Novo Nordisk (NVO) shares are slimming down.
Shares of the Wegovy maker tanked more than 5% on Monday as the company failed to impress Wall Street at its capital markets day. The company came up short by not sharing more specifics around near-term growth targets amid fierce competition in the weight loss drug market.
The company said it's targeting more than $23 billion in pipeline sales by 2035. It has plans to launch more than five potential multi-blockbusters by the end of the decade.
"We have a situation where competition, as we are seeing it, has never been at least in Novo's historical back. For decades long, this company operated in what you could argue as a duopoly often. Thanks to us, we created an incredibly attractive market, and now almost every other single pharma company, big or small, is trying to come and compete with us. We need to be ready for that," Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar told investors.
Doustdar took over as CEO at Novo Nordisk in August 2025, succeeding longtime leader Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen. He has spent 33 years at Novo Nordisk, rising from an entry-level office clerk in Vienna in 1992 to the corner office.
In 2015, he was promoted to executive vice president of international operations, where he successfully managed the company's entire commercial business footprint outside the US and doubled sales across the division.
Today, Doustdar leads the global healthcare powerhouse as it navigates intense market competition in the GLP-1 market, mainly with rival Eli Lilly (LLY).
Doustdar said on the Power Players With Brian Sozzi podcast on Yahoo Finance earlier this month he is focused on improved marketing of Wegovy while continuing to build momentum behind its pill form, which fell short of analyst estimates in the most recent quarter.
He is also investing more aggressively in R&D to help overcome future patent expirations in the coming years.
Successfully pulling these things off will be paramount to getting Novo Nordisk's stock back in the good graces of investors who are worried about the company's future patent expiry cliff and how it will impact the bottom line.
"I would say, first I would like to see a future after the patent cliff where the majority of semaglutide sold is sold by Novo Nordisk. Today, Novo is the biggest generic insulin maker in the world," Doustdar said. "We don't have a monopoly of good ideas. So we're also looking into partnerships, acquisitions and trying to basically see where else we could compliment all the good things we have on our own."