The Danish company behind weight-loss drug Wegovy is raising its profit forecast to £15.3 billion

Strong sales of diabetes and weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy have prompted Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk to raise its 2024 profit forecast to £15.3 billion, with supply shortages starting to ease.

Europe’s most valuable company, whose stock market value is greater than the size of the Danish economy, is struggling to keep up with runaway demand for the two weight-loss pills.

They are endorsed by celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Elon Musk, although others such as American comedian Amy Schumer have said they had to stop taking Ozempic due to its side effects.

Novo Nordisk achieved sales of 65 billion Danish kroner (£7.5 billion) in the first three months of the year, up 24% at constant exchange rates. This boosted pre-tax profits by 29% to almost 32 billion kroner.

The drugmaker now expects sales to grow between 19% and 27% this year, up from its previous estimate of between 18% and 26%. Corporate profits are now expected to rise between 22% and 30%, compared to a previous estimate of 21% to 29%. Last year it posted an operating profit of 102.6 billion crowns.

Novo CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen said that in the US, 27,000 people started using Wegovy injections for obesity every week, up from 5,000 per week in December.

The company is spending billions to expand its production capacity. The success of the drugs has resulted in “periodic supply constraints” and shortages. However, in January, Novo Nordisk said it had doubled its supply of “starting doses” for new Wegovy patients in the US after restrictions forced it to limit the release of the shots last May.

Wegovy and Ozempic are part of a new class of weight loss and diabetes drugs known as GLP-1, which are injected once a week and suppress people’s appetite. The GLP-1 agonist mimics the action of a hormone that is naturally released by the stomach when people eat food. They have helped some people lose significant amounts of weight, but can cause unpleasant side effects such as nausea.

Novo Nordisk said higher sales volumes and competition with rival drugs had pushed down Wegovy’s price, leading to lower revenues than analysts had expected. However, this was offset by the sales of Ozempic.

Pressure is increasing on the company to further reduce prices. Bernie Sanders, Chairman of the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, launched an investigation last week into “scandalously high prices” from Ozempic and Wegovy. He noted that Novo Nordisk charges $969 (£775) per month for Ozempic in the US, but only $155 in Canada and $59 in Germany. For Wegovy, the monthly cost is $1,349 in the US, $140 in Germany and just $92 in the UK.

Novo Nordisk’s main competitor, the US drugmaker Eli Lilly has raised its annual revenue forecast by $2 billion this week thanks to the success of the weight loss injection Zepbound and the diabetes drug Mounjaro, which are also in short supply due to strong demand. The Indianapolis-based company’s market value has risen to nearly $740 billion, far ahead of Tesla and Walmart.

Wegovy is available on the NHS and can also be purchased privately from pharmacies. The list price for a month’s supply in Britain ranges from £73.25 to £175.80 depending on the dose.

Russ Mould, investment director at stockbroker AJ Bell, said: “Competition in the market is growing, but demand is so high that Novo Nordisk is still racing to keep up with supplies, without worrying about what a rival like Eli Lilly do.

“However, the more products that come to market and the wider the availability of each treatment, the more likely prices are to fall. This is already happening in the US. It means Novo Nordisk faces the likelihood that weight-loss treatments will have lower margins over time. Therefore, it needs to ramp up volumes as quickly as possible as the dial shifts from profit quality to profit quantity.”