Novo Nordisk’s Oral Wegovy Nod Lifts Shares, but the Valuation Debate Rages On

European regulators clear first oral Wegovy tablet; shares jump 2.88% but remain 23.6% down annually amid mixed analyst ratings and overbought RSI signals.

Novo Nordisk added another chapter to its recovery story on Wednesday, when European regulators approved the first oral GLP-1 tablet for weight management. The decision sent the Danish drugmaker’s B-shares up 2.88% on the day to €44.14, extending a rally that has now recouped roughly 46% of the ground lost since the stock touched a 52-week low of €30.25 in early March 2026.

The European Commission’s green light for the once-daily Wegovy pill follows a positive recommendation from the EMA’s CHMP committee in May and marks a strategic milestone for a company trying to defend its lead in the obesity space against a growing wave of competitors. In the pivotal OASIS-4 trial, patients on the 25-milligram oral dose shed 17% of their body weight on average, compared with 3% for placebo. Alongside the tablet, Brussels also cleared a new ready-to-use single-dose pen delivering 7.2 milligrams of injectable semaglutide, which produced a 21% weight loss in studies.

Yet for all the encouraging headlines, the stock’s trajectory remains a battlefield of opposing views. Over the past 12 months, Novo Nordisk shares are still 23.6% lower, and they trade 27.6% below the July 2025 high of €60.95. On a year-to-date basis, the decline is a more modest 1.2%, but the technical picture is starting to flash caution signals. The 14-day relative strength index sits at 68, a level that often suggests the stock is approaching overbought territory. The current price is 10.9% above its 50-day moving average of €39.81 and 8.9% above the 200-day average of €40.52, a sign that the medium-term trend has turned constructive even as the short-term momentum looks stretched.

Analyst sentiment reflects that tension. UBS’s Matthew Weston, who rates the stock “Neutral” with a price target of 332 Danish kroner, argues that the recent run has left little room for further upside. The bank’s caution is echoed by Zacks Research, which downgraded Novo Nordisk from “Hold” to “Strong Sell” on the very day of the EU announcement. But other voices are more optimistic. Nordea recently upgraded the stock to “Buy”, while Sanford C. Bernstein reiterated “Outperform” with a $175 price target. HSBC sits in the middle with a “Hold” rating. The consensus among analysts tracked by the secondary source is “Hold” at a target of $65.56, a level that implies only modest potential from here.

Fundamentally, the bull case rests on Novo Nordisk’s ability to expand its oral GLP-1 franchise before rivals gain a foothold. In the United States, where the Wegovy pill launched in January, the company has captured 89% of the nascent oral market, with 153,050 prescriptions in the first week of July versus just 19,550 for Eli Lilly’s competing drug Foundayo. Revenue estimates for 2026 put Wegovy at $2.2 billion, compared with $1.3 billion for Foundayo. Novo Nordisk is pricing the tablet at $149 per month for cash-pay patients and distributing it through CVS, Costco and telemedicine channels.

But the competitive landscape is shifting rapidly. Eli Lilly recently reported strong phase 3 data for its candidate retatrutide in sleep apnea, a development that briefly sent its own shares up 4% and weighed on Novo Nordisk during European trading hours, even as Wegovy prescription numbers hit records. Pricing concessions and mounting rivalry in the GLP-1 category are weighing on analysts’ revenue models for Ozempic and Wegovy, creating a drag that the technical recovery has not fully addressed.

Support from the company’s own balance sheet is providing a floor. A 15-billion-kroner share buyback programme initiated at the start of 2026 continues to absorb supply in the market, giving the stock a mechanical tailwind even as the valuation debate remains unresolved. Novo Nordisk reported first-quarter earnings per share of $1.03 on revenue of $10.85 billion, figures that reinforced the earnings power but did little to settle the question of whether the recovery is built on durable fundamentals or simply a reflexive bounce from oversold levels.

Further out, the pipeline offers fresh narrative fuel. The triple agonist UBT251 produced positive phase 2 results, and the company has signed a non-exclusive evaluation agreement with Vivani Medical to study a semaglutide implant called NPM-139. No financial terms or equity stake were disclosed. With a market capitalisation of roughly €190.75 billion and 30-day annualised volatility of 28%, the stock remains a high-beta bet on the obesity megatrend — one where a single regulatory decision can spark a sharp rally, but the weight of analyst caution suggests the next leg will depend on hard sales data rather than headlines.