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Sign up here. On Tuesday, Novo's top investor, the non-profit Novo Nordisk Foundation, moved to take control of the company's board. It vowed a sharper focus on the key U.S. market to boost sales growth for Wegovy, and flagged a need to move faster on burgeoning mass-market channels. The incoming chair, former CEO Lars Rebien Sorensen, said the drugmaker faced a dynamic and more consumer-focused obesity market in the United States, a market that he called "our daily bread". He criticised the board for being too slow to recognise the shift. Making GLP-1 drugs "at very large scale at very competitive cost will become a competitive edge", he said. AMERICANS TURN TO CONSUMER SITES FOR WEIGHT-LOSS DRUGS An increasing number of Americans are seeking weight-loss drugs like Wegovy not from their doctors or pharmacies, but from online health platforms that make it easy to order the treatments, offer discounts to patients without insurance coverage and provide nutritional guidance. Markus Manns, portfolio manager at Novo shareholder Union Investment, said the board overhaul would help give Novo more consumer-facing know-how. "It has been clear... that they had neglected the self-pay and consumer segment and that they need to focus more on this market," Manns told Reuters. UBS analysts said the lack of consumer-facing expertise had been a focus of recent conversations with investors as a potential disadvantage in "an increasingly-consumerised U.S. obesity market." Morningstar analyst Karen Andersen said the board changes came as Novo tries to "get its footing back" in the United States, the world's most lucrative market for weight-loss drugs. That could prove critical ahead of Novo's planned launch of a weight-loss pill, and a more aggressive pricing strategy could put pressure on Lilly, Andersen said. FINDING THE CONSUMER Lilly was first to offer its weight-loss injection Zepbound directly to U.S. consumers through its LillyDirect platform beginning last year and expanded that programme this year to stave off competition from compounding pharmacies. Novo followed this year with its direct-to-consumer platform NovoCare and partnerships, though a high-profile one with telehealth firm Hims & Hers ended in controversy in June. The challenge for Novo and Lilly is finding a way to get many more eligible patients on their treatments, BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman said. Meeting heightened Wall Street expectations means exploring new commercial models, including encouraging insurance coverage from employers and the Medicare program for older Americans, to increase volumes, he said. "One of (the ways) is definitely leaning into direct to consumer," he told Reuters. Reporting by Bhanvi Satija and Maggie Fick in London; Additional reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen and Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Jamie Freed Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Bhanvi Satija reports on pharmaceutical companies and the healthcare industry in the United States. She has a postgraduate degree in International Journalism from City, University of London. Maggie is a Britain-based reporter covering the European pharmaceuticals industry with a global perspective. In 2023, Maggie's coverage of Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk and its race to increase production of its new weight-loss drug helped the Health & Pharma team win a Reuters Journalists of the Year award in the Beat Coverage of the Year category. Since November 2023, she has also been participating in Reuters coverage related to the Israel-Hamas war. Previously based in Nairobi and Cairo for Reuters and in Lagos for the Financial Times, Maggie got her start in journalism in 2010 as a freelancer for The Associated Press in South Sudan.
