(Bloomberg) -- Novo Nordisk A/S’s shares fell by the most on record after a failed attempt to leapfrog rival Eli Lilly & Co. in the red-hot market for obesity drugs.
Novo’s experimental obesity shot CagriSema helped patients lose an average of 20.4% of their weight over 68 weeks, short of the 25% weight loss that Novo had repeatedly predicted for its next-generation product.
The study results were roughly in line with the performance of Eli Lilly’s Zepbound shot, which is already on the market and competes with existing Novo treatment Wegovy. Lilly is also working on a next-generation medicine, called retatrutide, which helped people lose up to about 24% of their weight in a mid-sized study last year.
Novo’s shares plunged as much as 27% in Copenhagen, and are now down 15% for the year after a runup on the strength of Wegovy sales. Shares of Eli Lilly jumped 10% in premarket US trading. The share decline briefly knocked more than $120 billion from Novo’s market value.
The results may suffice for approval for CagriSema, but they leave Novo with issues positioning the drug in the market, Simon Baker, an analyst for Redburn, said in a note. “They sought a superior result to Lilly and got one that is the same,” Baker said.
Novo said it will start another trial in the first half of next year to help find out how best to boost patients’ doses. The company expects to seek regulatory approval for CagriSema toward the end of next year, a spokeswoman said in a statement.
The study is one of the most anticipated this year in the field. Novo has been counting on CagriSema to help it ward off a growing roster of competitors, led by Eli Lilly, in a weight-loss market that’s predicted to grow to nearly $130 billion by 2030.
The results suggest that side effects may have made it difficult for patients to remain on the treatment, Peter Welford, a London-based analyst for Jefferies, wrote in a note. Investors had expected 25% to 27% weight loss, Welford said.
The results of the study appeared slightly better, with 22.7% weight loss, when researchers looked at patients who stuck to taking the treatment.
Novo’s existing blockbusters mimic the gut hormone GLP-1, and CagriSema adds a second mode of action. The extra compound, called cagrilintide, works in a similar way as another gut hormone called amylin. Both the old and the new medicines suppress the appetite, though taking amylin has been described as a gentler experience than a GLP-1 drug, helping people stay satisfied for longer instead of wiping away their drive to eat.
What Bloomberg Intelligence Says:
Novo Nordisk’s results for its CagriSema drug (20.4-22.7% weight loss vs. targeted 25%) look on par with Eli Lilly’s marketed Zepbound. Lilly also has retatrutide to follow, which may offer even greater potency. With the patent expiration of Wegovy in the early 2030s and potential IRA headwinds, the underwhelming result will likely pressure consensus, which sees the asset driving almost 20% of Novo’s sales in 2030. There’s now added onus on Novo’s amycretin, though it’s only in Phase 1 trials currently.
— John Murphy, BI pharma analyst
Novo’s CagriSema Data Gives Lilly Upper Hand in Obesity: React
The researchers enrolled about 3,400 people and compared CagriSema to a dummy medicine as well as to semaglutide, the wildly successful shot that Novo sells under the brand names Wegovy for weight loss and Ozempic for diabetes. People who took semaglutide lost an average of 16.1% of their weight in the study.
The study also measured results for cagrilintide alone. People who took only the amylin-based compound lost an average of 11.8%.
Fewer than 60% of the CagriSema patients ended the trial on the highest dose of medicine, compared with more than four-fifths of cagrilintide patients and 70% of Wegovy patients. That may mean that side effects prevented patients from boosting their doses, resulting in less weight loss than expected, Evan Seigerman of BMO Capital Markets said in a note.
--With assistance from Lisa Pham, Jonas Ekblom and Joe Easton.
(Updates with additional study in the sixth paragraph, analysts throughout)
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.