Novo Nordisk is losing control of the anti-obesity market it created

It appears Novo Nordisk could take some advice from Scarface’s eventual wife and Biggie, aka never get high on your own supply.

The pharma giant, which briefly became Europe’s most valuable company in 2023 due to blockbuster weight-loss/diabetes drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, now finds itself with a rapidly slimming market share and stock price (-46% over the past year).

How we got here

Analysts say Novo Nordisk’s initial mistake was underestimating demand for Wegovy, the weight-loss version of diabetes drug Ozempic, ahead of its 2021 launch.

• The pharma giant thought Wegovy would face the same modest sales as an earlier weight-loss drug called Saxenda, but its calculations were juuuuuuuust a bit outside.
• After just five weeks, Wegovy’s prescription rate exceeded a level Saxenda hit after five years, leading Novo Nordisk to limit demand by rationing doses for new patients.

These shortages opened the door for competition. Novo Nordisk’s lack of supply made it legal for special pharmacies in the US to make compounded, copycat versions of semaglutide with list prices up to 15x lower than Ozempic and Wegovy. It also gave rival Eli Lilly time to catch up, with diabetes drug Mounjaro introduced in 2022 and Zepbound—which outperforms Wegovy in weight-loss studies—coming a year later.

Big picture: Zepbound has surpassed Wegovy in weekly US prescriptions, while Lilly’s Mounjaro is also gaining on Ozempic—putting Novo Nordisk at risk of joining BlackBerry (iPhone), MySpace (Facebook), and Hydrox (Oreo) on the list of companies that blew their first-mover advantage.