Novo Nordisk market cap surpasses Tesla on new obesity pill trial data
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The logo of Danish pharmaceutical company is pictured at their headquarters in Bagsvaerd outside of Copenhagen, Denmark on February 1, 2017.
Liselotte Sabroe | AFP | Getty Images
Wegovy obesity drug maker Novo Nordisk surpassed Tesla in market value, after fresh early trial data showed positive results for its new experimental weight loss pill.
Shares of the Danish company hit a record high on Thursday, rallying by as much as 8%, after telling investors that a Phase I trial of the company’s amycretin pill showed 13.1% weight loss in participants after 12 weeks.
Novo Nordisk is now the 12th most valuable company in the world, with a market cap of $604 billion — ahead of Tesla’s $569 billion, according to FactSet data.
Shares were trading slightly lower on Friday, down 0.5%, by 10:00 a.m. London time.
The uptick of Thursday extends a months-long rally for Novo Nordisk, as excitement grows around weight loss drugs and their potential wider applications. The company is now the most valuable in Europe, with a valuation larger than Denmark’s total gross domestic product last year.
The early amycretin data marks a fresh milestone for Novo Nordisk, potentially offering a more effective and less intrusive alternative to its already widely successful injection-based Wegovy and Ozempic drugs. Wegovy showed weight loss of 6% in a 12-week trial, while Ozempic is a diabetes treatment.
A Phase II trial of amycretin will begin in the second half of this year, with results expected in early 2026, the company said Thursday. The treatment will then be subject to Phase III and Phase IV trials — a process which could take years.
Still Novo’s head of development Martin Holst Lange said Friday that he anticipated that the pill could be available to consumers “within this decade.”
“I never commit to timelines but I would be very comfortable to say at the very least within this decade,” Lange he said, according to Reuters.
The company also said that it expects amycretin, and its other new experimental obesity drug CagriSema, to have similar cardiac benefits to Wegovy.
Earlier on Thursday, Novo Nordisk said that it was expanding its focus to include cardiovascular disease treatments, as it seeks to position its offering as more than a “vanity” drug.
A large late-stage study on Tuesday showed that Ozempic delayed progression of chronic kidney disease in diabetes patients, reducing the risk of death from that and major cardiac events by 24%.
It follows previous studies demonstrating that Wegovy lowered the risk of serious cardiovascular complications in people with obesity and heart disease.
Investors have been closely watching the progression of obesity treatments and the underlying appetite-suppressing GLP-1 drug class, for an indication of their wider market implications.
Ahead of the latest developments, Barclays forecast in 2023 that the weight loss drug industry could be worth as much as $200 billion by the end of the decade, with its applications likely to disrupt sectors well beyond health care.
— CNBC’s Ganesh Rao contributed to this story.
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