By Bhanvi Satija and Maggie Fick
LONDON (Reuters) -Novo Nordisk shares rose 5% on Wednesday after analysts said negotiated prices from the U.S. Medicare health plan for 15 of its costliest drugs, including the drugmaker’s blockbusters Wegovy and Ozempic, came in broadly as expected.
The prices, announced late on Tuesday, will go into effect in 2027. The list included a monthly price of $274 for the Danish drugmaker’s semaglutide, sold as Wegovy for weight loss and Ozempic for diabetes.
Earlier this month Novo said it expected a low single-digit impact to global sales if the price cuts were implemented this year, which analysts said would imply roughly a 6 billion Danish crown or $900 million sales hit.
Analysts at JPMorgan said the impact from these price cuts had already been captured in Novo’s forecast.
Novo Nordisk shares rose 1.4% at the open on Wednesday and extended gains to trade 4.8% higher at 1230 GMT.
SHARE BOUNCE FOLLOWS MONDAY LOSSES
The gains stand in contrast to Monday, when shares plunged around 12% immediately after an older oral version of Novo’s semaglutide failed to help slow Alzheimer’s progression, before closing down 5.8% for the day.
Shares of AstraZeneca and GSK, whose medicines are also on the list, were trading flat. GSK had said while reporting third-quarter results that any impact to the company’s business from negotiated prices is fully factored into its outlook.
The cuts on AstraZeneca’s cancer medicine Calquence and GSK’s lung disease drugs Trelegy and Breo were largely anticipated, said Shore Capital analyst Sean Conroy.
He estimates this represents a “low- to mid-hundreds of millions of pounds/dollars” hit to earnings for GSK and AstraZeneca, and is already reflected in the companies’ guidance.
“Although the cuts are a negative in the near term, both companies should be able to manage them,” Conroy said.
Private drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim said that more than 80% of the company’s U.S. business is now subject to government-negotiated prices. Its diabetes drug Tradjenta and lung disease medicine Ofev were part of the second round of negotiations.
(Reporting by Bhanvi Satija and Maggie Fick in London, Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen. Editing by Jane Merriman and Jan Harvey)
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