NEW YORK, Jan 9, 2026, 10:58 (EST)
- CICC initiates coverage on Novo Nordisk’s U.S. ADR with an outperform rating and a $73.50 target
- Amazon Pharmacy begins offering Novo’s Wegovy weight-loss pill via insurance and cash-pay options
- Novo’s ADR closed at $57.34 on Thursday, beating the broader market, a Zacks note said
CICC initiated coverage on Novo Nordisk’s U.S.-listed American depositary receipt (ADR) — a U.S.-traded certificate that represents shares in a foreign company — with an outperform rating and a $73.50 price target, a Finwire report carried by MarketScreener showed on Friday. Novo’s Copenhagen-listed stock was up about 3%.
The call lands as Novo tries to widen access to Wegovy in pill form, a key test for the maker of Ozempic after profit warnings and sliding shares last year. Investors have watched Eli Lilly pull ahead in the U.S. obesity market, and any hint of steadier growth is getting airtime.
Amazon Pharmacy said it now offers Novo’s Wegovy weight-loss pill through insurance plans and a cash-pay option, with eligible commercial-insurance customers paying $25 for a month’s supply and uninsured customers paying from $149 a month. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the pill in December; it uses semaglutide, the same active ingredient in injectable Wegovy and diabetes drug Ozempic. Amazon said the pill will also be available through its kiosks in the next few weeks.
The $73.50 target sits about 28% above Thursday’s close of $57.34, when Novo’s ADR rose 1.36% and beat the S&P 500, Zacks Equity Research wrote. Zacks expects Novo to report quarterly earnings per share of about $0.90 and projects full-year earnings of $3.57 per share on revenue of $47.95 billion.
In a separate note, Seeking Alpha contributor Louis Gerard called Novo his “top pick for 2026,” pointing to the Wegovy pill as a catalyst and to pipeline candidates CagriSema and Amycretin. Gerard said the shares trade at a “historically low” price-to-earnings ratio and put 124% upside on the stock in his discounted cash flow model — a valuation method that estimates future cash and discounts it back to today. Seeking Alpha
Novo’s push into pills puts it into a race with Lilly, whose experimental oral GLP-1 drug orforglipron can be taken at any time of day, Reuters has reported. GLP-1 drugs mimic a gut hormone that helps curb appetite and lower blood sugar; analysts expect the class to drive an obesity market worth $150 billion a year by the next decade, Reuters said.
But the pill’s commercial lift depends heavily on consumers paying out of pocket if insurers balk, shifting demand away from the usual system where health plans negotiate prices. Dr. W. Timothy Garvey, an obesity researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who worked on the pill trials, said an oral option could help keep patients on treatment long term. Ro chief executive Zachariah Reitano called a pill “a much easier on-ramp” for people who do not want injections. Reuters
Novo’s ADR has risen about 15% over the last month, Zacks data showed, as investors weigh whether easier access and lower cash prices can rebuild momentum in 2026. For now, the new CICC target sketches out one bullish case — but this is a crowded trade, and the next prescription and coverage signals will do the talking.
