Novo Nordisk is having a moment. Last week it became the most valuable listed company in Europe, overtaking luxury goods giant LVMH.
It has been an incredible year for the 100 year old diabetes drug maker. It’s blockbuster weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy have taken the world by storm. For a simple, yet novel reason in the world of weight-loss drugs: they actually work.
Novo Nordisk has become so successful that its market value ($424bn USD) is now larger than its home country Denmark’s GDP ($398bn USD).
This article from the Sydney Morning Herald looks at how the incredible success of Novo Nordisk is affecting the broader Danish economy.
Denmark may be a small country, home to just 6 million people, but it is no stranger to successful multinational companies. Shipping giant Maersk and toy company Lego top that list. Yet, Novo Nordisk is on another level. In the first quarter of this year, Denmark’s economy grew 1.9%. Denmark’s national statistics agency suggest that 1.7 percentage points of that was contributed by the pharmaceutical industry (read: Novo Nordisk).
There is no signs that this success is slowing down. The United States has 100 million obese adults, and the World Health Organisation suggests more than 1 billion people are obese globally, giving Novo Nordisk a massive addressable market. And companies that were riding the megatrend of servicing the growing numbers of obese people are seeing their share prices fall. For example, ResMed an Australian company helping treat sleep apnea is down 28% in the past six months.
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