By Maggie Fick
LONDON, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar was in a meeting with investors on Thursday discussing the company’s tough recent outlook when one interrupted him with shock news: U.S. telehealth firm Hims and Hers Health was launching a cut-price version of Novo’s blockbuster Wegovy weight loss pill.
Novo Nordisk’s stock plunged some 8% on the news, first reported by Reuters, with fears that the $49 compounded pill – rising to $99 but some $100 below Novo’s price – would scupper the Danish firm’s pivot into the cash-pay consumer market.
Put on the spot, Doustdar told analysts in the live-streamed meeting in London that anyone who bought the $49 compounded Wegovy pill copy would be wasting their money as it would not be properly absorbed in their body.
“You’re wasting $49 in my opinion,” he said, adding that the Wegovy pill had technology called SNAC that aided the absorption of the active compound semaglutide, which a copy would not have.
“Your gut enzyme will basically get rid of it, and it will not get to your bloodstream.”
Hims and Hers said in a statement to Reuters that its compounded pill uses what it called “liposomal technology that is intended to support absorption”, without giving more detail.
NOVO TO TAKE LEGAL ACTION AGAINST HIMS
The news appeared to catch Doustdar off guard.
“I have no idea what they have done with the compounding, I have to read what they are doing, but assuming you just take the compound without the things around it, and formulations, and what have you, then this just doesn’t work,” he said.
BMO analyst Evan Seigerman, who was in the meeting, told Reuters that Doustdar appeared “surprised” when analysts attending the meeting with the company’s management in London informed him of the Reuters report about Hims’ $49 pill.
“Everyone started rumbling, I was one of the first that mentioned it to management, and he (Doustdar) looked surprised,” said Seigerman. “Like that was the first time he had heard it.”
Novo, which said it would take legal action against Hims & Hers, declined to comment on whether Doustdar had been aware of Hims’ plan to launch the compounded pill.
Novo is facing an increasingly competitive obesity drug market. It flagged significant downward pressure on prices earlier this week when it forecast that sales and profits could decline as much as 13% this year.
“My question for management just generally speaking is how do you prevent this from being a race to the bottom, and I think that’s what’s changed here,” said Seigerman.
(Reporting by Maggie Fick in London; Additional reporting by Louise Rasmussen; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Susan Fenton)
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