Analysts and investors alike had been eagerly awaiting sales figures for Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill. The answer blew past expectations by 86%.
In 16 weeks, 1 million patients have begun taking Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill, helping the weight loss medicine bring in about $355 million in sales for the first quarter.
“It is no secret that the Wegovy pill is off to a record-breaking start in the U.S.,” CEO Maziar Mike Doustdar told analysts on a Wednesday morning earnings call. CFO Karsten Munk Knudsen later labeled it the “strongest launch in U.S. pharma”—vaccines excluded.
What was, to this point, a secret, was the specific sales for the early weeks of the Wegovy pill’s market debut. Analysts and investors alike had been eagerly awaiting the figures, which headlined Novo’s first quarter earnings report.
The pill beat analyst expectations by 86%, driven by around 950 million DKK ($149.4 million) in stocking. Even without the stocking, the pill still would have beat what analysts had expected, BMO Capital Markets said in an early morning note.
Novo’s shares rose more than 4% to $46.43 as the markets opened Wednesday on the beat.
In response, Novo—which has been struggling to catch up to come-from-behind rival Eli Lilly—is raising its 2026 outlook for sales growth to a range of -4 to -12%. Operating profit is also now expected to be -4 to -12%. The company had previously expected -5 to -13% for both profit and sales due to impacts from the Most Favored Nation drug pricing plan.
Knudsen attributed the new outlook to improved sales performance and the Wegovy pill launch. The company also factored in dynamics in the injectables market as the orals arrive.
Lilly makes two
But then there is Lilly. The American rival officially launched Foundayo on April 9 and has already reached 20,000 patients. Lilly has not yet reported sales figures for its pill and likely will not until the second quarter. But analysts were encouraged by the early uptake, particularly as early figures were low—a fact that Lilly attributed to some incorrect data.
Knudsen acknowledged the new competitor but said the Wegovy pill is holding its ground: “So far, it has not markedly impacted our scripts. In the few weeks since they launched, we have continued to increase scripts,” he said Wednesday. Knudsen did not provide sales guidance for the quarters ahead given the competitive dynamics but expressed confidence in the overall outlook provided.
Doustdar similarly told reporters on an earlier media call that Novo has heard good feedback about oral Wegovy so far and that the pill’s attributes are winning out in the market.
“I would say that the anecdotal situation, from what we hear, is that patients are after the most efficacious pill out there with the best tolerability and the one that has the least amount of drug-to-drug interactions,” the CEO said. “And our pill, thankfully, has all of those. So I’m quite hopeful.”
Novo has seen no evidence of early dropouts from initial prescriptions for the pill, with scripts climbing week by week, Doustdar said. “No drama,” he quipped.
The pill will also move into international markets later this year.
Novo has priced the pill for self-pay patients at $149 per month for the intro doses, rising to $299 for the higher dose. BMO was pleased to see that about 16% of the Wegovy pill prescriptions were for the higher doses, which carry a higher price and thus more revenue.
Speaking to the pricing dynamics, Knudsen said the goal was to “open up the market for millions of people.” That appears to have been achieved, with the 1 million patients accessing the medicine so far.
“It is absolutely record breaking. So we believe that we have found a sweet spot in terms of pricing,” Knudsen said. “We believe with the price point we have here and the volume uptake we’ve seen that we’re exactly in the right place.”
He would not say how the pill will be priced in other markets once those launches go forward.
Much of the pricing decline across Novo’s GLP-1 franchise can be attributed to policy pressure, particularly in the U.S.—although Lilly has also priced to compete.
“We knew this year was [going to] be a challenging year with the pricing headwinds,” Knudsen said. “Of course, the aim is to access more volumes across the market and that’s exactly what we’re seeing.”
Like Lilly, Novo noted that first quarter sales could have been higher had prices not come down. The Danish pharma reported that overall sales decreased by 4% to 70 billion DKK ($11 billion), which was offset by volume growth. The obesity care unit grew by 22% to 20.9 billion DKK ($3.29 billion), however.
In particular, sales in the U.S. decreased 11% for the quarter, with volume across the Wegovy product portfolio helping to keep the number from declining further.
Injectable Wegovy took home 18.24 billion DKK ($2.87 billion) globally, or 9.49 billion DKK ($1.49 billion) for the U.S. alone. On the diabetes side, Ozempic reigned with 27.83 billion DKK ($4.38 billion).
