Blockbuster drugs. Rising profits. Strong sales. And yet, Novo Nordisk, the Danish company behind the GLP-1 drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, made a surprising move last week: It pushed out its CEO. WSJ's Peter Loftus charts the rise of Ozempic and the fall of CEO Lars Jorgensen. Jessica Mendoza hosts. Further Listening: Trillion Dollar Shot Why WeightWatchers Wants in on Drugs Like Ozempic Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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In the world of big pharma, this is the sound of liquid gold. An assembly line in Denmark fills glass vials with semaglutide. It's the active ingredient in the injectable drug that's become a bona fide cultural phenomenon. Where would you say Ozempic ranks in terms of successful drugs that you've covered?
One of the most successful of all time. It's up there from a financial perspective, but also just from a cultural impact perspective. It's one of the biggest deals. That's rare.
Tell me about the company behind this blockbuster drug.
Well, the company is Novo Nordisk, which is based in Denmark, and they've been around for about 100 years. Most of that time, probably a lot of Americans never heard of it.
Over the last decade, our colleague Pete Loftus has watched Novo Nordisk grow into a pharmaceutical juggernaut. Novo is one of the most valuable companies in Europe by stock market capitalization, thanks to the spectacular success of Ozempic and its sister drug, Wagovi.
Last year, their combined sales of just those two drugs were over $26 billion. Wow. For Ozempic, I think it was up about 25% from the year before. So on paper, the company is still growing tremendously.
Tremendous growth, strong sales, rising profits. Novo is a success story, which makes the latest news from the company all the more surprising.
The CEO of Novo Nordisk for the past eight years is leaving the company.
By leaving, do we mean he's resigning? Is he retiring? What's going on?
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