By Dominic Chopping


Novo Nordisk raised its full-year sales guidance as demand for its blockbuster Wegovy obesity treatment continued to surge in the second quarter.

The Danish pharmaceutical giant said Wednesday that group sales this year are now expected to rise between 22% and 28% on soaring popularity of both Wegovy and its diabetes drug Ozempic. It had previously expected sales this year to grow between 19% and 27%.

The company's operating profit guidance range was lowered slightly as a recently announced 5.7 billion Danish kroner ($835 million) impairment from an unsuccessful drug trial drags on profitability.

The company is racing to keep up with demand and said Wednesday that demand continued to exceed supply and to safeguard supply for existing patients, supply of starter doses remains capped.

It has committed to invest $6.8 billion in new manufacturing capacity this year in addition to the $11 billion it has already agreed to pay for three manufacturing sites previously owned by Somerset, N.J.-based Catalent. It will take time to bring new capacity on line though and the company still expects continued periodic supply constraints and related drug-shortage notifications for both Wegovy and Ozempic across a number of products and geographies.

The company said sales of Ozempic rose 31% on year to DKK28.88 billion, while sales of obesity treatment Wegovy surged 55% to DKK11.66 billion. Sales of its total portfolio of diabetes and obesity medications grew 28% to DKK64.08 billion.

Both Wegovy and Ozempic are based on the same active ingredient, semaglutide. Novo Nordisk is racing to develop the next generation of treatments that combine it with other ingredients to enhance benefits and improve other areas of health, to try and keep ahead as competitors race to grab a slice of the market, currently dominated by the company and Eli Lilly.

Studies of semaglutide-based drugs have shown a reduction in risk of stroke and heart attacks, a slowing of kidney failure progression, and even improvement in pain and physical function in patients with osteoarthritis.

European Union drug regulators last month announced their support for a label expansion of Wegovy to reflect its potential to reduce risk of major cardiovascular events including heart attacks in obese or overweight adults. That followed similar label-expansion approvals from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.K.'s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

The approvals are a timely boost for Novo Nordisk, which is facing increasing competition from the likes of Roche and Viking Therapeutics that have stoked investor excitement over their promising developmental weight-loss drugs.

Novo Nordisk's net profit in the second quarter rose 3.2% to DKK20.05 billion, shy of the DKK21.38 billion forecast by analysts in a FactSet poll.

Sales rose 25% to DKK68.06 billion, again just shy of the DKK68.66 billion FactSet estimate.

For 2024, the company now expects operating growth of 20% to 28% at constant exchange rates, from previous guidance of 22%-30%. Sales and operating profit growth reported in Danish kroner are expected to be around one percentage point lower than constant currency growth, from in line previously.

It declared an interim dividend of DKK3.50.


Write to Dominic Chopping at dominic.chopping@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

08-07-24 0258ET