Beyond Steel Tanks

Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have struck gold. After decades of research, their GLP-1 obesity drugs appear to really work. Globally, at least 1.9 billion people are overweight, and J.P. Morgan estimates that—in the U.S. alone—about 30 million people will soon be taking weight loss drugs: Wegovy from Novo Nordisk and ZepBound from Eli Lilly. Novo Nordisk’s market capitalization ($442B) is already larger than the GDP of Denmark ($404B), the country where the company is headquartered. The market for semaglutide-based products is projected to swell to $71B in less than a decade. Stifel, the investment banking firm, has argued that the total market opportunity could be an order of magnitude larger. If that prediction bears fruit, it would mean that a biologically-produced molecule would, for the first time in history, outsell the iPhone. All of this future value, of course, relies upon these companies actually making enough of their product to meet the growing demand. So far, they haven’t bee

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• Shereen Lee