Novo Nordisk has struck a US Medicare price for semaglutide — the engine inside Ozempic and Wegovy — in a move investors read as “not as bad as feared,” even as the drugmaker lowered its guidance yet again, Reuters reports.
The negotiated Medicare price, enabled by the Inflation Reduction Act’s new bargaining powers, kicks in for 2027 and covers more than 60 million beneficiaries. Novo didn’t disclose the figure, but said that if it applied today it would shave only a low-single-digit percentage off sales. JPMorgan put rough math to that: about 6 billion Danish crowns (≈$937 million) a year — a hit, but smaller than many had braced for. The stock see-sawed on Wednesday, slumping at the open before turning positive and then easing again as the day wore on.
The pricing news landed alongside a downbeat third quarter and Novo’s fourth guidance cut of the year. New CEO Mike Doustdar — in the job since August — told investors the company is pushing a turnaround to claw back share from Eli Lilly, whose rival GLP-1 drug Zepbound has been running hot. Surging demand made Novo Europe’s most valuable company in mid-2024, but growth has cooled under the weight of copycat compounded semaglutide in the US and tighter payer budgets. Novo says “well above” a million Americans are now using those compounded versions despite legal challenges, a drag that appears to hit Wegovy harder than Lilly’s Zepbound.
There’s also a fast-moving policy backdrop. A White House source said both Novo and Lilly are expected to unveil separate price-cut deals with the Trump administration this week to secure Medicare coverage for their weight-loss drugs sooner than 2027. Meanwhile, Ozempic and Wegovy sit among 15 medicines in the IRA’s second round of Medicare negotiations.
On the numbers, Novo now sees 2025 sales growth at 8%–11% (from 8%–14%) and operating profit up 4%–7% (from 4%–10%) in local currencies, after Q3 delivered the slowest growth since early 2022. Analysts called the quarter soft and the messaging cautious. Doustdar flagged more direct-to-consumer selling in the US and doubled down on M&A, with Novo bidding $10 billion for Metsera in a pipeline race that also includes Pfizer.
Bottom line: a rare win on US pricing optics — “better than feared” — but set against intensifying competition, rampant compounding, and a guidance reset that says the next leg of the GLP-1 race will be tougher than the last.
$1 = 6.4029 Danish crowns.
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