Three drug launches featured in quarterly earnings presentations this week, and investors reacted to each in turn. Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill beat forecasts, Madrigal’s Rezdiffra crossed into blockbuster territory, and Axsome’s Auvelity grew more slowly than Wall Street had hoped.
The Wegovy pill numbers were the first of the week’s drug launches to land. On Wednesday, Novo said the oral version of its obesity medicine booked 5.39 billion Danish kroner in the third quarter, about $811 million, against an average consensus estimate of 4.96 billion kroner, according to analysts at Jefferies. Overall company sales and profit beat Wall Street’s projections, and Novo shares rose by more than 5 percent, one of their largest single-day gains this year.
Drug launches led by the Wegovy pill
The pill’s sales spike came in the same quarter that Eli Lilly’s rival offering, Foundayo, underperformed. Lilly’s drug launched a few months after Novo’s and is not as broadly available yet, but its $184 million in third-quarter sales fell short of Wall Street estimates by $44 million. The Wegovy pill continued to outpace Foundayo and accounted for around 80 percent of new-to-brand prescriptions in the United States in the third quarter, said Jamey Millar, the head of Novo’s United States operations, on a Wednesday earnings call.
For Novo, the numbers matter because the company ceded its lead in obesity drugs to Lilly, and the latest drug launches give it a way back. The pill has launched in seven countries so far, and Novo expects it to be available in more than 20 by early next year. Chief executive Mike Doustdar told analysts he saw no reason the upswing should stop with the turn of the year, saying, “I don’t foresee why that should completely change.”
The comparison between the two drug launches was direct. Novo rose on the numbers while Lilly’s miss was the one blemish on an obesity and diabetes franchise that otherwise beat consensus forecasts.
Drug launches and the Rezdiffra blockbuster
Madrigal Pharmaceuticals made history with the 2024 approval of Rezdiffra, the first medication for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, a liver disease known as MASH. New results disclosed this week show sales are still climbing: the drug generated $431 million between July and September and $1.1 billion so far in 2026, reaching blockbuster status in its 10th quarter on the market. The quarterly numbers beat consensus projections by more than $20 million and enabled Madrigal to post a profit for the first time.
The Rezdiffra figures were the second of the three drug launches to beat expectations. Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Prakhar Agrawal wrote that the results “couldn’t have been better” and “exceeded even elevated investor expectations.” More patients have started treatment despite competition in MASH from Novo’s Wegovy, which suggests diagnosis and treatment rates, both still low, could be accelerating. Agrawal added there is “meaningful room for growth.”
Auvelity and the slower start
Of the three drug launches, Axsome’s was the one that lifted a stock fastest. Five months ago, brain drug developer Axsome Therapeutics saw its market value soar past $12 billion. An April approval from the Food and Drug Administration had just expanded use of its depression drug Auvelity into Alzheimer’s disease, opening what Wall Street believed to be a multibillion-dollar market. Investors piled into the stock, believing Axsome might be a top buyout target in an already active year for biotech company acquisitions.
Auvelity has not taken off as fast as investors hoped. Sales grew from about $153 million between January and March to $208 million over the last three months, Axsome reported on Monday. On a conference call, chief commercial officer Ari Maizel noted there is “little precedent” for a medicine used to treat symptoms of agitation linked to Alzheimer’s disease. “This is still a relatively new and developing market, but we’re very encouraged by what we’ve seen thus far,” he said.
Among the three drug launches, Auvelity is the one investors now doubt most. Its latest figures were in line with consensus estimates, but William Blair analyst Myles Minter called the launch “slower than expected,” and some of his peers trimmed their price targets for Axsome shares and projections for Auvelity sales. Since peaking in June, Axsome’s stock price has fallen by more than a third. Leerink Partners analyst Marc Goodman wrote, “It’s been a very difficult four months,” adding that investors now “seem to have significant pessimism regarding Auvelity trends.”
Goodman and others still preached patience. During the third quarter, prescription totals accelerated in adults over 65, who are mostly using Auvelity for Alzheimer’s symptoms, and executives said the sales upswing, though gradual, is happening. The three drug launches will stay in focus as Novo rolls the pill into more countries, Madrigal adds patients and Axsome reports its next prescription totals.