Ozempic’s contradictory math has a simple answer

OZEMPIC and Wegovy have been shrinking people’s bottoms, and now they might also be shrinking corporations’ bottom lines. What happens when people eat less, drink less, and eventually weigh less? The market has spent October’s earnings season doing the math, and consequently developed indigestion over what this will cost us.

This year, demand for the drug generically known as semaglutide has been insatiable as patients use it to increase satiety and turn off the constant hum of “food noise” that plagues a food addict’s brain. Kilograms have slid off bodies with freakish speed – users are reporting weight loss of 10 to 22 per cent in their first year of use.

Since then, market sentiment about smaller appetites has swung between alarm and relief more wildly than a yo-yo dieter’s weighing scale.