Diabetes and obesity drug maker Novo Nordisk on Thursday raised its full-year operating profit and sales expectations on strong demand for its wildly popular Wegovi obesity drug.
“The 2023 sales outlook is higher, primarily reflecting Wegovy prescription trends in the first quarter and higher full-year expectations for Wegovy sales in the US,” Novo Nordisk said in a statement.
Shares in Novo were trading higher on Thursday before making a modest comeback.
Novo now expects sales growth in local currencies for 2023 to be between 24 percent and 30 percent and profit growth between 28 percent and 34 percent, up from February guidance of between 13 percent and 19 percent for both of those numbers.
“Novo Nordisk is a big company and growing at double-digit growth rates doesn’t happen automatically. I think many other large pharmaceutical companies of Novo’s caliber will be envious,” said Søren Lontoft Hansen, an analyst at Sidebank.
The guidance update partly reflects the expected high sales in the US of the diabetes drug Ozympic, which is based on the same active ingredient as Wegovy – semaglutide.
Semaglutide is one of a class of drugs known as GLP-1 analogs, which suppress appetite and reduce appetite and increase feelings of fullness.
After Novo Nordisk’s 2021 launch in the United States, the company’s supply constraints were exacerbated when demand for WegoV was overwhelmed and a contract manufacturing company had to temporarily suspend production due to manufacturing issues.
“The improvement shows that Novo is able to meet the year-round demand in terms of production,” Hansen told Reuters.
Novo also said in March that its best-selling diabetes drug Ozympic is back in stock after months of shortages, which can be explained to non-diabetics who want to use the drug to lose weight with a prescription in a so-called phase-out. – Account use.
Wegovi has been launched in the United States, Denmark and Norway, and the company expects the drug to be available in more European markets this year.
In the first quarter of this year, Novo’s sales rose 25 percent and operating profit rose 28 percent in local currencies, the company said. Novo will present full financial results for the first quarter on May 4. – Reuters
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