Dive Brief:

• Novo Nordisk is offering rosier forecasts for the year after first-quarter sales and operating profit beat analyst expectations on a strong launch for its Wegovy pill.
• The company in February prepared investors for substantial decreases in 2026 as it faces pricing pressure and increased competition from market leader Eli Lilly. On Wednesday, the company revised those forecasts, saying it expects both adjusted sales and operating profit to shrink by between 4% and 12%, compared with the earlier estimate of 5% to 13%.
• Sales of the Wegovy pill reached 2.26 billion Danish kroner, or about $354 million, in the first quarter, Novo said. That was almost double the consensus estimate among analysts of 1.16 billion kroner, according to Jefferies analyst Michael Leuchten. Overall adjusted sales and operating income beat Wall Street expectations by 1% and 14% respectively, he said.

Dive Insight:

The Wegovy pill is offering a boost in a GLP-1 market that has come to be dominated by Lilly and left Novo struggling. Over the last year, Novo has overhauled its leadership, installed a new CEO and made plans to lay off 9,000 employees.

The Danish drugmaker has tried to counter Lilly by launching a higher-dose version of injectable Wegovy and offering it at a lower price compared with the highest doses of Lilly’s rival Zepbound. But analysts say the company’s best shot at clawing back market share is the Wegovy pill.

Novo got a head start in the oral GLP-1 market, introducing Wegovy about three months before Lilly launched its competing pill option, Foundayo. Unlike Wegovy, which is an oral version of a drug that has existed for years in injectable form, Lilly’s Foundayo is a new medicine. That means it may take more time for the product to build a prescription base, Lilly CEO David Ricks told CNBC recently.

So far, Novo has a strong edge. More than 2 million prescriptions have now been written for the Wegovy pill, which launched on Jan. 5, Novo said. The product had more than 18,000 prescriptions in its first full week on the market, compared with 5,612 prescriptions for Foundayo in the third week after its April 9 introduction, Reuters reported.

The disparity has triggered concern among investors about how well the Lilly product will compete. Though the drugs haven’t been compared in a head-to-head trial, patients on the Wegovy pill lost a higher percentage of body weight in Novo’s clinical trials than those in Lilly’s testing of Foundayo. Lilly counters that its option offers more convenience, with no requirement to take Foundayo on an empty stomach.

The success of the Wegovy pill is critical for Novo as the company faces setbacks in its attempts to develop next-generation medicines for the metabolic market. An experimental combination obesity shot called CagriSema failed to match up to Zepbound in a study released in February. Meanwhile, Lilly is working on a triple-acting drug that has had success in late-stage testing in diabetes and osteoarthritis. Novo’s counterpart is further behind.