Novo Nordisk made 5.39 billion kroner selling a pill that tells you to eat less. Customers paid. Then they kept eating.
Analysts expected about 4.6 billion kroner. Novo blew past it. Shares jumped as much as 6% in Copenhagen. ,The U.S. shares climbed above $42 apiece., ,In June 2024, they traded over $140.,
Read that again. Novo is celebrating a rally to less than a third of its old price.
That's the bull case. A man falls off a roof, grabs a gutter on the way down, and the board calls it a turnaround.
Novo also raised guidance. ,It now expects growth between minus 2% and plus 2%, up from minus 6% to zero., That's a raise to "might shrink a little." ,It's the third raise this year., Guide low, beat low, repeat. A kid who sets the bar at the floor and then steps over it.
The pill launched in January. ,Prescriptions hit about 3.6 million this quarter, over 8 million since launch., That's 8 million people who looked at a needle and said no thanks. Novo found the one thing Americans fear more than carbs.
Retail traders will call this a trend. They'll draw a line from the lows to a price target that exists only in their group chat. They'll buy calls expiring Friday on a Danish company. Friday will not care.
Meanwhile, ,US sales of injectable Wegovy fell 13%., The old product is shrinking and the new one is a pill. Novo is eating its own lunch, which is at least on brand.
Jefferies also said ,pricing helped the sales beat by about 2 billion crowns, mostly for injectable Wegovy., So some of the beat was just charging more. Every landlord in America nods respectfully.
Eli Lilly launched its own pill, Foundayo. Novo's CEO says Wegovy still holds ,roughly 80% of new-to-brand prescriptions., A CEO saying that is like a man at a buffet telling you he's winning.
The chart doesn't care about any of it. Support is support. Resistance is resistance. A pill is a pill.
Buy the rip if you want. Novo built a business out of people who can't say no, and you're the same customer with a brokerage app.
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