For a while, Novo Nordisk looked like it had cracked the code to a modern pharma empire… a once-a-week injection that could turn 2008 Jonah Hill into 2020 Jonah Hill without logging a single mile on a treadmill. Ozempic and Wegovy were bigger than miracle drugs… they were cultural currency. Celebrities were using them, TikTok was glorifying them, and Wall Street couldn’t shovel money at Novo fast enough.

The company genuinely believed it had built an unshakable kingdom… one injection to rule them all. But like every empire before it, they forgot one thing: eventually, someone comes for the crown. And this morning? Novo’s Danish empire just got invaded… and this time, the barbarians showed up wearing lab coats and selling knockoffs for half the price.

Novo’s Q2 earnings just dropped, and while the headline figures looked fine on paper (they still hauled in nearly $12 billion), the mood was somewhere between “uh oh” and “sell everything.” Revenue rose 18% year-over-year to $11.92 billion… which would be impressive if this were 2020. But for Novo, that’s the slowest growth rate since the GLP-1 gold rush began. Investors weren’t impressed… more like mildly horrified.

(Source: MarketWatch)

And then came the profit miss. EPS clocked in at $5.96 versus the expected $6.06… not a huge gap, but when everyone’s already writing the narrative that you’re losing your pharma kingdom to knockoff injections and compounder pirates, even a tiny miss feels like confirmation bias to all of us.

The real problem of course is the compounders. These are the off-brand pharmacists whipping up bootleg versions of Wegovy in the back of local strip malls across the country. And according to outgoing CEO Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen, they’re now doing as much business as Novo itself. That’s… not great. Especially considering the FDA told them to shut it down months ago.

Novo assumed once the FDA got involved, patients would come crawling back. But nah… more than a million Americans are still using compounded knockoffs, many of which are allegedly churned out in China and “not quality controlled in any shape or form.” Scary? Sure. But not as scary as paying $1,350/month for the branded stuff.

So now? In a move that feels ripped straight from the Zuck-and-Bezos post-election playbook, Novo’s suddenly draped itself in red, white, and “please don’t regulate us” blue. After Trump’s warning to Big Pharma last week (demanding drugmakers match U.S. prices to what they charge in developing countries) Novo didn’t waste time reading between the lines. They got the message loud and clear.

They’re now fully committed to what you could call the “MAGA Means Margin Protection” strategy. That includes lowering prices, cutting out the insurance middlemen, and rolling out a direct-to-consumer cash model. Because if you can’t beat the compounders, you might as well underprice them. For instance, through their new platform NovoCare, they’re now offering Wegovy for $499/month… less than half the typical $1,350 sticker price. The press release says they’re “meeting patients where they are” (but they’re really just meeting Trump where he told them to).

In the meantime, Eli Lilly continues to eat Novo’s breakfast, lunch, and whatever’s left in the fridge at 2 a.m. Their GLP-1 drugs (Zepbound and Mounjaro) have now captured 60% of new prescriptions. And while they showed up late to the party, they’ve been dominating where it counts: better clinical efficacy and smarter pricing (aka two things that tend to matter when people are paying $1,000+ to lose ten pounds before a wedding).

This means Novo’s once-dominant position is slipping fast. They just had to cut their full-year growth forecast from 13–21% down to a much bleaker 8–14%. As you can imagine, Wall Street didn’t take that news well… and in typical fashion, investors responded by wiping $95 billion off Novo’s market cap.  Just last year, they were the pride of Europe… the most valuable company on the continent. Now? They’re barely holding onto 11th place.

And to make things even messier (because of course it gets messier), all of this is happening as outgoing CEO Lars Jorgensen hands over the reins to Maziar Mike Doustdar… the poor guy now responsible for mopping up the GLP-1 mess (welcome aboard, here’s your dumpster fire to put out… we have no water).

And unless he somehow pulls off a miracle, don’t be surprised if Novo’s downfall winds up in the business history books… possibly sandwiched somewhere between the fall of the Roman Empire and the implosion of Theranos. 

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News doesn’t hold positions in companies mentioned in the article.