With a modest improvement to guidance and rosy launch expectations for 2027 girding a solid quarter for its GLP-1 franchise, Novo appears to be gradually winning back the confidence of some of its shareholders.
The Danish drugmaker’s stock price was trading up more than 6% Wednesday morning as Novo reported third-quarter sales growth of 4% at constant currencies, reaching nearly 79.1 billion Danish kroner ($11.9 billion) for the period.
The bulk of that lift came courtesy of Novo’s GLP-1 portfolio, and particularly in obesity, where the company has been benefiting from the momentous launch of its Wegovy pill since January.
On a call with analysts Wednesday, Novo CEO Mike Doustdar—tapped last year to turn the company around amid flagging competitiveness with rival Eli Lilly—framed the quarter as a sign that “we are at the growth recovery phase.”
Beyond sales, which have been ticking up sequentially since Q2, patient volumes are moving back into positive territory, too.
Following a “flat end to 2025” and a “slight decline” in Q1, Novo has subsequently added 1.2 million patients in the second quarter and now 1.2 million more in the third, which Doustdar called “quite encouraging.”
“What is promising,” he added, “is that growth comes from both obesity and diabetes.”
All told, Wegovy pill locked down 5.39 billion kroner (nearly $811 million) in Q3, though the company’s injectable semaglutide products Ozempic and Wegovy continued to lose share to Lilly’s respective diabetes and obesity incretins Mounjaro and Zebpound.
Still, Novo has managed to eke out a sizeable lead over Lilly in the companies’ dueling oral launches. As Wegovy pill sales approach the blockbuster threshold in a single quarter, Lilly last week reported $184 million in Q3 sales for Foundayo.
Following that initial debut in the U.S. early this year, Novo had gone on to roll out the Wegovy pill in the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and Germany prior to the end of the third quarter, and it has since launched in four additional countries.
As analyst shops and Fierce have tracked the launch trajectories of the Wegovy pill and Foundayo, the data have come with the persistent caveat that the IQVIA results behind the comparisons fail to account for the full spread of prescriptions, especially where the increasingly important telehealth channel is concerned.
Novo’s EVP of U.S. operations Jamey Millar addressed this gap on Wednesday’s call, suggesting that the Wegovy pill’s performance could be even better than those IQVIA metrics suggest.
“The relative low capture rates from IQVIA are not isolated simply to the subscription model,” Millar told analysts Wednesday. “We have a much more extensive ecosystem of partners for Wegovy than our competitor, and those partners don’t report to IQVIA in absolute terms. So, we’ve consistently seen a lower capture rate for Wegovy pill than the competitive oral product.”
Meanwhile, on the broader GLP-1 front, both Novo and Lilly execs have spoken to the potential access swell that the recent Medicare Bridge program could open up for seniors, and on Wednesday’s call, Millar gave a clearer sense of just how big a benefit the program conferred in Q3.
Citing the most recent weekly data, Millar said that the company saw about 60,000 total prescriptions within Bridge, noting that the company’s 20% sequential GLP-1 growth for the third quarter is “largely, but not exclusively, Bridge volume.”
“For the whole category,” he explained, “if you look to May to October and eliminate the contribution of the Bridge, the whole category is relatively flat, consistent with the seasonality that you see in that period outside of the consumer activation that we see in the wellness period that starts here in the fourth quarter and really peaks at the beginning of the year with New Year’s resolutions and a recommitment to health, if you will.”
Building on that strong sales performance, Novo has upgraded its outlook for the year, now forecasting adjusted sales to range between a 2% drop and a 2% increase for all of 2026, which it credited directly to its latest GLP-1 momentum. As of the second quarter, Novo had telegraphed a steeper predicted decline of 6% up to a flat performance for the full year.
Evolving into ‘27
As Novo’s GLP-1 business continues to pay off, the company is increasingly looking to new launch opportunities as well. Doustdar confirmed on the conference call that Novo aims to launch both its next-generation hemophilia A medicine Frehemgo and its experimental semaglutide-amylin hybrid of cagrisema in 2027.
“I’ve been at Novo for more than 30 years,” Doustdar said, “and I can truthfully say that few things energize this organization like new launches.”
On Frehemgo, the CEO argued that “people living with hemophilia have been asked to accept the trade-off between good protection and a heavy treatment burden for way too long,” stressing that Novo’s drug is “designed to remove that exact trade-off.”
With data on the medicine now in and reviews underway in the U.S. and abroad, “our job now is to make switching from today’s standard of care seamless, safe, and the preferred choice for patients and doctors,” Doustdar said.
Frehemgo secured a first global approval in Saudi Arabia in September and has also passed muster with regulators in the European Union, where it still awaits formal sign-off from the European Commission.
As for cagrisema, Doustdar noted that “our job here is simple: We need to get it to patients fast across channels.”
“We are preparing as we speak so we can go from approval to launch as quickly as possible,” he added.
Pressed by an analyst on the call as to whether Novo expects a return to growth in 2027, Doustdar stopped short of giving formal guidance, instead offering “more building blocks for next year.”
The “starting point,” unsurprisingly, will be Novo’s GLP-1 business, where the company has “a good runway” and there is “still quite a bit of unmet need,” per the CEO.
Citing pushes and pulls likely to impact Novo’s revenue next year, Doustdar flagged expectations for continued strong Wegovy pill momentum, the boon from the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge program and expected launches of both Frehemgo and cagrisema as potential positives, while losses of exclusivity, China pressures and a likely one-off gross-to-net performance in 2026 may move the needle in the other direction next year.
Doustdar’s comments Wednesday were joined by the news that Karsten Munk Knudsen, Novo’s longtime chief financial officer, will step away from the company at the end of the year. Novo has already lined up a replacement in Galderma veteran Luigi La Corte, who presently holds the same position at the Swiss dermatology specialist.
Knudsen’s departure will mark the end of a 27-year run at Novo, with Doustdar telling analysts Wednesday that the outgoing executive has served as a “trusted colleague and a highly respected leader, known for his integrity and sound judgment, and genuine commitment to patients and our people.”
Knudsen will be sticking around at Novo through the end of 2026 to assist with the CFO transition.