By Maggie Fick and Bhanvi Satija
LONDON (Reuters) -Novo Nordisk said on Wednesday it had agreed a price under the U.S. Medicare scheme for semaglutide, the active ingredient in its key drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, in a deal that some analysts said sounded less onerous than feared.
The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act requires pharmaceutical companies to negotiate drug prices with the Medicare health insurance programme, which covers more than 60 million people.
The price will take effect in 2027. The announcement came alongside Novo’s third-quarter earnings and a cut to its 2025 financial guidance for the fourth time this year.
It also comes the day after a White House source said Novo and U.S. rival Eli Lilly were expected to announce deals this week with the Trump administration to cut prices of their weight-loss drugs in exchange for Medicare coverage.
Novo did not disclose the agreed price, but said that if applied this year it would have had a “low-single-digit negative impact on sales”.
JP Morgan analysts estimated this could equate to around a 6 billion Danish crown ($937 million) hit to sales, adding that was “better than feared” and could offset the negative news from the guidance cut.
“The shares could ultimately be in positive territory today,” they wrote in a note.
Novo’s stock was up 2.2% at 0947 GMT, after falling as much as 3.7% in early trade.
Markus Manns, a portfolio manager at mutual fund and Novo shareholder Union Investment, also said that Novo’s comments on the U.S. deal “implies a price cut less than feared”.
The IRA, implemented under President Joseph Biden in 2022, allows Medicare to negotiate prices on select high-cost drugs. Ozempic and Wegovy are among 15 medicines in the law’s second round of negotiations.
($1 = 6.4029 Danish crowns)
(Reporting by Maggie Fick. Editing by Jan Harvey and Mark Potter)
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