My key takeaways form recent earnings and market developments (part 1):
1) This is a comfortable situation for the company when the demand for anti-obesity drugs is growing rapidly and the main challenge is to increase production capacity. The main drug in this area is Wegovy, approved by the FDA in 2021. Wegovy's full-year 2023 sales increased by 407% (from DKK 6.2 billion in 2022 to DKK 31.3 billion in 2023) - see Figure 1, which shows Wegovy's quarterly revenues and Wall Street consensus estimate for 2024-2025,
2) Competition from Eli Lilly in the obesity drug space is only helping to excite investors about the prospects of the anti-obesity drug market. The share prices of Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly are moving together, significantly outperforming the S&P500 as well as the NYSE ARCA Pharmaceutical Index - see Figure 2.
3) Eli Lilly's Zepbound got the FDA's approval on November 8, 2023, and was available for sale from December 5 - and in December 2023 alone, sales amounted to $175 million. When publishing its results on February 6, 2024, the company boasted about the success of Zepbound - Figure 3.
4) In the case of Zepbound, Wall Street forecasts strong sales growth in the coming quarters – see Figure 4.
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