By Josh Nathan-Kazis and Adam Clark

Novo Nordisk lowered its potential growth outlook as it faces competitive pressure from copycat versions of its weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy.

The Danish pharmaceutical company said alongside earnings Wednesday that it now expects operating profit growth of between 4% and 7% at constant exchange rates this year, from a range of 4% to 10% previously. Sales growth is expected at between 8% and 11% from a range of 8% to 14% previously.

"The narrowing of the guidance ranges reflects lowered growth expectations for Novo Nordisk's GLP-1 treatments within diabetes and obesity," the company said in statement.

Novo reported third-quarter earnings of 4.50 Danish krone (69 U.S. cents) a share on revenue of 75 billion DKK ($11.5 billion). Analysts had expected Novo to report earnings of 4.90 DKK a share on sales of 76.5 billion DKK, according to FactSet.

The company's earnings were hit by 9 billion DKK of one-off restructuring costs after the company recently announced plans to slash 9,000 jobs, or 11%, of its workforce.

But one uncertainty looks to be clearing up, as The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that a deal could be announced by President Donald Trump as soon as Thursday that leads to the lowest dose of Novo Nordisk's weight-loss drug being sold to consumers for $149 in return for Medicare and Medicaid coverage of the drug.

Novo said Wednesday it had reached a deal with the White House on Medicare pricing. Although it didn't disclose the agreed price, it said if applied this year it would have had a "low-single-digit negative impact on global sales growth".

American depositary receipts of Novo were down 2.6% in premarket trading, after a 44% fall this year through to Tuesday's close.

For decades, Novo Nordisk cultivated an image as a sleepy and very steady alternative to its noisier Big Pharma peers. It had just five CEOs over more than a century, a tightly focused drug portfolio, and a charitable foundation as a controlling shareholder.

That's all out the window now. Novo is easily the most turbulent, high-drama name in the entire pharmaceutical industry, if not the entire healthcare sector.

You'll need a checklist to keep track of all the Novo chaos.

There was the one-day 21.8% selloff in July on the back of a huge guidance cut, the appointment of a new CEO, and the shock announcement in October that all of the board's independent directors were stepping down. That's not to mention its $4.5 billion acquisition of biotech Akero Therapeutics and the constant hyping of a new oral version of its weight-loss drug Wegovy.

That was all before last week, when Novo launched an extraordinarily aggressive bid to snatch an obesity biotech called Metsera from Pfizer, which already had a deal to buy Metsera.

Novo now says it will pay up to about $10 billion for Metsera, an eye-popping sum for a biotech with no drugs in Phase 3 trials. And Pfizer has launched a legal and public relations campaign to keep its grip on Metsera, painting Novo as a monopolist seeking to squash competition.

Novo's ADRs are down more than 65% since July 2024, as the air has leaked from the weight-loss bubble. Novo has found itself losing its two-man race against Eli Lilly.

"While expectations were low going into today's results, we expect continued disappointment on the magnitude of the guidance cut, implications for 2026 growth and the ongoing readacross from Novo's unsolicited offer for Metsera," wrote UBS analyst Matthew Weston in a research note.

Weston has a Neutral rating on Novo shares.

Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at josh.nathan-kazis@barrons.com

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November 05, 2025 08:06 ET (13:06 GMT)

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