{"id":76299,"date":"2026-05-06T17:43:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T17:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/76299\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T17:43:42","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T17:43:42","slug":"novo-nordisk-shares-surge-on-strong-weight-loss-pill-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/76299\/","title":{"rendered":"Novo Nordisk shares surge on strong weight-loss pill sales"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO) beat first-quarter profit forecasts and slightly raised its full-year outlook on Wednesday, supported by stronger-than-expected sales of its new weight-loss pill as it aims to close the gap with U.S. rival Eli Lilly (LLY.N), <a href=\"https:\/\/news.az\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">News.Az<\/a> reports, citing <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/legal\/litigation\/novo-nordisks-q1-profit-beats-forecasts-2026-05-06\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Reuters<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Shares in the Danish pharmaceutical company rose 5.8% at 0913 GMT, putting them on track for their biggest daily gain so far this year.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.az\/news\/novo-nordisk-teams-up-with-openai-on-ai-drugs\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Novo<\/a> is relying heavily on its weight-loss pill to regain market share lost to Eli Lilly in the United States and to offset increasing price competition in the obesity drug market.<\/p>\n<p>The company also plans to launch the Wegovy pill in its first markets outside the U.S. in the second half of 2026.<\/p>\n<p>The company reported adjusted operating profit of 32.86 billion Danish crowns ($5.16 billion), exceeding the 28.74 billion forecast in a company-compiled poll.<\/p>\n<p>Novo slightly improved its full-year guidance, now expecting adjusted sales and operating profit declines of 4% to 12% at constant exchange rates, compared with a previous forecast range of minus 5% to minus 13%. By comparison, Eli Lilly last week raised its own annual profit and revenue forecasts by a larger margin.<\/p>\n<p>Under CEO Mike Doustdar, Novo is banking on its new pill to drive near-term recovery after last year\u2019s price cuts to its Wegovy injection put pressure on margins.<\/p>\n<p>However, its period as the only oral obesity pill available in the U.S. ended in early April after Eli Lilly secured FDA approval for its rival drug Foundayo, opening a new phase in competition between the two pharmaceutical giants.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have now been competing with our competitor for about a month&#8230;and so far, so good,\u201d CEO Mike Doustdar told journalists on a call.<\/p>\n<p>Total prescriptions for the Wegovy pill reached about 1.3 million in the first quarter and more than 2 million since its January launch, which Doustdar said made it the strongest GLP-1 launch by volume in the United States. He added that the company was not seeing significant \u201cdrop-offs\u201d among patients who started using the new pill.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.az\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">News.Az<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a class=\"by-user\" href=\"https:\/\/news.az\/journalists\/nijat-babayev\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">By Nijat Babayev<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO) beat first-quarter profit forecasts and slightly raised its full-year outlook on Wednesday, supported by stronger-than-expected&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[271],"tags":[276,272,3582,6746,18654,6259],"class_list":["post-76299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-novo-nordisk","tag-eli-lilly","tag-novo-nordisk","tag-nvo-stock","tag-trading","tag-wall-street","tag-weight-loss-pills"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116528873895256271","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76299","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=76299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}