Rare are the laboratories to celebrate their centenary with such radiant health. And even fewer in such a tense global economic context. For the past two years, Novo Nordisk's dizzying rise has exceeded all expectations. This includes those of the economy of Denmark, its homeland, whose growth in 2023 is said to be largely due to the pharmaceutical manufacturer's good performance, according to analysts at Danske Bank, the country's largest bank.

After dethroning luxury giant LVMH at the end of September 2023, becoming the top-ranking European company by market capitalization, the Danish company has set a new record. On Thursday, March 7, its valuation jumped by 8% to $566 billion (around €517 billion), overtaking the American company Tesla, whose boss, Elon Musk – ironically enough – unwittingly helped bring the laboratory's latest blockbuster drug to the attention of the general public by extolling its merits on the social media platform X in 2022.

It's precisely this worldwide craze for Wegovy, a prescription-only weight-loss treatment for overweight and obese patients, that explains Novo Nordisk's renewed vitality in recent years. Until 2021, when its injectable drug was approved for marketing by the US Food and Drug Administration, the pharmaceutical company attracted little attention, despite its status as the world's leading manufacturer of anti-diabetic drugs.

Admittedly, these drugs provided comfortable revenues and steady annual growth, but the laboratory struggled to enthuse investors and flourish outside this field. But the 2017 launch of a new treatment to combat type 2 diabetes, Ozempic, a GLP-1 analog (it "mimics" the action of this digestive hormone), would be a game-changer.

This was because, in addition to its properties for regulating blood sugar, this product also proved to be particularly promising for weight loss, to everyone's surprise. It was enough to give the Danish giant ideas, and the company wasted no time in adapting it for the treatment of obesity under the name of Wegovy. It proved to be a winning bet.

In 2023, the laboratory generated 31.1 billion euros in sales (a 36% increase year-on-year at constant exchange rates), of which 5.6 billion euros came from obesity drugs (Wegovy, but also, to a lesser extent, Saxenda, which is older and less effective). This is a remarkable performance, considering that the Danish company is still in the early stages of commercializing its new flagship product, which is currently available only in a handful of countries (United States, Denmark, Norway, Germany, United Kingdom, Iceland, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates).

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