Many Americans have flocked to cheaper, compounded versions of GLP-1 weight loss drugs in lieu of brand-name treatments. That competition is cutting into demand for Novo Nordisk’s prescriptions, a company exec said Wednesday.
“Our latest market intelligence does tell us and show us that it is having an impact and it is growing faster than we had anticipated,” David Moore, Novo’s head of US operations, said during the drugmaker’s
fourth-quarter earnings call
.
He was responding to a question about compounded drugs’ effects on demand for the company’s products. Compounded drugs are copies of brand-name treatments mixed up by pharmacies, and they’re typically permitted only when there’s a drug shortage.
Over the last couple of years, these
pharmacies have seized the opportunity
to make alternative versions of semaglutide, the main ingredient in Novo blockbusters Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as tirzepatide, sold by Eli Lilly as Mounjaro and Zepbound, while they’ve been in shortage.
Novo’s acknowledgment of the competition it faces contrasts sharply with Eli Lilly’s comments on the subject. During an earnings call in October, Lilly CEO Dave Ricks said the company hadn’t seen a financial impact from compounded GLP-1s.
“I wouldn’t characterize compounding as a crisis. It certainly isn’t one for us,” Ricks said, according to a transcript from AlphaSense.
In the past, Novo hasn’t said much about the business impact of compounded drug competition. Instead, it discussed its concerns with the safety of the drugs, which aren’t tested or approved by the FDA. During an earnings call in November, CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen said the company didn’t know what share of the GLP-1 market compounding pharmacies had taken.
In any case, the availability of compounded GLP-1s may not last much longer. The FDA said late last year that
the shortage of tirzepatide had been resolved
, giving pharmacies until Feb. 18 or March 19 to stop compounding the drug, depending on the type of pharmacy. That order is being
challenged in court
by a trade group representing large compounding pharmacies.
Semaglutide remains on the FDA’s shortage list, even though all doses are listed as “available.” On Wednesday, Novo’s Moore said the company is talking with the FDA and working on increasing “resilience in our supply” to get off the shortage list.
“We are focused on doing that as fast as possible as we believe this will help our further actions to curtail compounding in the future,” he said.
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