2024-05-06 17:12:39
The stock market growth of the precursor companies of these treatments is in the hundreds of billions
It is not a very risky statement to say that Novo Nordisk and semaglutide, marketed as Ozempic or Wegovy, have been the great protagonists of the year in the pharmaceutical industry. The economic consequences of this success are diverse, and many are yet to come.
Ozempic is a drug developed more than a decade ago to fight type 2 diabetes. What could have been considered an unwanted side effect (nausea and loss of appetite) became an advantage for people who wanted to lose weight. By 2023, the company that developed the treatment achieved its approval, under the Wegovy brand, as a drug to control overweight and obesity.
Semaglutide is an antagonist of GLP-1 receptors, that is, it acts in our body as if it were this hormone that our body produces naturally.
The same does Zepbound (whose active compound is tirzepatide), the second treatment against diabetes approved also against overweight in the United States in recent months, this one manufactured by the American Eli Lilly. The difference with this treatment is that it also interacts with GIP receptors.
One of the most notable impacts has been reflected in the stock market value of these companies. Since the beginning of 2023, the company’s share price has increased by more than 70%.
Lilly’s case is also striking. The American ended 2022 immersed in a scandal that emerged as a result of the change in verification policy on Twitter and a series of Tweets that were supplanting the pharmaceutical company. Its shares fell 4% in one day, but the bad stock market streak continued several months after the event to end up falling nearly 10% in the spring of 2023. Since this minimum, the shares have grown more than 140%.
The rise in recent months has been especially pronounced. From the approval at the end of 2023 of Zepbound as a treatment for overweight in the United States, the company’s shares have grown by 35%. All this translates into an increase in the stock market value of both companies equivalent to more than 550,000 million euros from the beginning of 2023.
If we look at the profits reported by both companies in 2023 we will find discrepancies, yes. The Danish company declared a net profit of 83,683 million Danish crowns (just over 11,000 million euros): almost 51% more than in the previous year. The company’s turnover grew by 31.2%.
The American pharmaceutical company, for its part, obtained lower net profits than in the previous year. With net profits of more than 5,240 million dollars (about 4,900 million euros), the pharmaceutical company worsened its 2022 results by 16%. The reason was its investments, since its turnover had grown by almost 20%, largely thanks to the arrival of Zepbound.