Danish drugmaker says it aims to grow revenue in line with its leading rivals

Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar poses for a photo at Novo Nordisk headquarters in Bagsvaerd on August 5, 2026. The stock tumbled on Monday after setting out its 2030 ambitions.

Novo Nordisk stock tumbled on Monday as the weight-loss drug manufacturer failed to excite investors hoping for a turnaround.

At an investor event on Monday, Novo Nordisk set out its ambitions by 2030 to launch at least five multi-blockbusters, deliver compound annual revenue growth in line with industry peers, scale capacity to serve 10 times more people with obesity on oral GLP-1 drugs and serve 60 million patients globally.

Novo Nordisk stock (NVO) (DK:NOVO.B) tumbled 6% in premarket trade, reaching its lowest level since April. Novo's stock price is not even a third of its 2024 peak.

Under CEO Mike Doustdar, Novo has spent the last year undergoing a wide-reaching restructuring, and analysts are eager to understand what's next for the company.

Sales continue to grow for the drug maker's exclusive semaglutide products - Ozempic for Type 2 diabetes and the Wegovy injection and pill for weight loss. But there is concern that the franchise isn't growing as fast as it used to, and Novo is still too dependent on semaglutide - even CagriSema, its next-generation weight-loss drug, which could be approved later this year, includes the medication.

Deep dive: How Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk blew its lead in GLP-1 weight-loss drugs

"This is the opportunity for CEO Doustdar to take control of the narrative and tell us how he intends to right the ship," BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan David Seigerman told investors on Thursday. "The launch of the Wegovy pill has been strong, but one asset does not a company make (at least one the size of Novo)."

The drugmaker made several announcements last week, saying it dropped "Nordisk" from its name but not formally, that it has a new set of corporate principles focused on speed and competitiveness, and that it inked two small deals with biotechnology companies - both of which are developing obesity drugs - and another one with Anthropic.

In a note to investors last week, Goldman Sachs analysts described the lead-up to the Capital Markets Day as "stale at best."

It's been a tumultuous year for Novo. At this event last year, new CEO Doustdar announced that Novo would let go of 11.5% of its workers in what would be the largest corporate layoff in Denmark's history. In the following weeks and months, former workers tagged social-media posts about their departures with #Club9000, indicating the roughly 9,000 workers laid off globally, or #Club5000, for those let go in Denmark.

That wasn't all that happened. Much of Novo's board resigned last fall, and influential leaders like Lotte Bjerre Knudsen, who led development of semaglutide, have since stepped down.

Under Doustdar's attempt to right-size Novo, which lost its lead in the weight-loss market to Eli Lilly, the company is now leaner and much more focused on speed as it tries to better compete against the American pharmaceutical giant and the dozens of companies developing new weight-loss therapies.

A year into his tenure as CEO, analysts still have questions about the broader strategy for the company, which is known for making insulin and other products for Type 2 diabetes patients. The company's U.S.-listed shares are down 28.8% over the last year.

Analysts and former employees have said that Novo's culture emphasized consensus rather than quick decision-making, putting it at odds with Lilly, a powerhouse drugmaker that brought to market Prozac in the 1980s and the erectile dysfunction pill Cialis 15 years later.

Novo is now more aggressive than it used to be - it filed several high-profile lawsuits this year, including one that was later dropped against Hims & Hers Health and another over Lilly's ads. Much of the year's high points are due to the Wegovy pill, which has been a resounding success. The pill had about $839 million in sales in the first half of the year and remains the preferred option over Lilly's GLP-1 pill since Foundayo launched in April.

-Jaimy Lee