600 million from the top end of its yearly revenue projection, now at $46 billion.
“(The company) has been balancing demand creation activities and launches into new markets with its production to support the continuity of care for patients,” Lilly explained in a release at the time. “In Q3, the company continued to be prudent in scaling up demand generation activities.”
Given the popularity of GLP-1 medicines, both Lilly and Novo have been working tirelessly—and investing billions of dollars—into manufacturing capacity expansions for their drugs.
Those efforts bore fruit for Novo last week when it was revealed that the last dose of semaglutide posted on the FDA’s shortage database—the 0.25-mg starter dose of Wegovy—had once again been listed as “available.”
Still, Novo may soon have to contend with the compounding pharmacies that have been propping up demand in the interim, with one trade group for the industry already suing the FDA after it similarly removed Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide-based GLP-1s from its shortage roster last month