A box of Ozempic is placed on a table in North Tyneside, England, on October 31, 2023.
Lee Smith | Reuters
Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk on Wednesday said it was cutting growth expectations for its leading obesity and diabetes drugs due to increased competition and mounting pricing pressure in the weight-loss market.
Net profit for the quarter was 20 billion Danish kroner ($3.1 billion), matching the 20.12 billion Danish kroner expected by analysts polled by FactSet.
Diabetes and obesity care were key growth drivers after the Wegobee and Ozempic acquisitions, but the company lowered its growth expectations, citing prescription trends, competition and pricing pressures.
Novo stock ended Wednesday trading 4.5% lower. Year-to-date, it has fallen 44.8%.
Novo trimmed its full-year forecast for the fourth time this year, saying it now expects sales to grow in the range of 8% to 11% at constant exchange rates, up from previous expectations of 8% to 14%. The company also lowered its operating profit growth forecast by 4% to 10%, bringing the new forecast to 4% to 7%.
Sales of the company’s blockbuster weight loss drug Wegoby rose 18% year-on-year to DKK 20.35 billion in the three months to September, slightly below analysts’ expectations of DKK 21.35 billion.
Operating profit for the first nine months of 2025 rose 10% year-on-year to SEK 95.9 billion, but would have been 21% higher without restructuring costs of around SEK 9 billion, the company said.
“While we achieved strong sales growth in the first nine months of 2025, lower growth expectations for GLP-1 therapeutics led to a reduction in our guidance,” President and CEO Mike Doosder said in a statement.
In an interview with CNBC’s Charlotte Reid from Novo’s headquarters, Doosder added that the company’s obesity drugs serve 1 million patients in the U.S., a third of a market that “everyone is fighting for.”
UBS analysts expect Novo’s struggles to impact fourth-quarter results and 2026, but remain neutral on the stock. The target price was raised to 340 kronor per share from 315.2 kronor before the results.
“Given last night’s headlines, the announcement of agreed upon IRA direct negotiation pricing with only a low-single-digit impact on revenue growth will come as a modest relief,” the analysts wrote. “You can expect Novo to have given a significant discount to Wegovy to offset the price of Ozempic.”
Once Europe’s most valuable company, Novo’s Copenhagen-listed shares have fallen more than 50% this year as repeated headwinds have shaken investor confidence.
In addition to challenges stemming from a series of disappointing clinical trial results, increased competition in the obesity drug field, and U.S. policy on drug prices and tariffs, Novo has battled backlash against a leadership shakeup and a major acquisition.
As a result, analysts have mixed views on the stock. Although Jefferies recently downgraded the stock to underperform, Berenberg remains positive on the stock, saying Novo has reached “peak uncertainty.”
“Novo’s superior growth profile and best-in-class R&D revenue warrant a high valuation premium over its peers,” the bank said.
metsä bid
Novo launches rival bid to acquire American obesity biotech company Mezzala Last week, it was superseded by an offer for the company from a U.S. pharmaceutical giant. Pfizer. Pfizer announced on Monday that it had filed a second lawsuit against Novo and Mezzala, alleging that Novo’s bids for small companies were anticompetitive.
A Novo spokesperson said in a statement that Pfizer’s claims are “false and baseless.”
Novo then stepped up its bid for Mezzala on Tuesday, announcing it was now offering up to $10 billion, compared to its previous offer of about $9 billion.
“Novo Nordisk believes that this proposal, including the structure of the transaction, complies with all applicable laws and is in the best interests of Metzer’s shareholders as well as the patients who will benefit from its innovation efforts,” the company said in a statement, noting that the transaction is also subject to the terms of the Pfizer-Metzer merger agreement.
Mezzala said Tuesday that the revised proposal is “better” than the revised proposal by Pfizer.
Back in Denmark, Mr. Dusdahl told CNBC that he would not have pursued Metzer if he had not been “confident that the company could be shut down.”
“I have great confidence in our pipeline. We have some of the best pipelines in the industry. But when your ambitions are big, when you think about the unmet needs, when you think about the hundreds of millions of patients who have unmet treatments, no pipeline is enough,” Dusdahl added.
“We’ve been looking at Mestela for a long time and they have some of the best complementary medicines in our pipeline, and we’re really looking forward to acquiring them and integrating that into our pipeline so that we can really expand our business broadly and further expand our market,” he said.
