Prime Highlights
- Novo and Lilly Pills Draw Millions of First-Time Users, Expanding the Obesity Drug Market
- Analysts more than doubled their oral pill market share forecast, from 15–20% to 35–40%, on faster-than-expected uptake.
Key Facts
- Novo Nordisk is the Danish pharma giant behind Wegovy, the drug that sparked the global GLP-1 obesity boom in 2021.
- Both the Wegovy pill and Eli Lilly’s Foundayo are priced at $149/month, less than half the cost of their injectable counterparts.
Background
Weight-loss pills from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly are drawing strong early demand, with analysts saying the drugs are pulling in new patients rather than pulling them away from injections, a sign the obesity drug market may be much larger than previously thought.
Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill recorded first-quarter sales that came in roughly twice analyst expectations. Eli Lilly’s competing pill, Foundayo, launched a few months later in the first week of April and has also shown early traction, with more than 8,000 doctors already prescribing it. Lilly raised its annual profit forecast on the back of growing volumes of weight-loss drugs.
Both pills carry a self-pay price of $149 per month, less than half the cost of their injectable counterparts. Patients with commercial insurance may pay as little as $25 per month.
Early data from the first three weeks show Wegovy pill prescriptions at about 26,000 per week, compared to roughly 5,600 for Foundayo. Analysts note the gap partly reflects Wegovy’s earlier start.
Novo’s CEO said close to 80% of Wegovy pill users had never previously taken a GLP-1 drug. Lilly noted that about one-third of Foundayo prescribers had not previously written scripts for oral GLP-1 treatments, another signal of market expansion.
Analysts at one bank revised their oral pill market share forecast upward to 35–40%, from an earlier estimate of 15–20%, citing faster-than-expected adoption.
Still, risks remain. Novo’s adjusted U.S. sales fell 11% in the first quarter due to price pressure, and biosimilar competition in injectables looms.
Investors in both companies say this is not a zero-sum race. With over 100 million Americans living with obesity and only a fraction currently on treatment, the market has room for both players to grow.
