Novo Nordisk will replace its chief executive, Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen, the company announced Friday, citing a sharp decline in its stock price that stemmed from increased competition for its popular weight-loss drug.
The Danish drugmaker said it was searching for a new chief executive to soon replace Mr. Jorgensen, who has led Novo Nordisk for eight years.
The move reflects a remarkable fall in fortune for the maker of one of the most well-known drugs in the world, which is sold as Ozempic for diabetes and Wegovy for obesity. The company’s stock has fallen by 50 percent in the past year.
Sales of that drug created boom times for Novo Nordisk. In 2023, the company’s extraordinary success prompted the Danish central bank to keep interest rates lower than it otherwise would. For more than a year, Novo Nordisk’s market value surpassed Denmark’s entire gross domestic product.
But investors have soured on the company as it has faced increasingly fierce competition. Lower-cost copycat versions of the weight-loss drugs made through a process known as compounding have cut into Novo Nordisk’s sales. Even more damaging has been competition from Eli Lilly, the maker of the drug sold as Mounjaro and Zepbound.
Novo Nordisk had a head start, winning approval to market its drug for obesity more than two years before Eli Lilly. But Novo Nordisk has been rapidly losing market share to its competitor: American patients have filled more prescriptions this year for Zepbound than for Wegovy, and the gap has been widening, according to the industry data provider IQVIA.
Eli Lilly is also developing new weight-loss drugs, including a daily pill, that are expected to set up years of blockbuster sales for the company. Novo Nordisk has a hazier path forward.
Rebecca Robbins is a Times reporter covering the pharmaceutical industry. She has been reporting on health and medicine since 2015.
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