Exactly one year after touching an all‑time high above €70, Novo Nordisk’s shares now change hands at just over €38 — a 46% decline that reflects mounting competitive fears, a cyber incident, and structural price pressure. Yet the stock’s recent stabilization around its 50‑day moving average masks a more nuanced picture: the Danish drugmaker is on the cusp of a concrete demand catalyst from the US Medicare programme, even as it battles a widening trust deficit with employers and a pipeline threat from Eli Lilly.
The most immediate positive signal came from Europe. Britain became the first country to approve the oral version of Wegovy, a daily GLP‑1 tablet that addresses the needle‑aversion many patients feel. Novo Nordisk’s CEO Mike Doustdar confirmed that the pill has already surpassed three million prescriptions in the US in roughly five months since launch, with two‑thirds of users entirely new to GLP‑1 therapy — evidence that the oral formulation is expanding the addressable market, not merely cannibalising injectable sales. France also joined the reimbursement trend, promising to cover obesity drugs, adding a new growth engine in Europe.
That tailwind could soon be amplified by a government‑led demand shock in the world’s largest pharmaceutical market. From 1 July 2026, eligible Medicare beneficiaries will be able to access certain GLP‑1 medicines for $50 a month through to the end of 2027, and Wegovy is confirmed on the list. Previously, seniors bore the full cost of weight‑loss drugs. For a population that is older and often multimorbid, Wegovy carries a unique clinical advantage: it is the only obesity drug proven to reduce heart attacks, strokes, and cardiovascular death in patients with established heart disease. That label could make it the default choice under Medicare, creating a volume surge that Doustdar sees as a chance to regain market share from Lilly’s Zepbound.
Yet the bear case remains formidable. The US government’s most‑favoured‑nation (MFN) pricing agreement is compressing net realised prices, and patent expiries for semaglutide in some markets will erode exclusivity. Novo’s own guidance calls for a 4‑12% decline in adjusted operating profit at constant exchange rates. A fresh survey from the Business Group on Health shows that roughly 10% of large employers plan to stop covering GLP‑1 weight‑loss drugs in 2027, while 87% expect higher overall demand because of oral options — a dynamic that will keep insurers squeezing margins.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Novo Nordisk?
Complicating matters is a cyber attack that hit Novo’s internal systems, potentially exposing sensitive data. Although core operations remain unaffected, regulatory investigations and reputational damage are now additional overhangs. The stock also had to digest Eli Lilly’s pivotal data on Retatrutide, a triple agonist that delivered a 28.3% mean weight loss in the TRIUMPH‑1 trial. Though that drug is not expected to launch before 2027 and has no approval yet, the data reinforced the perception that Novo’s competitive moat is thinning.
Technically, the shares have stabilised: at €38.03, Novo sits above its 50‑day average of €36.38 and the 100‑day line of €37.51, with an RSI of 53.6 that suggests neither overbought nor oversold conditions. But it remains nearly 8% below the 200‑day average, and analysts are divided. Most rate the stock a hold, with only six buy ratings and two sells, while the average price target has been cut 11% in the past three months.
The argument for a more constructive stance is simple: the Medicare programme will inject a structural demand boost that the market has not yet priced in via real prescription data. For a stock that has already discounted much of the competitive and pricing risks — and is down 46% from its peak — that volume catalyst is the most underappreciated variable. July will be the month that tests whether the bears have overplayed their hand, or whether the headwinds from the cyber hack, employer pullback, and Lilly’s pipeline are simply too broad to offset.
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