GLP-1 manufacturers enter a turf war

Who needs reality TV these days? GLP-1 manufacturers are giving us all the drama we need.

The latest update in the GLP-1 battle came Feb. 5, when telehealth company Hims & Hers announced it’s offering a new compounded pill with the same active ingredient as Novo Nordisk’s once-a-day Wegovy GLP-1 pill. Hims is pricing its compounded weight loss treatment at $99 a month—$49 for the first month in an introductory offer—undercutting Novo’s $149–$299 per month cash price.

Novo promptly put out a statement, alleging this is “illegal mass compounding” and threatening a lawsuit. The legal action against Hims would be just another addition to the pile of 100+ suits the company has filed against compounders amid a mounting number of GLP-1 dramas.

Hims posted a statement on X dissing Novo’s threat: “This narrative is as predictable as it is outdated and false.”

Problems pile up. This isn’t Novo’s only problem this week, either. The Hims announcement came after the Danish pharmaceutical company shared a bleak market outlook. Though the company beat 2025 revenue and sales estimates, it warned on Feb. 3 that sales could fall by 5% to 13% in 2026—the first sales drop since 2017, a year before the company started selling its GLP-1 Ozempic.

Novo EVP and CFO Karsten Knudsen attributed the declining revenue to pressures like competition in the space and the deal that both Novo and Eli Lilly made with President Donald Trump to lower drug prices.

Meanwhile, Eli Lilly, manufacturer of competing GLP-1s Mounjaro and Zepbound, is continuing to do pretty well. The company contrasted Novo’s bleak prediction with an optimistic one, expecting $80 billion to $83 billion in revenue in 2026, which is at least a 23% jump from 2025’s $65.2 billion revenue and 5% above expectations, BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman wrote in a Feb. 4 research note.

“Lilly [is] in a class of its own: Novo’s problems aren’t Lilly’s problems,” Seigerman wrote.

Some background. The Hims & Hers launch is compounding (get it?) Novo’s headwinds.

The GLP-1 industry has been trying to put its injectables into pill form for years. Novo won that race and launched the first-ever FDA-approved oral GLP-1 for weight loss on Jan. 5. (Eli Lilly is developing an oral GLP-1 treatment, too, but doesn’t anticipate FDA approval until Q2.)

The Hims & Hers semaglutide pill, however, can skip the FDA approval process because it’s a compounded drug. Its entry cuts Novo’s victory lap short, though Novo can still claim to have the only FDA-approved oral GLP-1.

Following Hims’s announcement, both Novo’s and Lilly’s shares fell nearly 7%.

The spat between Novo and Hims & Hers is especially interesting because—as is the case in many of the juiciest high-profile celebrity fallouts—Novo and Hims were once partners. The two announced they were teaming up to sell Wegovy on April 29 last year. Their partnership ended less than two months later, with Novo saying Hims “failed to adhere to the law” by continuing to sell compounded versions of its branded drugs.

In November, it seemed like the two might rekindle their old flame. Hims said in a Nov. 3 release it was once again in “active discussions” to renew the partnership. But, clearly, something soured along the way.

The Pfizer of it all. Meanwhile, undeterred by all this infighting, other pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer are still trying to enter the GLP-1 arena.

We’re always skeptical when a new character enters a hit show after so many seasons, but the drugmaker is coming in hot.

The pharma giant beat out Novo for obesity drug biotech Metsera with a $10 billion bid in November. Metsera, launched in 2022, was developing a once-monthly GLP-1 injectable. Pfizer released data on Feb. 3 from a Phase 2 study suggesting the injectable increased weight loss up to 12.3% compared to a placebo, which was “slightly inferior” to other study results on the efficacy of Lilly’s Zepbound. Pfizer saw a 3.3% drop in shares after the announcement.

Despite heavy competition from more established companies, Pfizer Chief US Commercial Officer and EVP Aamir Malik said in a Feb. 3 earnings call he believes there’s still untapped potential that Pfizer will aim to fill.

“I think we’re in the very early innings of a large market where there is still significant unmet need,” Malik said.