A view shows a Novo Nordisk sign outside its office in Bagsvaerd, on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark, on July 14, 2025.
Tom Little | Reuters
Shares of Novo Nordisk on Monday fell to a four-year low after the Danish pharmaceutical company said a highly anticipated trial for Alzheimer’s disease failed to satisfy its important goal.
The trial tested whether semaglutide — the lively ingredient in Novo’s blockbuster diabetes and weight reduction drugs Ozempic and Wegovy — helped slow progression for Alzheimer’s disease.
While treatment with semaglutide resulted in improvement of Alzheimer’s disease-related biomarkers in two separate trials, this didn’t translate right into a delay of disease progression, Novo said in a press release Monday. The goal had been to slow patients’ cognitive decline by at the very least 20%.
Novo stock was down 10% to 274 Danish kroner ($42.33) in afternoon trade, its lowest level since mid-2021. The shares later regained some ground to preliminarily close the session 5.8% lower.
Analysts had prior to the outcomes called the trial an extended shot, whereas Novo itself had referred to it as a “lottery ticket.”
“Based on the numerous unmet need in Alzheimer’s disease in addition to various indicative data points, we felt we had a responsibility to explore semaglutide’s potential, despite a low likelihood of success,” said Novo’s chief scientific officer, Martin Holst Lange.
A protracted shot
The trial results are a setback for Novo investors that had hoped that it would reignite the corporate’s battered share price. Even before the Monday readout, Novo stock had halved yr so far amid a series of guidance cuts and heighted competition, especially in the important thing U.S. market.
“While hopes weren’t high for a positive readout, potential success had perhaps kept some within the name, with this result removing a near-term upside scenario,” wrote Jefferies analysts on Monday.
Alzheimer’s disease, probably the most common type of dementia, is notoriously difficult to treat. It’s also expected to affect an increasing proportion of individuals worldwide as populations get older.
Current treatments reminiscent of Eli Lilly’s Kisunla and Biogen/Eisai’s Leqembi have been shown to decelerate the progression of the disease by as much as a 3rd, but include the chance of severe unwanted effects. Shares of Eli Lilly traded nearly 0.8% higher Monday on the closing bell in London, while Biogen stock rose 2.6%.
Novo’s decision to check Rybelsus, an oral type of semaglutide, had been largely based on real-world evidence suggesting a correlation between Alzheimer’s and taking semaglutide.
The drug works in the same option to Lilly’s rival medicines Mounjaro and Zepbound by mimicking the gut hormone GLP-1 that naturally occurs within the body, to control blood sugar levels and enhance feelings of fullness. It is not yet clear how GLP-1s might profit Alzheimer’s patients, but the idea is that it targets the neuroinflammation thought to affect them.
Top-line results will probably be presented on the Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease conference on Dec. 3, with full results on the 2026 Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases Conference in March, Novo said.
A competitive market
While shares of Novo Nordisk have plunged over the past 18 months, rival Eli Lilly only last week became the primary pharmaceutical company with a market capitalization of $1 trillion.
Whilst Ozempic hit the market 4 years before Mounjaro, Novo’s head start hasn’t prevented Lilly from quickly grabbing a much bigger market share within the U.S.
This yr, Novo has cut its guidance several times, blaming so-called compounders which sell copycat versions of semaglutide for a less expensive price.
Novo recently replaced its chairman and half its board members over a disagreement between the previous board and Novo’s controlling shareholder, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, in regards to the scope and pace of change needed. It got here just months after former CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen was booted after an eight-year reign attributable to the stock decline.
The previous board was “too slow in recognizing the importance of the market changes in the US,” latest Chair Lars Rebien Sørensen said on the time.
Latest CEO Mike Doustdar, who previously headed Novo’s ex-U.S. operations, quickly got down to refocus the corporate’s business priorities to its core obesity and diabetes businesses and to chop greater than 10% of its global workforce.
