Why Novo Nordisk (NVO) Is Plummeting Today

Novo Nordisk (NVO) stock is tumbling 21% today after individuals who received the company’s experimental weight-loss drug shed many fewer pounds than expected.

Specifically, the weight of patients who received Novo’s anti-obesity drug, CagriSema, declined by an average of 20.4% in 68 weeks, versus the 25% average weight loss that Novo had expected the treatment to produce.

A closeup shot of a laboratory technician handling a medical device used for fertility treatments.

The company, however, stated that if all the patients who were tested had complied 100% with the treatment requirements, their mean weight loss would have been 22.7% and 40% of the trial participants would have shed at least 25% of their weight. Reporting that only 57% of patients in the trial received the highest dose of CagriSema, Novo stated that it was “encouraged” by the data and added that it intends to launch an additional trial of the drug by June 2025.  Roughly 3,400 individuals were involved in the trial.

Taken weekly as an injection, CagriSema consists of semaglutide and cagrilintide. Semaglutide, which is similar to the hunger-suppressing hormone called GLP-1, is also the main ingredient of Novo’s anti-obesity drug, Wegovy. The latter treatment is already being widely used to combat obesity in the U.S. Cagrilintide acts similarly to a pancreas-based hormone called amylin.

The average weight loss of the patients who took CagriSema was similar to the mean weight declines of individuals who have taken Eli Lilly’s (LLY) Zepbound treatment. Novo Nordisk had hoped that CagriSema would surpass Zeopbound’s performance.

LLY stock is advancing 7.5% in early trading.

While we acknowledge the potential of NVO, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than NVO but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.