By Maggie Fick and Stine Jacobsen
LONDON/COPENHAGEN (Reuters) -Obesity drug maker Novo Nordisk (NVO) forecast slower growth this year after Wegovy sales more than doubled in the fourth quarter, with analysts and investors describing the results as "good enough" to ease nerves about stiff competition from rival Eli Lilly (LLY).
Novo's stock rose 3% before the bell on Wednesday.
The Danish company said it expects sales growth in local currencies between 16% and 24% in 2025, less than the 26% growth seen in 2024 but in line with analysts expectations around 20%.
Its shares rose 5.3% at 1027 GMT on Copenhagen's stock exchange after fourth-quarter earnings beat forecasts on Wednesday.
Barclays analysts said in a note they were breathing a sigh of relief, describing the results and guidance as "good enough".
Shares in Novo have risen roughly 60% since it first launched Wegovy in the United States in June 2021, compared with a 20% rise in the pan-European STOXX 600 index. But since their peak in June last year, shares have fallen some 40%.
Investors were worried ahead of the results about potentially slowing demand for obesity drugs in the United States. U.S. rival Eli Lilly last month forecast fourth-quarter sales of weight-loss drug Zepbound below Wall Street estimates, leading the stock to fall 8% though the shares have since recovered.
"We see an intact strong demand for obesity treatments in the U.S. and elsewhere," Novo's CEO Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen told journalists on a call.
Lilly shares were up nearly 2% in pre-market U.S. trade on Wednesday, with the company scheduled to report its earnings on Thursday.
Lukas Leu, fund manager at healthcare-focused Bellevue Asset Management in Switzerland, which holds Novo shares, told Reuters the mid-point of Novo's 2025 sales growth outlook was reassuring, though the range was very wide.
Novo Nordisk was the first-mover in an obesity drug market that some analysts forecast could be worth about $150 billion by the early 2030s, but is now facing fierce competition from Lilly.
Novo lost out to Lilly in the fourth quarter in terms of total weekly prescriptions written for Wegovy compared to Lilly's Zepbound in the United States, the biggest market.
Novo is looking for new drug candidates to secure future growth. Its patent for the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic expires by 2032 in the United States.
Novo unveiled disappointing results for one of these drug candidates, CagriSema, in a late-stage trial in December, sending its shares down as much as 27% on the day in one of the biggest one-day wipeouts for a European company.
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Jorgensen said on Wednesday that the company was still confident in the drug candidate's biology and encouraged by what it has seen in the data.
Novo's fourth-quarter operating profit jumped 37% to 36.7 billion Danish crowns ($5.12 billion), better than the 33.6 billion forecast by analysts in a company poll.
It predicted operating profit for 2025 would climb between 19% and 27%, compared to growth of 26% last year.
Novo shareholder, Markus Manns, portfolio manager at mutual funds firm Union Investment, said he thought the fourth-quarter results were "good enough".
Sales of Wegovy more than doubled in the fourth quarter to 19.9 billion crowns from 9.6 billion a year ago, in line with expectations and more than the 17.3 billion crowns achieved in the third quarter.
($1 = 7.1674 Danish crowns)
(Reporting by Maggie Fick in London and Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen; Editing by Josephine Mason, Edwina Gibbs and Elaine Hardcastle)
