Novo Nordisk’s rise to become an obesity powerhouse, only to find itself in a brutal battle for market share with its U.S. rival Eli Lilly, has been one of the most dramatic narratives of biopharma.
One man who’s lived this story first-hand is Karsten Munk Knudsen. Having joined the Danish drugmaker as a business analyst in 1999, he rose through the ranks and was eventually appointed chief financial officer in 2018.
After Knudsen and CEO Mike Doustdar unveiled Novo’s second-quarter earnings Wednesday, the CFO spoke to Fierce for “The Top Line” podcast. During the wide-ranging conversation, Knudsen reflected on the highs and lows of his nine years on Novo’s leadership team.
“I would say it's been quite a roller coaster,” he told Fierce.
That ride began with a far less glamorous stretch for the company.
“I started out with a bit of a rough patch with very low growth and a lot of pressure and a new team,”Knudsen recalled. “And then we had a period of hyper growth where we were growing, like, 20%, 30%—even 40% in some quarters—where it was all about scaling manufacturing to meet unprecedented demand.”
But the surge did not last.
“Then, unfortunately, growth slowed down almost as fast as it came around, and as a consequence we disappointed a lot of investors, and our share price declined markedly over the last two years,” he added.
Knudsen acknowledged that trying to navigate the fluctuating financial fortunes of such a high-profile pharma “entails a lot of pressure” and comes with a great deal of responsibility to make the right decisions.
“I take that on me,” he said. “As a management team, we take that on us to chart the course, to set the company off to delivering sustainable future growth in the right way.”
With oral Wegovy sales off to a strong start, one of the next drivers for growth is expected to be CagriSema. But this drug—a combination of the amylin analog cagrilintide with Novo’s well-known GLP-1 quantity semaglutide—missed one of the endpoints of a phase 3 study in patients with Type 2 diabetes.
Despite this latest example of mixed data for CagriSema, Knudsen insisted he’s “still optimistic” on the therapy’s prospects ahead of an FDA approval decision.
While the results did not match Lilly’s tirzepatide, the CFO said the 1.9-percentage-point reduction in HbA1c represented “actually really good blood glucose lowering,” while the 15.2% weight loss in these patients was “really nice.”
“So, I believe it’s going to be a competitive diabetes product for many years to come,” he added.