LONDON (Reuters) -Novo Nordisk shares rose 5% on Wednesday after analysts said that U.S. price cuts for the Danish drugmaker’s semaglutide came in broadly as expected.
Late on Tuesday, the U.S. Medicare health plan announced newly negotiated prices for 15 of its costliest drugs which will go into effect in 2027. The list included a monthly price of $274 for Novo’s semaglutide, sold as Wegovy for weight loss and Ozempic for diabetes.
Analysts at J.P. Morgan said that the impact from these prices has already been captured in the forecasts provided by Novo.
When the company reported third-quarter results in early November, Novo had quantified a low-single-digit impact to global sales from the pricing, if the cuts were to be implemented this year.
Analysts estimated at that time that this would imply roughly a 6 billion Danish crowns or about $900 million sales hit, which they and investors broadly characterised as “better than feared”.
Novo Nordisk shares rose 1.4% at the open on Wednesday and extended gains to trade 4.8% higher at 1230 GMT.
They had closed down 6% earlier in the week after Novo said Alzheimer’s trials of an older oral version of its semaglutide drug failed to help slow the progression of the brain-wasting disease.
(Reporting by Bhanvi Satija and Maggie Fick in London, Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen. Editing by Jane Merriman)
