Novo Nordisk said annual sales and operating profit should fall less than it previously expected as demand for weight-loss drugs shows no sign of abating.
The Danish drugmaker said it expected sales and operating profit on an adjusted basis to decline by up to 6% at constant exchange rates this year, better than prior guidance of a 4% to 12% decline for both metrics.
Chief Executive Mike Doustdar said patients in the U.S. were scrambling to get their hands on the company's Wegovy pill, with more than 5 million prescriptions since it launched in January. Doustdar said early uptake was also encouraging in other markets where it recently expanded.
"The increased U.S. GLP-1 momentum, combined with continued growth and new launches in international operations, has led us to further raise our 2026 guidance for both adjusted sales and adjusted operating profit," he said.
Analysts had expected Novo Nordisk to raise its annual guidance as Wegovy turbocharged sales at the company since the Food and Drug Administration first approved it in 2021 as a weight-loss medication.
In recent months, the group has been working to win over health regulators across several markets so it could market Wegovy to more patients and further boost sales. In June, Novo Nordisk said its Wegovy pill was approved in the U.K. as an alternative to weekly injections for overweight or obese adults, marking the first green light in Europe for the oral version of the drug.
A month later, the company received the go ahead to market the pill in the European Union, paving the way for a rollout of the oral version of the drug across the bloc's 27 member states. The EU also approved Wegovy as an injection in a single-dose pen.
The fight for a slice of the lucrative weight-loss drug market has caused friction between Novo Nordisk and some of its rivals. Last month, Novo Nordisk said it was asking a U.S. court to halt Eli Lilly from advertising weight-loss drugs on a preliminary basis, days after accusing the Indianapolis drugmaker of using deceptive ads to mislead consumers in a lawsuit.
Meanwhile, Novo Nordisk itself is fighting a patent lawsuit that Sandoz filed in Italy to revoke a patent covering the a dose of semaglutide for diabetes in 18 EU countries.
Novo Nordisk said adjusted sales in the second quarter grew 7% from a year earlier, to 78.49 billion Danish kroner ($12.08 billion). The injectable variant of Wegovy contributed 19.48 billion Danish kroner, with the pill version bringing in 3.22 billion Danish kroner.
Net profit declined 21%, to 20.99 billion Danish kroner. However, adjusted operating profit--more closely watched by investors--grew 11%, to 33.39 billion Danish kroner.
