Nearly all of Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster GLP-1 Wegovy and Ozempic drugs have been taken off the FDA shortage list as the company reports a doubling of prescriptions in the US since the beginning of the year.
“We’re scaling our supply and now we’re serving twice as many people with Wegovy today compared to just at the beginning of the year and we continue to scale,” said CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen during a media call Wednesday morning.
Thanks to Novo’s GLP-1 ramp-up, the company is forecasting sales growth between 22% and 28% for 2024, mainly driven by the increased demand for its GLP-1 assets, according to the company’s press release on Wednesday.
Yet, Novo’s sales were below analysts’ estimates for the second quarter of 2024. Novo reported a total sales increase of 25% to 68 billion DKK ($9.94 billion), which was below the 26% analyst forecast.
Novo’s previous estimates for its Wegovy rebates were too low and the company is having to play catch-up during this second quarter, said Jørgensen. “This is a one-off related to last year,” he added.
After facing supply issues for months, nearly all of Novo’s semaglutide drugs are now available, except for the starting dose of Wegovy, which is still in shortage in the US. Three doses of Ozempic are still on the EMA’s shortage list for Europe.
In the US, Novo pulled in 46 billion DKK ($6.7 billion) in GLP-1 sales for diabetes for the first half of 2024, whereas in Europe the company made 11.7 billion DKK ($1.7 billion). Overall, the company made 75 billion DKK ($11 billion) in sales to the US market, compared to the 29 DKK billion ($4 billion) to Europe.
Novo is expecting its GLP-1 supply to persist throughout the year, according to Jørgensen. “We are quite comfortable in our ability to further scale up supply for the second half of the year and also going forward,” he added.
Zooming into Ozempic and Wegovy, sales also grew less than analysts predicted. In the first six months of this year, Novo’s GLP-1 drugs grew by 32% to 72 billion DKK ($10.5 billion) compared to the first half of 2023. Wegovy pulled in 21 billion DKK ($3.1 billion), while Ozempic made 57 billion DKK ($8.3 billion) in sales.
In terms of GLP-1 pricing in the US, Novo has come under pressure from Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) campaign urging the company to lower its Wegovy and Ozempic drug prices. Jørgensen is due to testify at a Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing in early September to address the ongoing price issue.
Pricing of commercial Wegovy is a mixture of market development, expansion and competition, Jørgensen said: “That takes more than a single company to do that. It’s a whole ecosystem of companies that need to collaborate to succeed with that.”
Further, as Novo continues to increase the volume of its GLP-1 drugs, prices will continue to go down, he explained. The price of Wegovy already started to drop during the first quarter of 2024 and is expected to continue.