Novo Nordisk ‘surprised’ by high European demand for weight-loss drugs

Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk has been “surprised” by the readiness of European consumers to pay for weight-loss drugs from their own pockets, as the region’s largest company invests in new supply to meet runaway demand.

The company’s weight-loss drug Wegovy and diabetes treatment Ozempic powered it to record sales in 2023 and a current market capitalisation of $508bn.

Wegovy’s effectiveness — participants lost an average 15 per cent of their body weight in a trial lasting more than a year — and a string of celebrity endorsements have made it very popular.

Chief executive Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen said the company had found “a very high willingness” among Europeans to pay for weight-loss drugs personally, even where they were not used to doing so.

“The uptake we see has surprised us initially. We wondered, was that only a US phenomenon? We tested it out in Denmark and Norway, we saw more or less the same,” he told the Financial Times. “It’s perhaps the first time that you see a large population willing to pay out of pocket for medicine.”

Wegovy and Saxenda, another older weight-loss drug, made $4.7bn in sales in the US last year, an increase of 193 per cent from 2022. But sales also doubled in Europe and the Middle East to almost $1bn in 2023 after Wegovy was made available in the UK, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Iceland and the United Arab Emirates.

In Europe — where Wegovy is not yet generally available in public health systems — 80 per cent of sales are paid for personally by consumers, with the remainder reimbursed by health insurance or states. In the US, more than 90 per cent of sales are completely or partially covered by health insurance, the company said.

The willingness to pay upfront is because people “have tried all kinds of interventions” to lose weight, Jørgensen said. “When there’s finally something that works and brings improved health and quality of life for the individual, there’s very high willingness to pay.”

In Jørgensen’s native Denmark, he said that about 1.5 per cent of the adult population, just under 100,000 Danes, are paying for the drug. In the UK, Wegovy is available in limited supply on the NHS but patients using private healthcare can pay up to £300 for a month’s supply. Costs are similar in Denmark and Germany.

High demand has led to supply problems, with the company committing $6.5bn in capital spending this year to increase production. Jørgensen said that private patients exhausting supplies were “a concern”. He added that: “Vulnerable patients . . . have an opportunity of getting care via the healthcare system. Obviously, that means the healthcare system has to acknowledge obesity as a disease. That’s not yet the case in all countries.”

To help convince healthcare providers and to increase take-up, Novo Nordisk is in talks with healthcare systems about contracts that allow them to spread the costs of Wegovy over many years.

But healthcare providers must also decide whether weight-loss drugs represent value for money. The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has recommended Wegovy for people with a BMI of at least 35, or 30-35 if they have other health conditions. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines a BMI of 30 and over as obese.

A Novo Nordisk trial published in November studied more than 17,600 people aged above 45 with obesity who had cardiovascular disease, but not diabetes, comparing Wegovy with a placebo. About 458 patients taking the placebo died during the trial, compared with 375 people taking Wegovy, an 18 per cent reduction in the risk of death.

However, modelling by healthcare data company Airfinity based on the trial data estimated that to prevent one heart attack, stroke or cardiovascular-related death, 67 people would need to take Wegovy for 3.3 years on average, at a cost of $1.3mn.

Jørgensen said: “I think most healthcare systems would acknowledge that if you cater for BMI with a certain level of comorbidities, there is a very strong case.”