Novo Nordisk faces slower growth as new CEO pushes for speed

Novo Nordisk, the Danish drugmaker whose diabetes and obesity medicines turned it into a global standout, faces a sharply altered landscape as its stock slumps, its long-running growth narrative stalls, and it ushers in a new chief executive to accelerate pace. The company has acknowledged that growth will slow in the near term, even as it tries to defend its lead in a rapidly evolving market dominated by GLP-1 drugs and increasingly affordable, competing approaches.

The turnaround comes after a period in which Ozempic, the semaglutide-based diabetes treatment, became a cultural and commercial phenomenon. The drug helped propel Novo Nordisk to the forefront of the European market, even as Wegovy, its counterpart for weight management, captured headlines and investor attention. In the first half of the year, sales tied to Ozempic topped a sizable share of the company’s revenue, signaling a powerful but potentially fragile engine if competition intensifies or access becomes constrained. Yet the market’s reaction has been swift and punitive: the company’s shares have traded lower as concerns about the size of the weight-loss market and the durability of current growth have grown.