Novo Nordisk shares dip as Wegovy maker posts earnings miss, cuts operating profit outlook

Novo Nordisk on Wednesday posted weaker-than-expected net profit in the second quarter and trimmed its operating profit outlook.

The pharmaceutical giant said its net profit came in at 20.05 billion Danish kroner ($2.93 billion) in the three months to the end of June. A LSEG aggregate forecast had projected the figure would come in at 20.9 billion Danish kroner.

EBIT — earnings before interest and tax — came in at 25.93 billion Danish kroner in the second quarter, which was also below the LSEG forecast of 26.86 billion Danish kroner.

Novo Nordisk also trimmed its operating profit outlook for full-year 2024, saying growth was now anticipated to come in between 20% and 28%, rather than the previously expected 22% to 30% range.

Shares of Novo Nordisk tumbled close to 7% at one point before paring back losses and were last down 2.71% at 9:40 a.m. London time.

In the first quarter of 2024, the Wegovy maker had posted a net profit increase of 28% to 25.4 billion Danish kroner year on year, slightly bumping up its forecasts for sales and operating profit growth.

Sales growth expectations were raised once more on Wednesday, with the company now issuing a guidance of 22% to 28% at constant exchange rates for full-year 2024. The sales growth outlook for the period had been penciled in at 19% to 27% previously.

Sales of popular weight loss drug Wegovy jumped 55% in the second quarter of 2024, compared to the same period in 2023, coming in at 11.66 billion kroner.

Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen on Wednesday said that the company was expecting “attractive growth” in the coming months.

“We’re very confident in our ability to scale and also supply patients and deliver now stronger growth for the second half. So I say worry less about what happened specifically in [the second quarter], there was some adjustments to, to rebates etc, look at our guidance and we believe there’s a very attractive growth in front of us,” he told CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe.”

Novo Nordisk is facing increasing competition in the weight loss space, both from smaller companies and from pharmaceutical giants such as Roche, which last month shared promising early-stage trial data from its own obesity drug candidate.

Jørgensen said that early trial data may attract attention, but would not impact Novo Nordisk’s business in the short term. Pointing to Novo Nordisk’s product pipeline, the CEO said he was still “very confident” that the company could “sustain competitiveness long term.”

Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy has also had promising news in recent months. The drug was approved in China in the second quarter, opening it for sale in the world’s second largest economy. Elsewhere, the U.K.’s and European Union’s medical regulators said it was backing Wegovy as a way to reduce risks of serious heart events among overweight and obese adults.