Novo Nordisk's Wegovy Pill Gets a Bigger Revenue Nod, but Citi Still Trims Its Target
Published on 10/09/2026 at 13:31 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Citi has nudged its price target on Novo Nordisk lower, cutting the figure to 296 Danish kroner from 310 while keeping a "Neutral" rating on the Danish drugmaker. The revision captures a company pulling in two directions at once: a promising oral obesity treatment on one side, and a core injectable business squeezed by pricing and competition on the other.
The headline upgrade concerns the Wegovy pill. Citi now expects the oral version to reach annual peak sales of USD 13 billion, up from a previous estimate of USD 10 billion. Driving that optimism is a rollout plan spanning at least 20 countries outside the United States by the end of 2027. Britain alone has already seen one million packs of the oral formulation distributed since July.
Yet the profit picture darkens further out. Novo Nordisk is guiding toward broadly flat margins through 2030, and research and development spending is climbing. As a result, Citi trimmed its adjusted operating profit forecasts for 2028 to 2030 by 2% to 4%. Annual earnings-per-share growth for 2027 through 2030 is now pegged at 9%, down from 12%, and the 2027 valuation multiple was lowered to 14 from 15.
Injections Under Siege
The established GLP-1 injection franchise is where the pressure bites hardest. Chief executive Mike Doustdar noted a day earlier that halving prices would require doubling volumes just to hold revenue steady — and that kind of volume growth takes time. In the US, prescriptions for the diabetes drug Ozempic have slipped 15%. Meanwhile, American rival Eli Lilly is gaining share, with UBS analyst Michael Yee currently placing Lilly ahead on direct growth comparisons.
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Citi looks for group revenue of DKK 73.5 billion in the third quarter, which lands on November 4 — a 4% decline in currency-adjusted terms. Sales of the Wegovy pill are projected at DKK 5.3 billion, roughly 16% above market consensus.
Regulatory Friction at Home
On top of the commercial headwinds, Novo Nordisk is contending with mounting scrutiny in Denmark. The national medicines authority has flagged four breaches of the law during 2026, three of which involved unlawful direct-to-consumer advertising for weight-loss treatments on LinkedIn. Danish rules bar public promotion of prescription medicines outright.
Separately, on September 28 the Danish pharmaceutical industry's ethics committee fined the company DKK 45,000 plus VAT over a joint patient-support program for Wegovy run with the service provider Falck, and ordered the arrangement halted in its existing form. Novo Nordisk subsequently ended the Falck collaboration, according to media reports, while making clear it disagreed with the ethics council's ruling.
Analysts Split as the Stock Sags
Brokerages have been recalibrating expectations across the board. Danske Bank lowered its target to DKK 345 from DKK 365 on Wednesday but stuck with a "Buy" rating. Deutsche Bank, by contrast, maintained a "Sell" and cut its target to DKK 225 from DKK 245, citing subdued data from the EASD diabetes conference.
The shares closed Tuesday at EUR 33.97 and were changing hands at EUR 33.98 in Frankfurt trading, leaving them down 23% since the start of the year. While Novo Nordisk's global GLP-1 operations continue to expand, the reprimands from Copenhagen regulators underscore how tightly supervisors are policing the marketing of these in-demand medicines.
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