Shares of Danish biotech Zealand Pharma recently plunged after detailed data on its weight loss drug survodutide showed far higher patient dropout rates than leading treatments, prompting analysts to slash peak sales forecasts and rethink the company’s obesity strategy.

But while the market’s enthusiasm for the drug has meaningfully cooled, investors are shifting focus to Zealand’s amylin-based medicine, petrelintide, as the next potential driver of the stock, setting it up for an important year ahead.

The Copenhagen-listed stock tumbled 23% earlier this month after survodutide, which Zealand has licensed to Boeringer Ingelheim, showed side effects grave enough for 19% of patients to end the treatment. It did, however, show a 16.6% weight loss on average, meeting its primary target.

It came after shares dropped 36% in March following lower-than-expected efficacy of just under 11% for its lead asset, petrelintide, in a mid-stage trial, which CEO Adam Steensberg said hadn’t been optimized for weight loss. These mark the stock’s two worst days on record since the company went public in 2010. 

Even so, many are sticking with the stock. 

UBS analysts this week slashed their price target on the stock to 540 Danish kroner from 730 kroner as they cut survodutide peak sales by nearly 80%.

“The tolerability data looks highly disappointing and will likely significantly limit its usage,” they wrote in a research note. 

“While survodutide data is disappointing to us, we are still positive on petrelintide, the most important asset,” they added, maintaining a Buy recommendation on the stock. 

The stock has recovered some of its losses, but remains down 38% year-to-date.

Zealand operates in that “sweet spot” between double-digit weight loss and a placebo-like tolerability with petrelintide, CEO Steensberg told CNBC’s Angelica Peebles at the ADA in New Orleans earlier this month. It also fits well with medical professionals’ call for a good tolerability profile, particularly for weight maintenance after GLP-1 use.

“I truly believe that when these amylin [drugs] launch, we can have that, what I’ve described as an iPhone moment, because patients are so aware of the experience they have on the GLP-1s, and once you launch a new modality that gives you a better experience, people will queue up to get access to that new weight loss…

Drugmakers are only months into introducing GLP-1 pills and navigating huge changes in how patients pay for weight-loss drugs.

Even so, they’re already outlining their visions for the future of obesity drugs.

At the American Diabetes Association’s Scientific Sessions in New Orleans last week, drugmakers pitched doctors and investors on the idea of new shots and pills, drugs that can be taken less frequently, and new treatments beyond GLP-1s that could come with fewer side effects. The attendees debated where all these new treatments might fit in, especially with Eli Lilly currently dominating the market for shots and impressing attendees with data from its experimental triple-acting drug retatrutide that produced the most weight loss seen yet.

Lilly and rival Novo Nordisk showcased new GLP-1 pills they each introduced earlier this year. Both companies made the case that oral options are bringing more people into the market for weight loss drugs, with Novo touting that prescriptions of its Wegovy pill reached more than 3 million just five months into the launch.

Behind the two market leaders are a wave of new entrants hoping to get into the massive market in the coming years.

Structure Therapeutics and AstraZeneca each shared mid-stage data from their respective GLP-1 pills. Should those oral drugs succeed in Phase 3 trials, they would likely come to the market around 2029, three years behind Lilly, which introduced its small molecule pill Foundayo earlier this year (the Wegovy pill is an oral peptide).

Structure Therapeutics CEO Ray Stevens thinks there will still be plenty of room in the market by then.

“Who wins at the end of the day with competition? Patients, and that’s really what this is all about,” Stevens said, adding that being the second small molecule drug will be important. “We’re really pushing hard to get into that second position behind orforglipron, now Foundayo.”

Pfizer also unveiled mid-stage data from a shot it gained through its $10 billion acquisition of Metsera. The drug showed the potential to be given monthly, which Pfizer thinks would be more convenient than the currently weekly shots. Another drugmaker, Amgen, is testing a different drug that could be given monthly or possibly even quarterly.

Susan Sweeney, Amgen’s executive vice president of obesity and related conditions, said the company sees an advantage in people not needing to take a weekly injection and instead thinking about treatment as little as four times a year.

“For somebody who’s lived with obesity for a long time, it can be a major advantage in not remembering your disease,” she said.

Some companies are looking beyond GLP-1 and other hot targets like GIP and glucagon to emerging areas like amylin, another hormone…

Shares of weight loss drug maker Zealand Pharma plummeted as much as 26% on Monday after new data on its experimental medicine raised concerns over its potential side effects.

The Danish drugmaker said that while its drug survodutide met its key targets in a late-stage study, 19% of patients dropped out of the study due to gastrointestinal events, compared to 2.9% on placebo.

“Safety/tolerability remains the key issue,” said Barclays analysts in a note on Monday. 

The high discontinuation rate, with more than 40% of patients reporting vomiting, might limit the drug’s commercial potential as a treatment for obesity or those suffering from fatty liver disease, the analysts added.

Shares of Zealand Pharma were last seen down 24%, firmly at the bottom of the pan-European Stoxx 600 index. It adds to a nearly 50% drop year-to-date.

Survodutide was tested in adults living with obesity or overweight adults, without type 2 diabetes, over 76 weeks. Topline data announced in April showed average weight loss of up to 16.6% versus 3.2% with the placebo.

Analysts at Citi wrote in a note on Monday: “A 19% treatment discontinuation rate due to… adverse events… is not a rounding error, and nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and constipation incidence at the levels reported here sit well above what we consider commercially viable against [rival drugs] tirzepatide and semaglutide.”

The full survodutide data comes about three months after Zealand stock suffered its worst day on record when a trial of another of its experimental anti-obesity drugs, petrelintide, disappointed investors with lower-than-expected weight loss statistics. 

Further data on petrelintide disclosed on Friday provided “incremental detail around [its] clinical profile, but little to change our view since the topline in March,” said Barclays.

Petrelintide, which Zealand is developing together with Roche, looks attractive in terms of tolerability, but efficacy does not look as strong as Eli Lilly’s amylin, eloralintide, or other already available incretin​-​based obesity treatments, they added.

The market for weight loss drugs is currently dominated by Novo Nordisk, which sells semaglutide under the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic, and Eli Lilly, which sells tirzepatide as Zepbound and Mounjaro.

But a flurry of hopeful market entrants are testing their own anti-obesity drugs, including Zealand Pharma, which is partnering with bigger drugmakers Roche and Boehringer Ingelheim, and heavyweights like Amgen and AstraZeneca.

Heightened competition has increased the pressure on companies to differentiate their products. Muscle mass preservation, oral options, obesity-related diseases, and weight management are some areas companies are targeting to build their share of the lucrative market.

As for Zealand Pharma, it has long called for an end to what it calls the “weight loss…

Eli Lilly on Thursday said its next-generation drug cleared a crucial late-stage trial in patients with obesity, delivering significant weight loss across doses. 

The results bring Lilly one step closer to filing for approval of the weekly injection, called retatrutide, which works differently from existing shots and pills from both Lilly and Novo Nordisk. It also appears to be more effective than those options.

The highest dose of retatrutide helped patients lose 28.3% of their weight — or 70.3 pounds — on average over 80 weeks, compared with 2.2% with placebo, when evaluating only patients who stayed on the drug.

Roughly 45% of the 2,500 patients in the Phase 3 trial achieved 30% or more weight loss, Lilly said. 

The highest dose also helped patients with a body mass index of 35 or above who participated in an extension of the study lose 30.3% of their weight on average over 104 weeks. That BMI threshold puts people at higher risk of cardiovascular complications or diabetes.

While the drug appeared to show higher rates of certain gastrointestinal side effects, such as nausea and diarrhea, especially at the highest dose, they were generally consistent with a previous Phase 3 trial of retatrutide in patients with obesity and a type of knee arthritis pain. Some analysts previously said those side effects highlight the speed and strength of the drug’s weight loss.

A lower dose of retatrutide that Lilly tested in the latest study was also associated with fewer discontinuations due to side effects.

Dan Skovronsky, Lilly’s chief scientific and product officer, called the 30% weight loss an “incredible number to see,” as it has previously only been associated with bariatric surgery. 

“We haven’t seen that level of weight loss before with these kinds of medicines,” Skovronsky told CNBC in an interview. 

Around 65% of people taking the highest dose of retatrutide also achieved a BMI of less than 30, which falls under the threshold for obesity, at 80 weeks.

Ahead of the results, some analysts said they were expecting to see weight loss higher than that seen with Lilly’s blockbuster weight loss drug Zepbound, which is around 20% to 22%. 

The data is the third late-stage result to date on retatrutide, which succeeded in a diabetes trial earlier this year and cleared a smaller study on patients with obesity and a type of knee arthritis in December. Lilly is betting big on retatrutide as the next pillar of its obesity portfolio after its injection Zepbound and newly launched pill, Foundayo. 

In a January note, TD Cowen analysts estimated that retatrutide could rake in sales of $3.8 billion in 2030. 

Retatrutide is also critical to the drugmaker’s plan to maintain its market share majority over Novo in the booming market for weight loss and diabetes drugs. Some analysts estimate the segment could be worth about $100 billion by the 2030s. 

Novo Nordisk has told CNBC how it is preparing to go “all in” on launching its Wegovy pill outside the U.S, as the battle for dominance of the weight-loss market goes global.

“When we launch, we’ll go all in,” Novo’s Executive Vice President for International Operations, Emil Kongshøj Larsen, told CNBC in an interview on Tuesday. “It’s a major opportunity.”

Novo announced last week that it expects to start the first launches outside of the U.S. later this year, pending approvals, after the pill continues to impress with unparalleled U.S. uptake.

The U.S. market accounts for more than half of the sales of both Novo and its chief rival Eli Lilly. But the companies are now looking increasingly to expand the market for weight-loss drugs that have revolutionized the pharmaceutical space in recent years.

Larsen wouldn’t name specific countries where Novo might launch the Wegovy pill first, saying the drugmaker will “go according to potential,” highlighting factors such as patient interest in obesity treatment, how well-trained doctors are, and the existence of potential telehealth partners.

Larsen said that telehealth had been one way of broadening access to patients, saying that, in Germany, “it’s been slow for a while, and all of a sudden, telehealth helps patients get access to treatment in a way that is very convenient and appreciated.”

While Eli Lilly expects sales to grow 28% at the midpoint of its guidance this year, Novo has forecast a drastic decline in sales.

Novo hiked its guidance slightly last week, but still expects profits and sales to decline between 4% and 12% in 2026, hurt by lower prices in the U.S. and generic competition in markets including India, Canada, Brazil, and China.

This is despite Novo gaining an early lead in the oral weight loss drugs with the U.S. launch of the Wegovy pill in January. Last week, Novo said total prescriptions had reached more than 2 million, as sales massively beat expectations in its first quarter despite its lower price point. 

“We cannot have a better pre-launch in a world that’s become very small when it comes to social media, digital, sentiment, etc.,” Larsen said, referring to the U.S launch. “It’s also very exciting for our injectable franchise, because it’s energizing the whole Wegovy brand,” he added.

Nordea analysts said in a note to clients that Wegovy is becoming the number one household weight loss brand in the U.S., based on Google Trends data, which aligns with prescription trends.

Meanwhile, Lilly said on April 30 that more than 20,000 people had started taking the rival pill Foundayo since it launched earlier that month.

According to analysts closely tracking weekly U.S. prescription data, Foundayo has recorded far fewer prescriptions compared with the Wegovy pill in the comparable period, according to IQVIA data, which doesn’t capture all prescriptions, but gives market…

Surging demand for weight loss and diabetes drugs leaves the pharmaceutical sector at risk from a “bubble effect” as profitability soars, new research suggests.

Demand for the likes of Wegovy and Zepbound has driven research and development returns to their highest level in years, but a report published by Deloitte on Monday suggests this is masking pressure facing the rest of the sector. 

Pharmaceutical R&D returns for the world’s top 20 pharma companies have improved for a third consecutive year to 7%, thanks almost entirely to a handful of high-forecast assets such as glucagon-like peptide receptor agonists, or GLP-1s.

The report found that, for the first time in 16 years, oncology has been surpassed as the largest contributor to late-stage pipeline value by obesity treatments.

This, according to Deloitte, increases companies’ exposure to therapeutic-area-specific shocks.

“It is a bubble, because so much is concentrated,” Life Sciences and Healthcare Partner at Deloitte Hanno Ronte, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”

Drugs that target obesity and diabetes now account for an estimated 38% of all projected commercial inflows from the 2025 late-stage pipeline.

The impact is so significant that it masks a weaker environment for the rest of the industry. If GLP-1/GIP assets are excluded from the analysis, the industry’s rate of return drops to just 2.9%, a decline from 3.8% in 2024.

Obesity assets now represent about 25% of total forecast sales of the late-stage pipeline, while oncology’s share has slipped to 20%. This represents a staggering rise for the obesity sector, which contributed just 1% of the projected value as recently as 2022.

While the boom is driving headline growth, it has also led to a significant concentration of risk. Deloitte found that just 54 mega-blockbuster indications, representing only 9% of the late-stage cohort, are projected to generate roughly 70% of total risk-adjusted peak sales.

But many question marks remain, not least the drugs’ potential impact on brain health and inflammation. 

Last year, Novo…

Amazon is pushing deeper into the booming weight loss market, unveiling Tuesday a new program that aims to simplify access to popular GLP-1 treatments.

The company said its primary care arm, Amazon One Medical, is launching a GLP-1 management program that integrates obesity treatment into routine care. The offering combines virtual and in-person visits, prescription management and pharmacy fulfillment, positioning weight management as a long-term chronic condition rather than a one-off prescription.

“Providing customers with fast, convenient medication access and clear, transparent pricing is integral to how Amazon Pharmacy is transforming the pharmacy experience,” said Tanvi Patel, vice president and general manager of Amazon Pharmacy, in the company’s press release.

“By expanding access to the latest GLP-1 medications with upfront, clear pricing, we’re making it easier for customers to get the treatments their health care providers prescribe and to stay on those medications because they are delivered reliably directly to patients,” Patel said.

Through Amazon Pharmacy, patients will be able to access medications including Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy as well as newer oral GLP-1 options. Insured pricing will start as low as $25 per month, Amazon said. For cash-paying patients, oral drugs start at $149 per month, it said.

Injectable treatments, including Wegovy shots and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound, begin at $299 per month when paid for without insurance, Amazon said.

Those prices are roughly in line with much of the current market.

But Amazon’s edge is in same-day delivery and convenience as it looks to leverage its logistics network and consumer reach into another corner of the medical system.

The company also said it will offer on-demand prescription renewals, starting at $29 for message consultation and $49 for video care. Amazon plans to expand its same-day drug delivery offering to 4,500 cities by the end of 2026.

Shares of several companies tied to the obesity drug boom moved lower following Amazon’s Tuesday announcement, including Hims & Hers Health, Viking Therapeutics, Amgen and Septerna.

The cost of GLP-1 drugs is falling, and pill versions are hitting the U.S. market. For restaurant chains and snacking giants, higher adoption of weight loss and diabetes treatments poses a threat to their sales — or an opportunity.

GLP-1 drugs slow digestion, suppress users’ appetites and increase satiety. For many restaurants and packaged food manufacturers, those reactions will likely mean weaker sales. Adults who use GLP-1s consume 21% fewer calories and spend nearly a third less on grocery bills on average, according to KPMG. JPMorgan estimates the growing use of the medications could wipe out $30 billion to $55 billion in annual sales for the food and beverage industry as soon as 2030.

About one in every eight U.S. adults is currently taking a GLP-1 drug like Ozempic or Zepbound, according to the KFF Health Tracking Poll conducted from Oct. 27 to Nov. 2. That number doesn’t include consumers who have discontinued their use of the drugs; 18% of respondents said that they have taken a GLP-1 medication at some point.

Those numbers are expected to keep climbing, especially after Novo Nordisk launched its Wegovy pill in January and Eli Lilly prepares to roll out its own oral drug this year. By 2030, more than 30 million Americans could be on a GLP-1 treatment, up from 10 million in 2026, based on J.P. Morgan estimates.

But the shift also presents an opportunity for restaurants and food and beverage companies.

With new protein- and fiber-rich options, many businesses are hoping to win over GLP-1 consumers and mollify investors’ concerns about how the treatments will affect their bottom lines.

“Whether it is labeling as GLP-1 friendly, decreasing the serving size, emphasizing protein content, or even when you shift over to the beverage world, because hydration is certainly a concern, there are a number of players that are starting to react to this,” said Don K. Johnson, principal of strategy and execution for EY-Parthenon.

Novo Nordisk stock fell as much as 15% Monday after it said its next-generation weight loss drug didn’t meet its key goal of showing that it wasn’t inferior to Eli Lilly’s rival drug, in the latest blow to the Danish drugmaker, whose stock is trading at a multi-year low after a series of disappointing announcements.

The experimental drug, CagriSema, didn’t achieve its primary endpoint of demonstrating non-inferiority on weight loss when compared to Eli Lilly’s rival drug tirzepatide after 84 weeks, Novo said in a statement Monday morning.

Tirzepatide is the active ingredient in Lilly’s mega-blockbuster medicines Mounjaro and Zepbound, which have overtaken Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide, sold as Ozempic and Wegovy, in U.S. prescriptions.

Novo’s Copenhagen-listed shares were last seen down 14% at 259 Danish kroner, hitting their lowest level since June 2021.

Eli Lilly‘s stock rose 3.1% in premarket trading.

Patients taking a 2.4 mg dose of CagriSema achieved a weight loss of 23% after 84 weeks compared to 25.5% with a 15 mg dose of tirzepatide, Novo said.

The trial was a so-called open-label trial, meaning participants knew what treatment they were receiving. Such a design can introduce bias in favor of a well-known product when it is compared to an investigational therapy, said Novo’s Chief Scientific Officer Martin Holst Lange, adding that he was “surprised” by the 25% weight loss seen with tirzepatide.

Lilly’s own studies have shown tirzepatide to result in a 20.2% weight loss over 72 weeks for people living with obesity or overweight.

Eli Lilly didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.