4 ms·

Novo Nordisk is now Europe’s most valuable company. Congrats to them.

• throwaway35777 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • Scandiravian 3y ago
    I get that point, but given that Ozempic sells for significantly less in other countries I think it's worth considering why it's that much more expensive in the US
    • SmellTheGlove 3y ago
      Exactly this. And it’s because the US consumer is paying for the R&D on drugs for the rest of the world. We could balance this out a bit by passing a law that says the retail cost of a drug in the US can’t be any higher than the median of the EU + Canada (or something approximating the set of developed economies).
      • Scandiravian 3y ago
        I do get that point, but I'm not sure it would actually work Drug prices in the US are, in part, higher because FDA requirements are much, much stricter so it's more difficult to actually get a drug approved. It's simply more expensive to launch a product in the US, so if it becomes less profitable it might not be worth the risk for companies You could also risk that drug companies launch an analogue of the effective compound in the US to circumvent such a regulation, since it would be two different drugs The reason it's cheaper in Europe is in some part due to having single payer healthcare, which mean that there's a single entity negotiating purchase prices for the entire country, which improves bargaining power significantly
    • xyzal 3y ago
      Isn't everything healthcare-related much more expensive in the US?
      • Scandiravian 3y ago
        It is, which is why I think it's silly to focus on a single drug, when I think it's a pretty obvious systemic issue in how the US has structured its healthcare system
    • pfdietz 3y ago
      It's because those other countries are free riders. I think we should do the same thing in reverse on limiting CO2 emissions. How does that sound?
      • Scandiravian 3y ago
        Can you elaborate on how other countries are free riders? It's not like the board at Novo has a board meeting where they decide "we hate the US so lets charge them more for our products" The simple fact is that the US has higher drug prices because it has created a healthcare system that allows pharmaceutical companies to charge much more for their products The way to lower drug prices is to change the system to prevent that
        • pfdietz 3y ago
          They have monopsonies. The drug maker has a choice of either losing some operating profit or going along with the price they set. The free riding is in these countries not paying a price that pays their share of the development cost of the drug.
          • Ekaros 3y ago
            These companies are not selling drugs at loss in these countries. And these countries are not forcing the sale of drugs in the first place. The companies choose to take some profit over none. That does not make smarter countries that do negotiation anyway free riders.
            • pfdietz 3y ago
              Indeed, they are not selling the drugs at a price that is below their marginal costs. But they are also not selling drugs at a price that compensates them for the development cost, including the cost of drugs that didn't reach the market. They are free riding on this latter part.
              • 3y ago
  • ethanbond 3y ago
    They almost certainly didn’t cure obesity. Food manufacturers are already scrambling to figure out how to make foods even more compelling and less satiating. Regression to the mean, and our grocery selection will suffer further.
• Scandiravian 3y ago
  Their market cap is also bigger than the GDP of their home country (Denmark) As a Dane that's pretty terrifying to me (see Nokia and Nortel)
  • nabla9 3y ago
    Apples to oranges comparison. Revenue to GDP is better. Novo Nordisk $35 billion in revenue. GDP of Denmark:$400 billion. Their revenue is roughly 9% of GDP.
    • Scandiravian 3y ago
      I think that depends on what I'm trying to illustrate There's a lot of pensions and savings tied up in Novo stock, so a potential downturn would have a catastrophic impact on the danish citizens The danish economy is, to a large extend, dependent on the stock price of Novo, not its revenue
      • nabla9 3y ago
        Asset values should be compared against asset values. Novo Nordisk makes 17% of Danish stock index. Vestas and DSV are both 10% (Foreign investors' ownership of listed Danish shares is over 50%, so I assume the situation is similar to NN when you remove the foundation owned stocks)
        • Scandiravian 3y ago
          I'm honestly not sure if you're trolling here - you seem to purposefully be missing the point and I'm honestly not sure what you're trying to achieve here If a country's largest company based on market cap is bigger than the next 50 companies combined, is the most popular stock among the countries retail investors, and is the current sole driver of economic growth in said country, that's a significant risk Making a comparison between the value generated in a country compared to the total price of a company is a way to illustrate how massive the company actually is - same as when making a comparison to how many years I'd need to work to have earned as much as Jeff Bezos net worth
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]