MILAN (Reuters) – Shares of Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk (NVO, NOVO-B.CO) hit a more than 9-month low on Thursday after rising more than 8% the day before on disappointing expectations for next year overshadowed strong sales growth for his company. popular Wegovy drug for weight loss.
During this two-day move, Europe’s largest company by market capitalization traded in a wide range of 14 percentage points from low to high. On Thursday morning in Copenhagen, the stock fell 3%, after earlier falling 5.5% to the lowest level since January.
In an analyst call on Wednesday, Novo chief financial officer Karsten Munk Knudsen, after a quarterly release that allayed concerns that demand for Wegowy is slowing, said sales growth next year could be in the high teens.
Barclays said the 2025 commentary weighed on the shares. “We’ve called back with IR and the moving parts appear to indicate (at least from what we know now) a FY25 revenue midpoint slightly lower than current business consensus,” wrote Emily Field, an analyst at the British bank. comment, confirming its overweight on the stock.
The company will formally set its 2025 guidance in February.
US-listed Novo shares rose 1.6% in premarket trading on Thursday, after losing more than 4% in the previous session.
Gilles Guibout, head of European equity strategies at AXA Investment Managers in Paris, said the sharp moves in Novo shares were likely due to hedge fund action.
“Novo Nordisk is a widely held stock. The market has significant potential. However, it is easier to find sellers than buyers for the stock because everyone already owns a lot of it,” he said.
“It’s a stock that needs to be normalized. There was too much hype around it at the beginning of the year,” he added.
Shares of Novo Nordisk are up about 4% so far this year, but are down nearly 30% from June’s record high.
The stock is trading at 27 times forward earnings, a 22% premium to its 20-year average valuation, according to data from LSEG Datastream. It is worth about $470 billion.
(Reporting by Danilo Masoni; Editing by Amanda Cooper)
