Not long ago, it seemed pretty clear who was winning the war of the weight loss drugs: Novo Nordisk.
Novo Nordisk.
Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk.
Novo Nordisk, king of the weight loss people.
Novo Nordisk, the Danish drug maker behind Ozempic and Wegovy, basically kickstarted an entire industry.
But now, the race looks very different.
Really bad news for what was the first mover in this space.
Shares of Novo Nordisk plunging by the most on record today.
The weight loss trailblazer is rapidly ceding market share to rival Eli Lilly.
Novo's biggest rival, the American pharma giant Eli Lilly, has surged ahead.
Lilly's obesity shot, Zepbound, helps patients lose more weight than Novo's Wegovy.
But Novo has an edge in one critical area: weight loss pills.
The company released the Wegovy pill earlier this year, and it quickly became the biggest drug launch in recent history.
At the center of all this is Mike Doustdar,
the CEO who was hired nine months ago to breathe new life into Novo Nordisk.
Mike Doustdar, welcome to The Journal.
It's nice to be here.
Thank you very much, Jess.
I reached Mike last week at Novo's headquarters near Copenhagen.
I wanted to understand how the company that started this whole boom found itself playing catch-up.