MILAN (Reuters) — Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk’s (NVO, NOVO-B.CO) shares hit an over 9-month low on Thursday after surging more than 8% the previous day, as underwhelming guidance for next year overshadowed strong sales growth for its popular Wegovy weight-loss drug.
The two-day move saw Europe’s biggest company by market cap trade in a wide 14-percentage-point range from low to high. On Thursday morning, the stock was down 3% in Copenhagen, after earlier falling 5.5% to its lowest since January.
In an analyst call on Wednesday, following a quarterly release that eased concerns that demand for Wegowy was slowing, Novo’s finance chief Karsten Munk Knudsen said sales growth next year could be in the high percentage teens.
Barclays said commentary on 2025 weighed on the shares. “We had a call back with IR and the moving parts seem to indicate (at least what we know now) a midpoint for FY25 top line a touch lower than current company consensus,” Emily Field, analyst at the UK bank, wrote in a note, affirming her overweight rating on the stock.
The company will formally guide for 2025 in February.
US-listed Novo shares were up 1.6% in premarket trading on Thursday, having lost over 4% the prior session.
Gilles Guibout, head of European equity strategies at AXA Investment Managers in Paris, said the sharp moves in Novo’s shares were probably due to hedge fund action.
“Novo Nordisk is a widely held stock. Its market has significant potential. However, it’s easier to find sellers than buyers for the stock, as everyone already holds plenty of it,” he said.
“It’s a stock that needs to be normalised. At the beginning of the year, there was too much hype around it,” he added.
Novo Nordisk shares are up around 4% so far this year, but they have fallen almost 30% from the record high set in June.
The stock trades at a 27 times its expected earnings, a 22% premium to its 20-year average valuation, according to LSEG Datastream data. It is worth around $470 billion.
(Reporting by Danilo Masoni; Editing by Amanda Cooper)
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