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as Novo Nordisk Despite showing signs of recovery, investors were treated to another cold snap late Tuesday when the drugmaker surprisingly advanced its 2026 forecast, sending shares tumbling.
Novo Nordisk shares plunged 18% in Copenhagen early Wednesday, tracking losses Seen in its American depositary shares On Tuesday, that not only erased year-to-date gains.
“People should expect it to go down before it goes back up,” Chief Executive Mike Doustdar said Wednesday on CNBC’s “Early Edition Europe,” highlighting headwinds from a sharp drop in U.S. pricing for its best-selling weight loss drug Wegovy.
“We don’t have details on the scale of that – that’s within the range of guidance we’ve given.”
Prior to this, Novo’s guidance for 2026 sales and operating profit both fell by 5% to 13%, well below analysts’ expectations.
Barclays analysts said some may view the guidance as a “kitchen sink” that will be beaten, “although we note that the same thing was said last year, but that proved not to be the case.”
July last yearNovo significantly cut its 2025 performance guidance, citing the challenging U.S. market, causing the stock price to plummet 23% that day.
U-shaped recovery?
“We’re creating affordability for patients, and millions of patients need GLP-1 products now but simply can’t afford them. To do that in the short term, you have to swim against the wind. But of course, there’s a long tailwind over the next few years,” Dustdahl told CNBC.
The company faces pricing challenges in the United States, its largest market, due to competition from compounding pharmacies selling cheap knock-off versions of semaglutide, the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic, as well as from archrival U.S. companies. Eli Lilly and Company.
But optimism grew earlier this year as the U.S. launch of the Wegovy pill went even better than Novo expected. “We knew it was going to be the best, 16.6% effective, and we thought it was going to perform well, but we didn’t expect that four weeks after launch, we would have 170,000 people taking it,” Doustdar said.
“Regardless of how it performs early on, the price hit to the existing business is basically outweighing the great pill that we’ve already launched.”
While Novo has been working to manage full-year performance expectations and announced guidance for the coming year, the market did not foresee this.
“The question is whether the recovery from here will be a Nike recovery or a U-shaped recovery,” said HSBC’s Rajesh Kumar.
