The treatment area I’m talking about is obesity. Today Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk lead the weight loss drug market, but many others are working to enter this market — one that may approach $100 billion by the end of the decade. One of these hopefuls is Viking Therapeutics (NASDAQ: VKTX). Could it be the ultimate millionaire-maker obesity stock for 2026? Let’s find out.<\/p>\n
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An investor smiles while working at a laptop at home.<\/p>\n
Image source: Getty Images.<\/p>\n
Viking’s late-stage trials<\/p>\n
Viking is a biotech company<\/a> specializing in metabolic diseases. The company hasn’t yet commercialized a drug, but its leading weight loss candidates — in injectable and oral formulations — are both progressing through late-stage clinical trials. A phase 3 trial for injectable VK2735 is ongoing, and the oral candidate is set to enter phase 3 in the third quarter of this year.<\/p>\n The injectable trial for obesity completed enrollment ahead of schedule, suggesting people are eager to try this potential new drug.<\/p>\n Viking’s candidate is part of the GLP-1 class<\/a> of drugs, which interact with hormonal pathways controlling appetite and blood sugar levels. Current commercialized drugs — such as Lilly’s Zepbound and Novo’s Wegovy — have met with explosive demand. At a certain point, there was even a shortage.<\/p>\n Individuals aiming to shed pounds like these drugs because they’re effective, generally are easy to tolerate, and are easy to take — injectables are self-administered weekly. Novo and Lilly each recently launched oral drugs, and these are taken daily.<\/p>\n The demand seen so far suggests there is plenty of room for new players to enter the market — so if all continues to go smoothly for Viking in these late stages of development, the company could capture some market share and generate significant growth. As an example, Lilly’s Zepbound brought in more than $4 billion in the recent quarter. Even a fraction of that would be tremendous for a young biotech player.<\/p>\n Viking has skyrocketed on positive news<\/p>\n So, could Viking be the ultimate millionaire-maker stock for your portfolio this year? Viking stock has been known to surge on positive news. When it first reported encouraging phase 2 news for VK2735 back in February of 2024, the stock surged 121% in one trading session. A gain of such proportions won’t necessarily happen after each bit of news, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see double-digit increases after signs of fresh progress. And since that colossal one-day gain back in 2024, Viking has slipped — meaning that from current levels, it could have a lot of room to run, particularly if the company moves closer to product commercialization.<\/p>\n Viking also has shown signs of strength in today’s difficult market environment — the stock is posting a slight increase for the year so far.<\/p>\n In spite of this, Viking on its own is unlikely to make you a millionaire. For example, if you invested $10,000 in Viking at the end of 2023 and held it as it soared in early 2024, the value of your investment would have been $50,000. That’s fantastic, but it’s far from the million-dollar mark.<\/p>\n It’s actually rare when a single stock turns an investor into a millionaire — instead, it’s more common for a basket of well-chosen stocks<\/a> to do the job. In this context, Viking is a great choice. If the company’s obesity program continues to deliver encouraging news, Viking could be the ultimate addition to your millionaire-maker portfolio.<\/p>\n Should you buy stock in Viking Therapeutics right now?<\/p>\n Before you buy stock in Viking Therapeutics, consider this:<\/p>\n The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks<\/a> for investors to buy now\u2026 and Viking Therapeutics wasn\u2019t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.<\/p>\n Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you\u2019d have $580,872!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you\u2019d have $1,219,180!*<\/p>\n Now, it\u2019s worth noting Stock Advisor\u2019s total average return is 1,016% \u2014 a market-crushing outperformance compared to 197% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors.<\/p>\n See the 10 stocks \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n *Stock Advisor returns as of April 17, 2026. <\/p>\n Adria Cimino<\/a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Novo Nordisk and Viking Therapeutics. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Key Points Viking Therapeutics aims to participate in the billion-dollar obesity market. The company\u2019s most advanced candidate is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[271],"tags":[34668,34669,272,34670,618],"class_list":["post-63024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-novo-nordisk","tag-biotech-companies","tag-explosive-demand","tag-novo-nordisk","tag-treatment-area","tag-viking"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116419587360683528","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63024","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=63024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}