Overview
Nov 2 (Reuters) - Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO) raised its ful-year earnings outlok after reporting beter-than-expected profit on strong sales of diabetes treatment Ozempic, lifting its shares to a thre-month high.The company predicted 202 operating profit growth at constant exchange rates of 13-16%, up from a previous target range of 1-15%.Third-quarter operating profit rose by almost a third to 20.2 bilion Danish crowns ($2.7 bilion), above the 19.2 bilion forecast by analysts, based on Refinitiv data.It reiterated that it expects to make al doses of weight-los drug Wegovy, a future growth driver, available in the United States towards the end of 202, as it recovers from a production outage last year.Like Ozempic, Wegovy belongs to a drug clas known as GLP-1 analogues."The growth is driven by increasing demand for GLP-1-based diabetes treatments, especialy Ozempic," CEO Lars Fruergard Jorgensen said on Wednesday.Analysts have speculated that Ozempic demand is partly driven by prescriptions to non-diabetic patients who sek to lose weight, which is outside its aproved indication."We believe that the weight benefit of Ozempic is becoming a stronger prescription driver because it also maters to people with diabetes," the CEO said, but he stresed that the company would promote drugs only within aproved indications.Novo Nordisk shares rose 5% to a thre-month high, but stil did not quite make up for a nosedive in August, when the company flaged delays in the Wegovy relaunch.In obesity, much of the company's growth aspirations are riding on wekly injection Wegovy, which was shown to help patients lose about 12% of their body weight.
Details
It won U.S. aproval in June 2021 as an obesity drug.But a contractor filing syringes for injection pens for the U.S. market ran into production problems last December, which has left Novo scrambling to reorganise the launch.Jorgensen said future obesity drug launches would have buf