Novo may be willing to transition some of its shares to the New York Stock Exchange in an effort to woo U.S. investors.
Novo CEO Mike Doustdar said the Danish drugmaker was open to the idea in an interview with Financial Times this week, noting the U.S. listing clearly offered some advantages.
Novo is currently listed on the Nasdaq Copenhagen. US investors can trade the company’s American depositary receipts in New York. A direct U.S. listing would replace the ADR arrangement and give America’s deep capital markets direct access to the shares. AstraZeneca made a similar move to attract more U.S. investors earlier this year.
Doustdar emphasized that Novo is not actively discussing a change to its listing, just that the company is keeping its options open. And it’s well aware of the increasing importance of the U.S. market for its business.
The U.S. now makes up a majority of the pharma’s GLP-1 sales and accounts for more than half of its revenue. Novo has also been courting an increasingly international and U.S. investor base over the last two decades, Doustdar told the news outlet.
The openness to a New York listing comes as Doustdar navigates a tumultuous transition at Novo. The Ozempic maker helped break open GLP-1 market and was deemed Europe’s most valuable company as recently as Summer 2025. But competition from Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound have dramatically compressed Novo’s share of the metabolic medicine market, especially in the U.S.
A simultaneous string of high-profile pipeline disappointments—like the end of a TransCon collaboration with Ascendis and phase 3 failures for blockbuster hopeful ziltivekimab—have left Novo’s post-Wegovy era equally uncertain.
Since Doustdar took over last year, Novo has cut thousands of jobs in a move to reallocate funds for R&D and launched a branding overhaul. Earlier this week, at Doustdar’s first capital markets day, company leadership also announced plans launch five blockbuster drugs by 2030, increase oral Wegovy production capacity and build out a new consumer-focused arm.
In an interview with Fierce earlier this month, the CEO said the company “felt strongly that we needed to make some radical changes.”
But Novo’s transformation pitch was not enough to appease investors. The company’s shares fell almost eight percent after the Monday meeting, a cumulative 20% descent since the beginning of the year.
Some shareholders, as first reported by Reuters, are calling for Novo go after the way of its chief competitor Eli Lilly, by beefing up its pipeline with more M&A.
Doustdar told Financial Times that Novo’s dealmaking would continue, but remain disciplined. The company will not be “going Christmas shopping” just because dealmaking is now in fashion, he said.