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 title, the TV jingle for its best-selling drug — “Oh-oh-ohhh, Ozempic!” — may ring in your ears. Throughout the USA, Novo Nordisk’s diabetes and weight-loss medication, Ozempic and Wegovy, have soared to superstar standing and helped make the corporate Europe’s most respected public agency. It might probably’t make sufficient of the medication.
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 person had forecast this progress — no analyst, no one within the firm,” Mr. Jorgensen mentioned in a current interview on the firm’s headquarters in a suburb of Copenhagen. “No person forecast a 100-year-old firm would develop greater than 30 p.c,” he mentioned, seemingly torn between pleasure 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 persistent ailments. Even at present, 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 critical persistent 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 larger, extra worldwide and nearer to the warmth of the highlight. Mr. Jorgensen is making an attempt to ramp up manufacturing to satisfy the large demand for its weight-loss medication, keep forward of competitors from Eli Lilly and others and make sure the firm’s future so it will possibly meet its lofty purpose.
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 Manner.”
These ideas, which embody having a “patient-centered enterprise strategy,” have helped earn the corporate an excellent fame at dwelling, the place it’s thought of a spot the place persons are proud to work. However these guideposts are going through stress as tens of 1000’s of latest staff 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 chief staff share an open-plan workplace area.
“Many people have been right here ceaselessly,” Mr. Jorgensen, 57, mentioned as a snowstorm gathered energy exterior.
He’s labored at Novo Nordisk for greater than three a long time, and have become chief govt in 2017, a turbulent interval when the insulin market was underneath pressure: “Three revenue warnings in a single yr, and the share value had tanked by 40 p.c,” he recalled.
A couple of yr later, Ozempic hit the market.
Now Novo Nordisk constantly beats investor expectations. Final summer season, it eclipsed the French luxurious group LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton to grow to be Europe’s most respected firm. Its market worth exceeds $555 billion.
For these on the sixth ground, who rose by means of 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 totally different, say, administration system and provide chain that’s required.”
The center of the expansion is semaglutide, Novo Nordisk’s artificial model of a hormone referred to as 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 best way 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 a long time 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 value caps and drugmakers have been pressured to pay bigger rebates.
Ozempic, the model title for semaglutide, a weekly injection for Sort 2 diabetes sufferers, has been round for greater than six years. However within the final couple of years, there was an explosion in recognition, helped alongside by heavy promoting, social media movies and intrigue over superstar 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 permitted by the Meals and Drug Administration in mid-2021, the Danish firm knew it had “one thing particular,” mentioned Camilla Sylvest, the chief vice chairman for business technique and company affairs.
Novo Nordisk leads the pack in weight problems therapy, however it now has robust competitors from Eli Lilly, which sells the same drug underneath 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 medication are usually launched first in the USA.
Which means the Danes basically have People to thank for his or her financial progress. The enlargement of the pharmaceutical business, principally as a result of Novo Nordisk, was liable for all of Denmark’s financial progress final yr.
Excessive Costs, Loud Criticism
The price of these medication, although, has made Novo Nordisk a goal.
“There is no such thing as a rational purpose, aside from greed, for Novo Nordisk to cost People 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 may very well be a “recreation changer” combating diabetes and weight problems, Mr. Sanders added, however “this outrageously excessive value has the potential to bankrupt Medicare, the American individuals and our complete well being care system.”
Whereas the U.S. record value for Ozempic is just a little underneath $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 coverage, and a few have been overwhelmed. This month, going through ballooning prices, North Carolina stop offering insurance coverage protection for weight problems medication for state staff. 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 medication to finish weight problems finally get monetary savings. “Well being care methods are challenged, with growing old populations,” he mentioned. “They’re going to interrupt until we do one thing about weight problems.”
The Novo Nordisk Manner
Though the corporate’s manufacturing services function 24 hours a day, twelve months 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 staff, and visitors jams exterior its buildings are frequent. On the headquarters in Bagsvaerd, arrivals after 9 a.m. may wrestle to discover a desk.
So Novo Nordisk is in the course of remaking itself. Cranes and building employees have descended on its websites because it spends greater than $6 billion this yr to increase 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 have been employed final yr globally, and the corporate is changing 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 throughout the firm. A few years in the past, he gathered executives on a retreat for coaching referred to as NNX, for Novo Nordisk Unknown. The important query, he mentioned: “What are your individual self-limiting beliefs that would set off you, block you, in truly daring to steer in a unique surroundings?”
Since then, greater than 400 managers have been by means of this program, supposed 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 decide who will get what’s obtainable.
Ms. Sylvest says right here she is guided by the Novo Nordisk Manner, launched within the late Nineteen Nineties. It consists of 10 ideas, like “we’re curious and innovate for the good thing about sufferers and society at giant” and “we construct and keep good relations with our stakeholders.”
“Someway,” she mentioned, “it at all times helps us to have these necessities about what’s the best factor to do.”
Novo Nordisk, she added, doesn’t need to simply promote the place costs are highest — the USA — however increase entry internationally for low-income individuals or these with inadequate insurance coverage, whereas additionally preserving current sufferers on the high of the record.
Lots of of Tens of millions of Potential Sufferers
Till not too long ago, weight problems medication had a dire historical past, together with when Fen-Phen needed to be pulled off cabinets within the late Nineteen Nineties for inflicting critical coronary heart issues.
Weight problems was “a therapeutic graveyard,” mentioned Emily Discipline, a prescribed drugs analyst at Barclays in London. The medication both labored effectively and had unhealthy uncomfortable side 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, somewhat than a failure of willpower and poor food plan.
Novo Nordisk is liable for a few of this altering outlook. Final summer season, a five-year research it financed confirmed that its medication may scale back the chance of coronary heart assaults, stroke and heart problems. That is “what actually received Novo Nordisk on the radar,” Ms. Discipline mentioned.
That makes a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of individuals potential sufferers. The marketplace for weight problems drugs may develop to $100 billion within the subsequent decade, in response to 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 value spiked after early trial outcomes for an oral pill of one other weight-loss therapy.
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 forestall weight problems. Can it predict who’s in danger, based mostly on genetics and the information, and deal with them first?
Final yr, Novo Nordisk established the Transformational Prevention Unit, an inner staff 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 medication will grow to be frequent and interchangeable, struggling the identical destiny as insulin, with greater 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 value is just too excessive hasn’t labored out to this point.
“Clearly we’ve been fallacious,” he mentioned.
