Bad news for Novo Nordisk (NYSE: NVO) Friday was good news for Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) and Viking Therapeutics (NASDAQ: VKTX), its two main rivals in the field of weight loss drugs. This morning, Novo reported headline results from its phase 3 trial of a new weight loss drug, CagriSema, and while objectively not bad, the results were less great than Novo was shooting for.
As of 11:05 a.m. ET, Novo Nordisk stock is down a disheartening 20.8%, while both Lilly and Viking stocks are up 4.4% apiece.
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Originally designed to treat patients with diabetes, GLP-1 drugs like Novo’s Ozempic and Lilly’s Zepbound have taken on a new role in society as the go-to treatment for obesity, and for easy weight loss, generally. Novo was hoping to expand its lead in this market with its new offering, CagriSema, which fortifies the semaglutide ingredient in Ozempic with an amylin-focused drug that also aims to decrease food cravings.
The goal: to beat Ozempic’s record for 16.1% weight loss among patients taking the drug over 68 weeks, by hitting a new target of 25% weight loss over the same period.
I won’t keep you in suspense. Novo missed that target. The company’s Redefine 1 phase 3 trial of CagriSema, containing both cagrilintide and semaglutide “achieved its primary endpoint by demonstrating a statistically significant and superior weight loss” relative to a placebo. However, average weight loss over the course of the 68-week trial was only 22.7% — not the targeted 25%.
So that’s the bad news. The good news is that CagriSema does appear to have resulted in greater weight loss than Novo’s original recipe Ozempic and better weight loss than Lilly’s Zepbound. (Viking’s own weight loss drug, VK2735, is still in trials.)
Investors in Novo Nordisk seem very unhappy with these results while investors in Lilly and Viking seem much happier, but should they be?
While you’d expect Novo to try to put a happy face on these results, management honestly doesn’t seem too upset.
“We are encouraged by the weight loss profile of CagriSema demonstrating superiority over both semaglutide and cagrilintide in monotherapy in the REDEFINE 1 trial,” said Novo’s Executive Vice President for Development Martin Lange, noting that the company plans to “further explore the additional weight loss potential of CagriSema.” And when you consider that 40.4% of the patients participating in the REDEFINE 1 study actually did achieve 25% or greater weight loss after 68 weeks (it’s only the average that fell short of the mark), it would seem at least possible that further tweaking of the drug combination might eventually yield the results Novo is looking for.
Image source: Getty Images.
Meanwhile, today’s massive sell-off in Novo Nordisk stock may be giving investors an unexpected second bite at the GLP-1 apple — a chance to buy Novo stock at a price-to-earnings ratio of barely 29. On a stock expected to grow earnings at better than 21% annually over the next five years, and paying a modest 1.3% dividend yield to boot, that’s not too much more than what I’d call a fair valuation for Novo Nordisk shares.
When you consider further that Lilly shares are selling for closer to 82 times earnings (i.e., twice as expensive), while Viking Therapeutics stock has no earnings at all, and therefore no P/E ratio on which to value it, this all kind of makes Novo Nordisk look like the value investor’s choice for investing in weight loss drugs.
Crazy as it may sound to say it, today just might be good day to buy Novo Nordisk stock.
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Rich Smith has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Novo Nordisk and Viking Therapeutics. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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