Novo Nordisk to present early-stage trial data for new diabetes drug at investor meeting

Novo Nordisk, maker of obesity drug Wegovy, on Thursday said it would present early-stage trial data for its highly anticipated pipeline drug, amycretin, for treatment of Type 2 diabetes.

Novo Nordisk, maker of obesity drug Wegovy, on Thursday said it would present early-stage trial data for its highly anticipated pipeline drug, amycretin, for treatment of Type 2 diabetes. The company said in a statement that it will present the data as it hosts investors and analysts at its headquarters near Copenhagen for the first strategy update since Wegovy exploded in popularity.

Its market capitalisation stood at about $560 billion going into the meeting compared with around $235 billion two years ago when it last held an investor day. Novo shares are up around 15% since the company reported full-year

earnings on Jan. 31, and have risen more than three-fold since June 2021 when it launched Wegovy in the United States.

Nearly half of Novo's current valuation is based on the company's pipeline of new experimental drugs such as amycretin, according to calculations by Berenberg analysts last week. Analysts had hoped Novo would provide data at Thursday's investor meeting after announcing on Jan. 31 that the group had successfully completed an early stage trial of that experimental drug.

At that time, Novo's head of research and development Martin Lange told an analyst call that the company believes amycretin is "properly differentiated to whatever else is out there". Following the success of obesity and type 2 diabetes drugs from the GLP-1 class, companies including Novo are working on promising therapies in clinical trials, such as Novo's amycretin and another drug, CagriSema, which target a hunger hormone called amylin.