With New CEOs, Is Walmart or Target the Better Buy Going Forward?<\/a><\/p>\nOn demand drivers, Doustdar pointed to efficacy and label advantages, arguing the pill\u2019s 16.6% weight loss compares favorably with a competitor\u2019s 12.4% figure. He also said the cardiovascular benefits established with Wegovy injection translate to the pill and provide an additional differentiator.<\/p>\n
He attributed early performance in part to significant marketing and partner support. Beyond a Super Bowl ad, Doustdar said high-visibility advertising included placements such as Boston and New York\u2019s Grand Central Terminal, where he said viewers would see \u201cprobably no other ad than the Wegovy pill ad.\u201d He said the company is \u201cgoing really all in\u201d with partners and wants to capitalize quickly on first-mover advantage, including gathering real-world patient experience to counter competitive messaging around dosing constraints.<\/p>\n
Doustdar also suggested early prescribing skew indicates the launch is expanding the market, not merely converting existing patients. He said 88% of pills sold were the lowest 1.5 mg dose, which he interpreted as evidence many patients are new to therapy. He expects titration patterns to evolve over time, while acknowledging some patients may remain on low doses for \u201cmicrodosing\u201d behavior seen online.<\/p>\n
CFO Karsten Munk Knudsen outlined the company\u2019s forward view and key pricing headwinds, stating the company is guiding for a top-line decline of 5% to 13%. He attributed the outlook primarily to \u201cextraordinary effects,\u201d including:<\/p>\n
Loss of exclusivity (LOE) in international operations in specific markets<\/p>\n
\u201cMFN\u201d impact in the U.S.<\/p>\n
Declining U.S. prices driven by a higher proportion of cash business and \u201crate enhancements\u201d on the insured side<\/p>\n
Knudsen said the company expects continued volume growth and more patients on Novo products, but that price effects outweigh expected volume gains in the outlook.<\/p>\n
On U.S. pricing, Knudsen said Novo continues to see declining prices in diabetes GLP-1s (mainly Ozempic), referencing prior commentary of an underlying \u201c-10 to -15\u201d directional trend. In obesity, he emphasized the combination of channel mix shifts, insured-channel dynamics, and MFN effects as driving \u201cquite substantial price reduction\u201d for Wegovy injectable. For the oral product, he noted the company has only a \u201cstarter price\u201d so far, making direct comparison difficult.<\/p>\n
Knudsen said Novo delivered DKK 100 billion in net profit for 2025 and converted that into \u201calmost DKK 120 billion\u201d in cash from operations, describing cash conversion as very strong. He outlined capital deployment including DKK 60 billion in capital expenditures tied to manufacturing capacity buildout and DKK 30 billion spent on business development and M&A, which he said was largely linked to the Akero transaction for MASH F4. The company also paid DKK 53 billion in dividends related to 2025, and Knudsen said the proposed dividend would mark 30 consecutive years of dividend per share increases, reflecting a consistent 50% payout ratio.<\/p>\n
Looking ahead, he said capital expenditures should come down as facilities are finalized, while the company would continue BD investment \u201cpending that we have attractive assets.\u201d He also said Novo initiated a DKK 15 billion share buyback program that started this week.<\/p>\n
On profitability, Knudsen acknowledged that a price-driven top-line decline is typically \u201cbrutal on a margin in a high-margin business,\u201d but said operating profit is not expected to fall as much due to a combination of factors. These included restructuring costs in 2025 creating an easier comparison, partially offset by Akero running costs in 2026, and \u201csuper-disciplined resourcing,\u201d with budget cuts across the company while stepping up investment in top priorities such as selected R&D programs.<\/p>\n
Knudsen also explained why the company shifted to adjusted measures in guidance: in the first quarter of 2026, Novo expects a non-cash provision reversal related to the \u201c340B rebate provision,\u201d creating a positive one-off accounting impact of $4.2 billion. Management said the adjusted presentation is intended to better reflect underlying business performance.<\/p>\n
In response to a question about why guidance was released the night before the presentation, Knudsen said the company needed more recent data\u2014particularly January performance\u2014along with scenario work and board approval. He said that because the guidance was \u201cmaterially away from expectations,\u201d the company disclosed immediately after board sign-off rather than waiting until the next morning. Doustdar added that Novo delayed internal budget formation into January due to how dynamic the obesity market has become and said small changes in assumptions can have large impacts on reported expectations.<\/p>\n
Doustdar described 2026 as an \u201cexciting year\u201d for diabetes and obesity R&D, citing planned readouts, initiations, and regulatory decisions across programs including cagrilintide, semaglutide, CagriSema, amycretin, and two tri-agonists (one external acquisition and one internal program). In comorbidities, he said the ZEUS trial for ziltivekimab (anti-IL-6) is expected to read out in the second half of the year, calling it \u201chigh risk\u201d but \u201chigh potential.\u201d He also pointed to expected regulatory approvals for Mim8 in hemophilia A and a phase III readout for etavopivat in sickle cell disease.<\/p>\n
On the competitive landscape, Doustdar acknowledged that in the U.S. injectable market, preference share has favored a competitor, suggesting \u201cfrom 10 patients, 7 or 8 go to my competitor,\u201d while Novo captures \u201c2 on a good day, 3.\u201d He said Novo hopes higher-dose semaglutide (7.2 mg) can help address perceptions of weight loss magnitude and, over time, shift attention back to differentiated outcomes like cardiovascular, kidney, and liver benefits.<\/p>\n
Internationally, he said Novo was hearing of potential \u201cupsides\u201d related to possible delays from generic competition, but also noted that U.S. social media narratives about product comparisons can spill over into other markets and influence patient and prescriber perceptions abroad.<\/p>\n
Management also discussed how it views long-term pricing and market structure in obesity. Doustdar said price is an important factor in unlocking volume, referencing learnings from compounded products that attracted patients who \u201ccouldn\u2019t afford the original.\u201d He compared the first-month performance of the Wegovy pill launch to prior launches, stating it was \u201c15 times more\u201d than the first month of Wegovy injectable and \u201ctwo times better\u201d than the first month of a competitor\u2019s launch, while emphasizing that the company views the price reset as a near-term investment intended to drive medium-term volume.<\/p>\n
On intellectual property, Knudsen said compound loss of exclusivity is the same for oral and injectable semaglutide, but that tablet formulation IP provides longer protection. He said the newly launched Wegovy pill formulation has longer IP \u201cinto the late 30s.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chief Scientific Officer Martin Holst Lange argued the obesity market will segment between high-volume consumer demand and subpopulations with greater medical complexity, such as severe obesity and comorbidities. Management said that in areas like MASH\u2014especially advanced disease\u2014pricing and value discussions may be anchored not to other GLP-1s but to the cost and outcomes associated with severe disease interventions, such as liver transplant, and that the company\u2019s job is to demonstrate return on investment to payers.<\/p>\n
Doustdar closed by emphasizing the uncertainty inherent in forecasting a consumer-influenced obesity market and said Novo aims to provide more detail at its Capital Markets Day on September 21 in London, including how the company plans to compete across both injectable and oral offerings while maintaining financial discipline and expanding manufacturing capacity without repeating past supply constraints.<\/p>\n
Novo Nordisk A\/S is a Danish multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in Bagsv\u00e6rd, Denmark, best known for its leadership in diabetes care and metabolic health. The company traces its roots to early Danish insulin production in the 1920s and was established in its current form through a 1989 merger of predecessor companies. Novo Nordisk develops, manufactures and markets pharmaceutical products and devices that address chronic and serious diseases, with a strong emphasis on long-term treatment and patient support.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s core product portfolio centers on diabetes therapies, including a range of insulins and modern incretin-based treatments.<\/p>\n
The article “Novo Nordisk A\/S Q4 Earnings Call Highlights<\/a>” was originally published by MarketBeat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novo Nordisk A\/S logo Novo expects a top-line decline of 5%\u201313% for 2026, attributing the outlook to \u201cextraordinary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[271],"tags":[1382,2835,2833,2832,272,357,2836,2834],"class_list":{"0":"post-2518","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-novo-nordisk","8":"tag-dkk","9":"tag-international-operations","10":"tag-karsten-munk-knudsen","11":"tag-mike-doustdar","12":"tag-novo-nordisk","13":"tag-obesity","14":"tag-patients","15":"tag-u-s"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Novo](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/15e760ff14de77173dc96c1f3b9361e3.jpeg\")
Novo Nordisk A\/S logo <\/p>\n