Imagine a company whose stock market value exceeds the GDP of the country in which it was born. A company so prolific that the economy of the country in question escaped recession last year, ending 2023 with growth of 1.8%, instead of -0.3%. No need to fantasize, this company is very real. Novo Nordisk is now more than a hundred years old, and is the most valuable European company ahead of the French LVMH. Tale of gargantuan success.
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At the beginning of the last century, the Danish laboratory Nordisk was the first company to commercialize the production of insulin, a hormone used to treat diabetes. Two employees of this company, the brothers Harald and Thorvald Pedersen, decided in 1925 to leave their employer to create their own company: Novo. The two pharmaceutical companies then engaged in fierce competition for many years. They merged at the end of the 1980s to create the Novo Nordisk Pharma group.
An injection costing more than $4 million per dose: why this exorbitant price for the most expensive new treatment in the world?
Today, this pharmaceutical group is worth 588 billion euros, more than the Danish GDP of 371.13 billion euros in 2022. Also, it represents 1% of jobs in the country. This financial success is largely due to two flagship drugs: Ozempic and Wegovy. Two drugs to treat diabetes, but whose appetite suppressant effect makes them products of choice in obese societies.
Americans are getting fatter and fatter. It’s no secret. According to Statista, almost half of the American adult population is obese, and therefore has a body mass index greater than 30. A situation that is good for Novo Nordisk. The pharmaceutical giant sells its anti-diabetic drugs there by the shovelful.
In 2022, Elon Musk praised the merits of “appetite suppressant” Wegovy and Ozempic, and claimed to have lost nearly 13 kg thanks to the fact that these drugs slow down the emptying of the stomach. They actually reduce the appetite and cause significant weight loss (of the order of 10% of body mass in one year). Other personalities have done the same, such as the American actress Amy Schumer or the singer Robbie Williams who praised Ozempic last October in an interview with the Times, evoking a “Christmas miracle”: “I’m on Ozempic baby”.
It didn’t take much for the Americans to rush into these drugs, going so far as to threaten them with shortages. A Morgan Stanley study even predicts that by 2035, 7% of the American population, or 24 million people, will consume this type of medication. The Danish industrialist also succeeded in obtaining the marketing of Wegovy for purposes specifically linked to the treatment of obesity.
Last October, the Walmart distribution group rode this wave, claiming to sell less food since drugs are consumed for their effects.appetite suppressant”. “We are certainly seeing a slight change in relation to the total population, we are seeing a slight decline in the overall basket”CEO John Furner declared in October in an interview with Bloomberg media, “Just fewer units, a few fewer calories.”
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Faced with these declarations, the reaction of the markets was not long in coming. Mondelez, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola saw their stock prices drop after this announcement. Questioned by the Financial Times, the CEO of Kellanova, owner of Pringles crisps in particular, is closely monitoring the situation: “Like anything that can impact our business, we will review it, we will study it and if necessary, we will adapt.” For his part, Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen announced last month that the company was facing demand higher than its supply for Wegovy.
Dangers and shortages
Marketed in the United States since 2021, Wegovy has since been expanded to several European countries such as Iceland, Norway, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. For its part, the WHO constantly warns of the danger of obesity, responsible according to it for 1.2 million deaths per year in Europe. But the danger is also present in the treatments themselves.
Researchers from the University of British Columbia published last October the first epidemiological study showing a link between weight-loss medications and severe gastrointestinal conditions: pancreatitis, intestinal obstruction, biliary pathologies and even gastroparesis. Jean-Luc Faillie, head of the medical pharmacology and toxicology department at Montpellier University Hospital, told the newspaper Le Monde that “whether these drugs have an important benefit in diabetes and potentially in severe obesity […]on the other hand, it is non-existent for losing a few kilos in slightly overweight people.”
