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The millennial-skewed telehealth platform Hims & Hers announced Monday that it has added Kåre Schultz, a longtime Novo Nordisk executive, to its board of directors.
Schultz spent over 25 years at the Danish pharma giant known for its diabetes and obesity medications, serving in different roles including president and chief operating officer. He is currently the CEO of Teva Pharmaceutical.
“Hims & Hers is on a trajectory to upend the healthcare industry,” said Schultz in a press release. “In my long career in the pharmaceutical industry, this is the first company I have seen that is leveraging today’s modern tools to truly break down barriers and change the status quo of how people access the health solutions they need to live their fullest lives. I’m thrilled to be a part of this journey.”
Hims & Hers stock popped 3% during Monday morning trading. The company’s share are up 125% since the beginning of the year.
The news comes just months after Hims & Hers started offering customers a compounded version of semaglutide, the active ingredient in popular diabetes and weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, both of which are produced by Novo Nordisk.
Hims & Hers is selling a month’s supply of the weight loss medication at $199 — hundreds of dollars cheaper than Ozempic’s nearly $1,000 list price and Wegovy’s $1,349 price tag.
The limited supply of these highly coveted and expensive brand name drugs has spurred several telehealth platforms to take advantage of a section of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that allows for the sale of compounded versions of medications that are in shortage.
Compounding is the process of customizing an approved drug by a state-licensed pharmacist or physician to meet the specific needs of an individual patient.
Typically, the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act prohibits compounding drugs that are just copies of commercially available medications. However, drugs that are in shortage are not considered by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be commercially available.
Schultz told Bloomberg on Monday that the company has a “long future” in selling compounded semaglutide.
When asked if pharmacies will still be able to make compounded semaglutide after the shortages end, Schulz said he wasn’t worried because there would still be cases where patients need individualized prescriptions.