Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen has an issue: Too many individuals need what he’s promoting.
Mr. Jorgensen is the chief govt of Novo Nordisk, the Danish drugmaker. Even when the corporate isn’t fairly a family identify, the TV jingle for its best-selling drug — “Oh-oh-ohhh, Ozempic!” — would possibly ring in your ears. Throughout the USA, Novo Nordisk’s diabetes and weight-loss medicine, Ozempic and Wegovy, have soared to movie star standing and helped make the corporate Europe’s Most worthy public agency. It could possibly’t make sufficient of the medicine.
Mr. Jorgensen’s drawback is one many high executives wouldn’t thoughts, however the success caught him off guard. Final yr, when the corporate was celebrating its centenary, Novo Nordisk’s income jumped by a 3rd, to 232 billion Danish kroner, or $33 billion.
“No one had forecast this progress — no analyst, no person within the firm,” Mr. Jorgensen mentioned in a latest interview on the firm’s headquarters in a suburb of Copenhagen. “No one forecast a 100-year-old firm would develop greater than 30 p.c,” he mentioned, seemingly torn between satisfaction and amazement.
For many of its 100 years Novo Nordisk has been targeted on the regular enterprise of treating diabetes, one of many world’s most prevalent power ailments. Even as we speak, it produces half the world’s insulin. However the improvement of Ozempic and Wegovy has led to an even bigger and bolder ambition to “defeat severe power ailments.” That features treating, and even stopping, weight problems, which is linked to different well being points like coronary heart and kidney ailments.
By pursuing a a lot bigger goal than diabetes, the corporate expects to unlock the door to a multibillion-dollar market with almost a billion potential sufferers. In the USA alone, greater than 40 p.c of adults are overweight.
And so the Danish drugmaker is present process huge adjustments — it’s getting greater, extra worldwide and nearer to the warmth of the highlight. Mr. Jorgensen is making an attempt to ramp up manufacturing to fulfill the massive demand for its weight-loss medicine, keep forward of competitors from Eli Lilly and others and make sure the firm’s future so it will possibly meet its lofty aim.
However in all of the tumult, there’s something executives are attempting to carry on to: the corporate’s longstanding values, codified within the “Novo Nordisk Means.”
These ideas, which embody having a “patient-centered enterprise strategy,” have helped earn the corporate popularity at dwelling, the place it’s thought of a spot the place individuals are proud to work. However these guideposts are going through stress as tens of hundreds of latest workers are employed, lawmakers denounce the drugmaker for its excessive costs and counterfeit variations of its merchandise make individuals sick.
#Ozempic
The drugmaker’s head workplace is a homage to its roots: a contemporary six-story white round constructing impressed by the molecular construction of insulin. A staircase spirals round an open atrium. On the highest ground, Mr. Jorgensen and the manager workforce share an open-plan workplace area.
“Many people have been right here without end,” Mr. Jorgensen, 57, mentioned as a snowstorm gathered power exterior.
He’s labored at Novo Nordisk for greater than three many years, and have become chief govt in 2017, a turbulent interval when the insulin market was beneath pressure: “Three revenue warnings in a single yr, and the share worth had tanked by 40 p.c,” he recalled.
A couple of yr later, Ozempic hit the market.
Now Novo Nordisk persistently beats investor expectations. Final summer season, it eclipsed the French luxurious group LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton to develop into Europe’s Most worthy firm. Its market worth exceeds $555 billion.
For these on the sixth ground, who rose via the ranks of an organization that focused on insulin, the adjustments are coming rapidly.
“Now it’s new sufferers; a brand new product presentation; typically new molecules,” Mr. Jorgensen mentioned. “It’s a totally completely different, say, administration system and provide chain that’s required.”
The guts of the expansion is semaglutide, Novo Nordisk’s artificial model of a hormone often called glucagon-like peptide 1, or GLP-1, which helps the physique regulate blood sugar ranges. The patent developed by the corporate additionally proved remarkably efficient for weight reduction. It causes individuals to really feel fuller once they eat and reduces cravings. Physicians say it may revolutionize the way in which we take into consideration weight problems and what we eat; meals executives worry the identical factor.
Semaglutide revived the fortunes of Novo Nordisk. A few many years in the past, the corporate was falling behind worldwide friends, with failed insulin medical trials and too little innovation. After which insulin began drying up as a supply of income, as U.S. lawmakers pushed worth caps and drugmakers had been compelled to pay bigger rebates.
Ozempic, the model identify for semaglutide, a weekly injection for Kind 2 diabetes sufferers, has been round for greater than six years. However within the final couple of years, there was an explosion in reputation, helped alongside by heavy promoting, social media movies and intrigue over movie star use. Elon Musk mentioned he used it, and on the Oscars final yr Jimmy Kimmel made a gag about it. TikTok movies tagged Ozempic have a couple of billion views, with individuals documenting their weight reduction.
As Ozempic started to take off, Novo Nordisk pushed forward with Wegovy, which is semaglutide marketed particularly for weight reduction. By the point it was authorized by the Meals and Drug Administration in mid-2021, the Danish firm knew it had “one thing particular,” mentioned Camilla Sylvest, the manager vice chairman for industrial technique and company affairs.
Novo Nordisk leads the pack in weight problems remedy, nevertheless it now has sturdy competitors from Eli Lilly, which sells an identical drug beneath the model names Mounjaro, for diabetes, and Zepbound, for weight reduction. Different pharmaceutical firms are clambering to catch up.
By far, most individuals utilizing Ozempic (two thirds of its gross sales final yr) and Wegovy (almost all of its gross sales) are in the USA. That’s partly as a result of medicine are usually launched first in the USA.
Meaning the Danes basically have Individuals to thank for his or her financial progress. The enlargement of the pharmaceutical trade, largely as a result of Novo Nordisk, was accountable for all of Denmark’s financial progress final yr.
Excessive Costs, Loud Criticism
The price of these medicine, although, has made Novo Nordisk a goal.
“There isn’t any rational motive, aside from greed, for Novo Nordisk to cost Individuals almost $1,000 a month for Ozempic,” Senator Bernie Sanders, unbiased of Vermont, mentioned final month. A frequent critic of excessive drug costs, he mentioned Canadians paid $155 a month and Germans simply $59.
Ozempic could possibly be a “recreation changer” combating diabetes and weight problems, Mr. Sanders added, however “this outrageously excessive worth has the potential to bankrupt Medicare, the American individuals and our complete well being care system.”
Whereas the U.S. listing worth for Ozempic is slightly beneath $1,000 a month and about $1,350 for Wegovy, Novo Nordisk says most American sufferers pay $25 or much less for Wegovy. A lot of the remainder of the fee is shouldered by insurance policy, and a few have been overwhelmed. This month, going through ballooning prices, North Carolina stop offering insurance coverage protection for weight problems medicine for state workers. Even Denmark’s nationwide well being service received’t subsidize Wegovy, arguing that it isn’t price efficient.
Mr. Jorgensen argues that prime charges of weight problems result in monumental medical prices, and that medicine to finish weight problems finally get monetary savings. “Well being care methods are challenged, with growing older populations,” he mentioned. “They’re going to interrupt except we do one thing about weight problems.”
The Novo Nordisk Means
Though the corporate’s manufacturing services function 24 hours a day, three hundred and sixty five days a yr, the restricted provide of Ozempic and Wegovy is predicted to final for a number of extra years, worrying diabetics whereas counterfeits are leaking into the market.
Manufacturing capability is a recurring headache. Novo Nordisk has greater than 64,000 workers, and visitors jams exterior its buildings are widespread. On the headquarters in Bagsvaerd, arrivals after 9 a.m. would possibly battle to discover a desk.
So Novo Nordisk is in the midst of remaking itself. Cranes and building employees have descended on its websites because it spends greater than $6 billion this yr to broaden manufacturing, almost 4 instances the quantity it spent simply two years in the past. The corporate is shopping for extra manufacturing websites and vacuuming up workplace area in Denmark.
Greater than 10,000 individuals had been employed final yr globally, and the corporate is turning into extra worldwide — particularly American — because it expands analysis workplaces in Cambridge, Mass., and buys smaller biotech firms.
Mr. Jorgensen can also be making an attempt to rework the mind-set inside the firm. A few years in the past, he gathered executives on a retreat for coaching known as NNX, for Novo Nordisk Unknown. The important query, he mentioned: “What are your personal self-limiting beliefs that might set off you, block you, in really daring to guide in a special atmosphere?”
Since then, greater than 400 managers have been via this program, meant to assist them sustain with the corporate’s sudden progress.
Till drug provides can higher match demand, the corporate says, it must make tough selections about how one can decide who will get what’s accessible.
Ms. Sylvest says right here she is guided by the Novo Nordisk Means, launched within the late Nineties. It contains 10 ideas, like “we’re curious and innovate for the advantage of sufferers and society at giant” and “we construct and keep good relations with our stakeholders.”
“By hook or by crook,” she mentioned, “it at all times helps us to have these necessities about what’s the proper factor to do.”
Novo Nordisk, she added, doesn’t need to simply promote the place costs are highest — the USA — however broaden entry internationally for low-income individuals or these with inadequate insurance coverage, whereas additionally maintaining present sufferers on the high of the listing.
A whole bunch of Hundreds of thousands of Potential Sufferers
Till not too long ago, weight problems medicine had a dire historical past, together with when Fen-Phen needed to be pulled off cabinets within the late Nineties for inflicting severe coronary heart issues.
Weight problems was “a therapeutic graveyard,” mentioned Emily Area, a prescription drugs analyst at Barclays in London. The medicine both labored effectively and had unhealthy unwanted effects or led to solely middling weight reduction, she mentioned.
However the science has modified quickly, together with public opinion on weight problems, which is more and more understood to be a illness that may be medically handled, reasonably than a failure of willpower and poor food regimen.
Novo Nordisk is accountable for a few of this altering outlook. Final summer season, a five-year examine it financed confirmed that its medicine may cut back the danger of coronary heart assaults, stroke and heart problems. That is “what actually received Novo Nordisk on the radar,” Ms. Area mentioned.
That makes a whole lot of tens of millions of individuals potential sufferers. The marketplace for weight problems medicines may develop to $100 billion within the subsequent decade, based on Barclays. Up to now, Novo Nordisk is treating about 40 million individuals globally with its diabetes and weight-loss remedies.
The Finish of Weight problems?
The U.S. patents on Ozempic and Wegovy don’t expire till 2032, however already Novo Nordisk is engaged on new remedies. It’s in superior improvement of CagriSema, a weekly injection that’s anticipated to be simpler than Wegovy for shedding weight. Final month, its inventory worth spiked after early trial outcomes for an oral pill of one other weight-loss remedy.
As the corporate digs deeper into weight problems, which is outlined as having a physique mass index above 30, the subsequent query is whether or not the Danish drugmaker can stop weight problems. Can it predict who’s in danger, based mostly on genetics and the info, and deal with them first?
Final yr, Novo Nordisk established the Transformational Prevention Unit, an inner workforce on the lookout for methods to foretell and stop weight problems.
Not everyone seems to be shopping for the hype. For greater than 4 years, Jefferies has had a adverse “underperform” score on Novo Nordisk inventory. Peter Welford, an analyst on the financial institution in London, thinks weight problems medicine will develop into widespread and interchangeable, struggling the identical destiny as insulin, with larger volumes and stress on internet costs.
“Finally, we predict Novo Nordisk must diversify,” Mr. Welford mentioned. However the financial institution’s guess that Novo Nordisk’s share worth is simply too excessive hasn’t labored out thus far.
“Clearly we’ve been fallacious,” he mentioned.
