A defining week for Novo Nordisk kicks off on July 1, when the US Medicare GLP-1 Bridge Program goes live, slashing out-of-pocket costs for older Americans to roughly $50 a month. Just five days later, on July 6, British patients will be able to order the oral version of Wegovy through private prescriptions, after the UK’s MHRA became the first European regulator to approve the pill in June 2026. Together, these two milestones mark a major expansion of the addressable market for Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss portfolio.
The US bridge program is expected to unlock millions of new patients who had previously been priced out of GLP-1 therapies. Analysts anticipate a sharp uptick in new prescriptions, easing earlier concerns about US pricing pressure. The scale of demand has already been hinted at by the oral Wegovy’s US launch: on the sidelines of the American Diabetes Association’s annual congress in June, Novo Nordisk disclosed that more than three million prescriptions had been written since the US rollout — one every five seconds. Crucially, most of those patients had never taken a GLP-1 before, suggesting the tablet is expanding the user base rather than cannibalising sales of the injectable version.
That same ADA meeting was the stage for a flurry of clinical data. The SELECT study showed that semaglutide 2.4 mg reduced all-cause mortality by 19% and major cardiovascular events by 20%. The FLOW trial in patients with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease reported a 20% mortality reduction and an 18% drop in cardiovascular events, while the SOUL study of oral semaglutide cut serious heart events by 14%. Additionally, phase 2 results for Zenagamtide — formerly known as Amycretin — demonstrated up to 14.6% weight loss after 36 weeks, reinforcing the depth of the pipeline beyond current GLP-1 offerings.
On the oral Wegovy front, trial participants lost nearly 14% of their body weight over 64 weeks. That figure is roughly three percentage points higher than what Eli Lilly’s oral rival Foundayo (orforglipron) achieved in its own studies, though no head-to-head comparison exists. The clinical edge gives Novo Nordisk a window before Lilly can enter the UK market. Meanwhile, the European Medicines Agency recommended the pill for approval in May, and an EU green light is expected shortly.
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The British launch will initially be limited to private prescriptions. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence still needs to conduct a cost-benefit analysis, a process that typically takes six to twelve months, meaning NHS reimbursement is unlikely before 2027. In the US, the bridge program’s impact on prescription volumes should become clearer by August, when first monthly data are expected.
Parallel to these commercial developments, Novo Nordisk continues to advance its next-generation combos. CagriSema, a fixed-dose combination, achieved a 22.7% weight loss after 68 weeks in the REDEFINE-1 study — significantly more than either component alone. The company submitted a US approval application for CagriSema in December 2025, and the FDA review is ongoing this year.
The company has also been active on the capital allocation front. Its share buyback programme of up to 15 billion Danish kroner (roughly €2 billion) has already seen more than 22 million B-shares repurchased since February 2026, with the treasury stake now standing at 0.9% of share capital.
All of this has fuelled a sharp recovery in the stock. Novo Nordisk shares closed at €42.75, up nearly 13% over the past 30 days. That rally has pushed the relative strength index to 73, technically indicating overbought conditions and raising the possibility of a near-term consolidation. Still, the stock remains about 30% below its 52-week high of €61.20, leaving ample room for further upside if the twin catalysts deliver on their promise. The next concrete checkpoint is the quarterly report due on August 5, when investors will scrutinise US patient retention rates through dose escalation — the metric that turns script counts into recurring revenue.
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