An Ozempic successor falls short, Eli Lilly's GLP-1 pill, and senators grill RFK: Pharma news roundup

Several weight loss drug stocks are sliding today as pharmaceutical companies battle for dominance in the booming GLP-1 market — which is projected to hit $105 billion by 2030, according to Morgan Stanley (MS) analysts. Shares of Zealand Pharma and Roche (RHHBY) fell 11% and 2%, respectively, on Thursday morning — just a day after popping on news of their collaboration to develop new weight-loss treatments. Hims & Hers (HIMS), the telehealth company catering to millennials, saw its stock drop nearly 5% Thursday morning. The company jumped into the GLP-1 market last May, offering compounded semaglutide — an off-brand version of Ozempic.

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Three U.S. senators are urging Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to disclose details about several private dinners he attended with Donald Trump and healthcare executives at Mar-a-Lago. “It is unclear why you attended private dinners with Big Pharma executives at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club following your promises to ‘clean up corruption’ and ‘stop the revolving door between industry and government,’” Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, and Bernie Sanders wrote in a letter to Kennedy dated March 10.

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Viking Therapeutics (VKTX), the developer of a promising experimental weight-loss drug, has announced a multi-year partnership with CordenPharma, a leading contract manufacturing firm. The deal covers the supply of both the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and the finished products for Viking’s weight-loss drug, VK2735, which is being developed for the treatment of obesity. Under the agreement, Viking will make $150 million in prepayments between 2025 and 2028, with those payments credited against future orders.

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Healthcare is big business in America — really big. The 10 largest healthcare companies generated a combined $2.4 trillion in revenue over the past year. These companies touch all aspects of our healthcare system, from how we get insurance to where we pick up prescription drugs. This ranking includes major insurers, pharmacy chains, and hospital operators. Some of them are household names like CVS (CVS) and Walgreens (WBA) others are less known.

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Eli Lilly (LLY) believes its experimental weight-loss pill could make GLP-1 treatments more accessible worldwide. “We feel that a product like an oral, orforglipron, could serve a significant amount of patients globally,” Eli Lilly CFO Lucas Montarce said Monday at the Leerink (SIVB) 2025 Global Healthcare Conference. Montarce said their are many markets where patients prefer an oral option over an injection — like the current GLP-1s on the market. Pills are also cheaper and more simple to produce and distribute than injections, making them easier to scale globally.

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Eli Lilly (LLY) CEO David Ricks got a 10% raise in 2024, as a surge in demand for weigh-loss drugs has propelled the pharma giant into the most valuable pharmaceutical company in the world. Ricks’ total compensation for 2024 reached $29.2 million, according to the company’s latest proxy statement, up from $26.6 million in 2023. When he became CEO in 2017, Ricks’ annual compensation started at $15.8 million.

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Novo Nordisk (NVO) released clinical trial results for its potential Ozempic successor on Monday, disappointing Wall Street for the second time. The pharmaceutical giant, known for its blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic, announced on Monday that patients taking its experimental diabetes and weight-loss drug, CagriSema, lost an average of 15.7% of their body weight after 68 weeks in a phase 3 clinical trial. This is the second trial of the drug that failed to meet trial the company and analysts’ expectations of a 25% average weight loss.

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