(Bloomberg) -- Amgen Inc.’s shares soared after its chief executive officer said he was “very encouraged” by early results from a study of the company’s experimental obesity drug, MariTide. 

“We recognize the significant interest in obesity,” Amgen CEO Robert Bradway said Thursday on a call with investors. “We are confident in MariTide’s differentiated profile and believe it will address important unmet medical needs.”

Amgen shares rose as much as 15.9% when the market opened Friday, its biggest intraday rise since July 2009.

The Thousand Oaks, California-based company has emerged as a potential competitor to Eli Lilly & Co. and Novo Nordisk A/S, which so far dominate the weight-loss market. Demand for anti-obesity drugs like Zepbound and Wegovy is so strong that Bloomberg Intelligence’s estimate for $80 billion in annual sales by 2030 is now looking conservative, BI analyst Michael Shah said after Lilly raised its annual forecast this week. 

“We see MariTide as having multi-blockbuster potential,” William Blair analyst Matt Phipps said in a note Friday, boosting his rating on Amgen stock to outperform. “We believe Amgen has the capacity and expertise to maximize development of the asset.”

Shares of Denmark’s Novo Nordisk fell as much as 5.3% Friday after the Amgen CEO’s comments. Optimism over towering sales of its Wegovy and Ozempic drugs have pushed Novo’s market value above $500 billion, reinforcing its position as Europe’s most valuable listed company. The stock has more than quadrupled since the start of 2020.

Lilly, whose shares rocketed Tuesday when it lifted its forecast, fell 2.1% before US markets opened Friday. Viking Therapeutics Inc., which has been developing an anti-obesity medication, fell as much as 6.2%. 

 

MariTide has excited investors because it’s taken less frequently than the top-selling treatments from Novo and Lilly. Patients given a monthly injection of the drug lost up to 14.5% of their body weight in 12 weeks, according to a small early-stage study published in February in the journal Nature Metabolism. Some people kept weight off for up to 150 days after stopping the drug, the findings showed. 

Amgen’s two-part drug works differently than Wegovy or Zepbound. It’s what’s known as an antibody-drug conjugate, a type of molecule more commonly used as a targeted cancer treatment. One part of the drug mimics a gut hormone called GLP-1, just as the other weight-loss drugs do. 

The other part is an antibody that blocks the gastric inhibitory polypeptide, or GIP, receptor. GIP is another gut hormone that’s similar to GLP-1. The antibody component of the drug allows it to stay in the body longer than weekly weight-loss shots. 

The company is already investing in building out production capacity for MariTide, even though it’s still in mid-stage studies and hasn’t been submitted for regulatory approval. Amgen is planning late-stage studies in obesity, obesity-related conditions and diabetes, Bradway said on the call. The drug will likely be delivered in a handheld autoinjector that’s used monthly.

Amgen, which in February forecast a big jump in revenue this year, will focus on MariTide and discontinue development of another, earlier-stage drug called AMG 786, R&D chief Jay Bradner said on the call. 

--With assistance from Subrat Patnaik and Jerrold Colten.

(Updates with analyst comment, more stocks.)

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