What is Novo Nordisk’s History?

Novo Nordisk A/S develops, produces, and markets pharmaceutical products. The Company focuses on diabetes care and offers insulin delivery systems and other diabetes products. Novo Nordisk also works in areas such as haemostatis management, growth disorders, and hormone replacement therapy. The Company offers educational and training materials. Novo Nordisk markets worldwide.

What Novo Nordisk is doing in more details?

Novo Nordisk is one of the world’s leading producers of diabetes therapies including human insulin, insulin analogues, and injection devices. It makes modern insulin analogues Levemir and NovoLog (which mimic natural insulin regulation more closely than human insulin), Victoza for type 2 diabetes, and Saxenda, which treats obesity.

The firm also has products in the areas of hemostasis management (blood clotting), human growth hormone, and estrogen replacement therapy. The company has affiliates in some 80 countries and markets products in about 170 countries.

The not-for-profit Novo Nordisk Foundation, through its Novo A/S subsidiary, controls the voting power in Novo Nordisk.

Where Novo Nordisk is Operating?

Novo Nordisk operates in two business segments: Diabetes and Obesity (which covers insulins, oral anti-diabetic drugs, and obesity therapies) and Biopharmaceuticals (which covers hemophilia care, growth hormone therapy, and hormone replacement therapy).

Novo Nordisk is the world’s leader in diabetes medicines with nearly half of the total insulin market in volume. The Diabetes and Obesity segment accounts for about 85% of annual revenue, primarily from diabetes treatments.

op product offerings include Levemir and Tresiba (long-acting insulin), NovoMix/NovoLog Mix (premix insulin), NovoRapid/NovoLog (fast-acting insulin), Victoza (type 2 diabetes and weight management), and Saxenda (obesity).

The remainder of sales comes from the Biopharmaceuticals segment, which includes the NovoSeven (hemophilia), NovoEight (hemophilia), Norditropin (growth hormone deficiencies), and hormone replacement therapy offerings.

Where is the geographical reach of Novo Nordisk?

Headquartered in Denmark, Novo Nordisk has some 15 production facilities and 10 research and development centers located in Algeria, Brazil, China, Denmark, France, India, Japan, Russia, UK and US.

Its primary markets are North America (about 50% of revenues), China, Japan, and major countries in Europe.

What is Novo Nordisk Financial Performance?

Note: Growth rates may differ after conversion to US Dollars.

Novo Nordisk’s revenue for the year ended 2020 was DKK 126.9 billion, a 4% increase from the previous year. Sales growth was negatively impacted by COVID-19, driven by fewer patients initiating treatment.

Novo Nordisk’s 2020 sales and operating profit performance measured at constant exchange rates (CER) were within the ranges provided in October 2020.

For the year ended 2020, the company’s net profit totaled DKK 42.1 billion, an 8% growth from the previous year.

The company’s cash for the year ended 2020 totaled DKK 12.2 billion. Operating activities generated DKK 52 billion, while investing activities used DKK 22.4 billion, mainly for purchases of intangible assets. Financing activities used another DKK 32.2 billion, primarily for payment of dividends.

What is Novo Nordisk Future Strategy?

Novo Nordisk has been focused on sustainability for many years ? but it is determined to continue to raise its game.

In the past year the company launched a new social responsibility strategy, Defeat Diabetes, and initiated programs within renewable power and recycling as part of its Circular for Zero environmental strategy. Above all, 2020 underscored the need for strong corporate values and a shared sense of purpose.

The company is fortunate that both are well-established across its organization, empowering its employees to keep delivering for both patients and investors, despite the unprecedented disruptions caused by COVID-19.

What are Novo Nordisk’s Mergers and Acquisitions?

In late 2020, ? Novo Nordisk A/S completed the acquisition of Emisphere Technologies Inc. (Emisphere), a drug delivery company with proprietary technologies, such as the Eligen SNAC technology, that enable oral formulations of therapeutics.

Novo Nordisk acquired all outstanding shares of Emisphere for about $1.35 billion. With these acquisitions, Novo Nordisk eliminates its future royalty obligations to Emisphere and MHR and obtains full access to the Eligen SNAC technology platform thereby enabling Novo Nordisk to expand the portfolio of oral biologic pipeline assets across therapy areas.

In 2020, Novo Nordisk A/S agreed to acquire Corvidia Therapeutics Inc., a privately held, clinical stage company focused on the research and development of transformative therapies for cardio-renal diseases. Novo Nordisk will acquire all outstanding shares of Corvidia Therapeutics for about $2.1 billion.

The acquisition of Corvidia Therapeutics and its lead candidate, ziltivekimab, is aligned with Novo Nordisk’s strategy to expand its presence across a range of cardiometabolic diseases that are closely linked to Novo Nordisk’s core business within diabetes and obesity.

What is Novo Nordisk’s Background?

Novo Nordisk was formed by the 1989 merger of Danish insulin producers Novo and Nordisk. The company traces its roots to the founding of two Danish insulin companies, Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium and Novo Terapeutisk Laboratorium, in 1923 and 1925, respectively.

What is Novo Nordisk’s History?

Novo Nordisk was formed by the 1989 merger of Danish insulin producers Novo and Nordisk.

Soon after Canadian researchers first extracted insulin from the pancreases of cattle, Danish researcher August Krogh (winner of the 1920 Nobel Prize in physiology) and physician Marie Krogh, his wife, teamed up with H. C. Hagedorn, also a physician, to found Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium.

One of their lab workers was an inventor named Harald Pedersen, and in 1923 Nordisk hired Pedersen’s brother, Thorvald, to analyze chemicals. The relationship was unsuccessful, however, and the brothers left the company.

The Pedersens decided to produce insulin themselves and set up operations in their basement in 1924. Harald also designed a syringe that patients could use for their own insulin injections. Within a decade their firm, Novo Terapeutisk Laboratorium, was selling its product in 40 countries.

Meanwhile, Nordisk introduced a slow-acting insulin in 1936. NPH insulin, launched in the US in 1950, soon became the leading longer-acting insulin. Nordisk later became a major maker of human growth hormone.

During WWII Novo produced its first enzyme, trypsin, used to soften leather. It began producing penicillin in 1947 and during the 1950s developed Heparin, a trypsin-based drug used to treat blood clots. The company unveiled more industrial enzymes in the 1960s.

In 1981 Novo began selling its insulin in the US through a joint venture with E. R. Squibb (now part of Bristol-Myers Squibb).

The next year Novo was the first to produce human insulin (actually a modified form of pig insulin), and in 1983 Nordisk introduced the Nordisk Infuser, a pump that constantly released small quantities of insulin. Two years later Novo debuted the NovoPen, a refillable injector that looked like a fountain pen.

Novo was the world’s #2 insulin maker (and the world’s largest maker of industrial enzymes) when it merged with #3, Nordisk, in 1989.

By combining their research and market share, they were better able to compete globally with then-#1 Eli Lilly. After the merger, Novo Nordisk introduced the NovoLet, the world’s first prefilled, disposable insulin syringe.

Novo Nordisk introduced drugs for depression (Seroxat, 1992), epilepsy (Gabitril, 1995), and hemophilia (NovoSeven, 1995).

The company entered a joint marketing alliance with Johnson & Johnson subsidiary LifeScan, the world’s #1 maker of blood glucose monitors, in 1995. It also began working with Rhône-Poulenc Rorer on estrogen replacement therapies.

Eli Lilly raised a new challenge in 1996 with the FDA approval of Humalog (the US’s first new insulin product in 14 years), which is absorbed faster, giving users more flexibility in their injection schedule.

(Novo Nordisk’s own fast-acting insulin product, NovoLog, received FDA approval four years later.) A 1998 marketing pact with Schering-Plough signaled Novo Nordisk’s desire to boost sales of its diabetes drugs in the US, where Eli Lilly had historically dominated.

In 2000 Novo Nordisk split its health care and enzymes businesses; the split left Novo Nordisk with all the health care operations, while a new company, Novozymes, was formed to carry out the enzyme business.

It bought out the remaining shares in its Brazilian subsidiary, Biobrás, in 2001. In 2002 the company spun off its US-based biotechnology firm, ZymoGenetics. It retained a one-third of the company until selling its shares to Bristol-Myers Squibb in 2010.

Further boosting its portfolio of diabetes and obesity intellectual property, the company acquired two US biopharmaceutical research firms (Calibrium and MB2) for undisclosed amounts in 2015.