Medical bottles and syringe are seen with Novo Nordisk emblem displayed on a display screen within the background.
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Danish pharmaceutical behemoth Novo Nordisk on Wednesday reported better-than-expected web revenue within the fourth quarter amid hovering demand for its Wegovy weight problems medicine, however forecast a slight slowdown in gross sales for 2025.
Web revenue for the fourth quarter rose 29% yearly to twenty-eight.23 billion Danish kroner ($3.98 billion), versus the 26.09 billion Danish kroner anticipated.
Full-year web revenue climbed 21% to 100.99 billion Danish kroner, additionally beating estimates of 99.14 billion Danish kroner for 2024.
The drug maker posted a 107% year-on-year enhance in Wegovy gross sales to 19.87 billion Danish kroner ($2.76 billion) within the three months to the top of December, barely lacking the 20.02 billion Danish kroner forecast by analysts in a Factset ballot late Tuesday.
General gross sales on the firm — which additionally produces diabetes and uncommon illness therapies — elevated 30% within the fourth quarter and 26% on the yr at fixed change charges. That development was pushed primarily by demand from the North America and Europe, Center East and Africa areas.
Novo Nordisk, nevertheless, forecast slower gross sales development for 2025 of between 16% to 24% at fixed change charges, beneath the 18% to 26% forecast for 2024. This forecast, the corporate mentioned, mirrored “intensifying competitors and continued pricing strain inside Diabetes and Weight problems care” market.
Novo Nordisk has ridden a wave of rising world demand for GLP-1 agonist weight problems therapies. GLP-1s, which type the idea of Novo’s Wegovy and rival Eli Lilly‘s Zepbound, work by mimicking a hormone referred to as glucagon-like peptide-1, which suppresses urge for food.
Buyers are actually expecting updates on the corporate’s different weight problems drug candidates, together with its hotly anticipated experimental CagriSema remedy. Late-stage CagriSema trial outcomes disillusioned markets in December after demonstrating common weight discount of twenty-two.7%, beneath the 25% Novo had beforehand forecast.
The trial outcomes dealt a blow to expectations that CagriSema would emerge as Novo’s next-generation weight problems drug, combining semaglutide — the lively ingredient in Wegovy — with amylin analog Cagrilintide, a nascent type of weight reduction remedy.
Nevertheless, constructive early-stage outcomes for its as soon as weekly Amycretin weight problems drug, which equally employs the amylin pancreas hormone, led the inventory increased final month.
Novo Nordisk mentioned Wednesday that it will conduct an extra research of CagriSema in 2025 with a view to submitting for regulatory approval within the first quarter of 2026, in accordance with Reuters.
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