Novo Nordisk Keeps Buying Back Stock While a Courtroom Loss and a Fresh FDA Nod Sit on the Sidelines
Published on 10/28/2026 at 08:31 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Novo Nordisk has kept its share buyback running without interruption, reporting on Monday that purchases under the programme had reached a cumulative transaction volume of DKK 11,187,348,102 through Friday. The figure lands well short of the DKK 15 billion ceiling set for the scheme, leaving room for further repurchases.
Since the programme began on 4 February, the Danish drugmaker has bought back 40,274,179 B shares. Monday's disclosure covers executed trades up to Friday — a statement of where the programme stands, not a declaration of intent. The remaining headroom should not be read as a signal of an expanded scheme or as a comment on future business performance; what it documents is the continued execution of an existing plan.
A Legal Setback That Settles Nothing
Running alongside the buyback is a court defeat in Novo's advertising dispute with Eli Lilly. US District Judge Zahid Quraishi declined the company's request for a preliminary injunction, according to Reuters, allowing Lilly to keep running the contested advertising for Zepbound and Mounjaro while litigation proceeds.
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That ruling addresses interim relief only. It does not decide whether the advertisements are false or misleading, so the substantive fight remains open. What Novo has lost, for now, is the short-term intervention it sought — not the case itself. The buyback does nothing to resolve that uncertainty.
An Approval and a Data Readout, Weighted Differently
On the product side, the FDA on Friday cleared Awiqli to improve blood-sugar control in children aged ten and older with type 2 diabetes, used alongside diet and exercise. Novo describes it as the first once-weekly long-acting basal insulin approved for this patient group. That is a regulatory decision in hand.
CagriSema is a different matter: still an investigational drug, so positive study findings carry a different weight than an approval already granted. The readouts published roughly a week ago stem from a post-hoc analysis of REDEFINE 1, presented at the annual meeting of the Menopause Society. Among 2,309 women, average weight loss came to 25.0% after 68 weeks on the assumption that all participants had stayed on treatment; the placebo arm averaged 3.0%. Novo explicitly labelled the additional analyses exploratory and hypothesis-generating, meaning they should not be read as the final results of a dedicated trial.
The Date That Matters
The next scheduled financial checkpoint is 4 November, when Novo reports results for the first nine months of 2026. Until then, the completed buybacks represent a concrete capital measure — not an all-clear on competition or on the business outlook. Approvals and encouraging study data give the portfolio arguments, but they are not the same as revenue or profit already booked. Developments arriving after the reporting period may matter for what comes next; they will not retroactively explain the nine-month figures.
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