Pfizer announced Friday it won’t move forward with trials for a twice-daily regimen of its weight-loss pill intended to compete with Ozempic and other booming drugs in the class, sending Pfizer’s stock toward a fresh multiyear low as its shares continue to vastly underperform its pharmaceutical peers.
Pfizer executives, including CEO Albert Bourla, ring the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange ... [+]
The company said though a clinical trial revealed its GLP-1 receptor agonist oral treatment, danuglipron, induced an average of 7% to 11% weight loss for obese adults without Type 2 diabetes, it won’t move forward with further trials on a two-a-day dosage, though it will continue research on a once-daily formulation.
More than half of the trial participants stopped taking the treatment due to adverse gastrointestinal side effects, which, though often associated with weight loss drugs, occurred at extremely high rates for the danuglipron users, up to 73% of whom reported nausea, 47% vomiting and 25% diarrhea.
Shares of Pfizer slipped 6% to below $29 in morning trading, registering the steepest daily drop of any S&P 500 company and hitting their lowest price since March 2020.
Pfizer’s danuglipron “does not appear too competitive with the leading” weight loss drugs, Mizuho analyst Jared Holz said about the newly released results, according to Bloomberg.
Friday’s stock losses tied to pessimism about Pfizer’s weight loss drug potential builds on the narrative hanging over the pharmaceutical giant for all of 2023, as sales dry up in its once-lucrative Covid-19 treatment business. Discussions about Pfizer’s weight loss drug “dominated” the company’s third-quarter earnings call, according to Goldman Sachs analysts, who also noted that “almost anything relating to GLP-1s gets amplified” now. The fall from stock market grace for Pfizer, whose shares are down 44% this year as sales declined 42%, coincides with an explosion in valuation for market leaders in weight loss and diabetes drugs. Shares of Ozempic and Wegovy maker Novo Nordisk are up nearly 50% this year as its overall revenue jumped 33% and shares of Mounjaro maker Eli Lilly are up more than 60% as sales rose 17%.