Novo Nordisk A/S NVO

The business

Novo makes peptide medicines for diabetes and obesity, sold through pharmacy benefit managers in the United States and through national health systems and private channels everywhere else. The two operating units are close to even: H1 2026 adjusted sales were DKK 76.3B in US Operations and DKK 72.3B in International Operations. Semaglutide carries the franchise. Ozempic at DKK 59.2B, Wegovy injectable at DKK 37.7B, Rybelsus at DKK 9.8B and the newly launched Wegovy pill at DKK 5.5B sum to DKK 112.2B, or 75% of H1 adjusted sales of DKK 148.6B. Insulin, the business Novo was built on, is down to DKK 24.6B and shrinking 7% at constant rates. The moat is a peptide manufacturing base few can replicate at scale, wrapped around semaglutide's patent estate.

What the statements do not show is that Novo has already published what it will charge next year. Effective 1 January 2027 the US list price of Wegovy and Ozempic falls to USD 675, reductions of roughly 50% and 35%. Volume has to replace price, and the Wegovy pill is the instrument: launched 5 January 2026, it ran more than 265,000 US prescriptions in the week to 17 July and over 5 million since launch, the strongest GLP-1 volume launch the US has seen. The pipeline behind it thinned in the same stretch. The ZEUS trial of ziltivekimab missed its primary endpoint on 31 July with a hazard ratio of 0.99, monlunabant was written off for DKK 4.0B inside a DKK 6.3B Q2 impairment, and the company says ZEUS may force a further non-cash impairment in Q3 2026.