Showdown with Eli Lilly in the obesity market: manufacturing limits and pressure on net drug prices

Back in June 2024, the market paid more for the Danish company that makes the weight-loss injection pen than for any other company in Europe. Novo Nordisk stock $NVO climbed to 1,033 Danish kroner in intraday trading in Copenhagen, market value exceeded 4.6 trillion kroner, and analysts wrote about a company that had conquered an entire therapeutic class before competitors even made it to phase 3 clinical trials.

Today, that same stock costs 292.40 kroner. That's a drop of almost 72% in two years and two months. Over the same period, Eli Lilly $LLY became the world's most valuable pharmaceutical company and its tirzepatide overtook Keytruda as the best-selling drug on the planet. Two companies, one market, two completely different stories.

The numbers Novo released on August 4 actually looked good. Adjusted revenue rose 7% in constant currencies, adjusted operating profit rose 11%, the company raised its full-year guidance and beat consensus revenue estimates by more than 10%. The stock reacted by falling 6%.

That's not market irrationality. It's a market looking at numbers other than the headline ones—at the gross margin, which fell by five percentage points, at US revenue, which declined year over year, at the third failed study in eight months, and at the single accounting item that today makes every screener show Novo's P/E at around eleven.

The company that invented the fastest-growing drug category in modern history now holds a minority share of it in America. So the question for 2026 isn't whether Novo lost the first round. It's what exactly you're buying today for under fourteen times annual earnings: a company that's getting back in the game, or a company whose best years were paid for in advance?