GLP 1 Drugs Availability Booms

Insight Focus

GLP-1 drugs consumer acceptance is changing rapidly. Until a few years ago they were merely drugs used to help control type-2 diabetes. More recently they’ve been hailed as miracle weight-loss drugs favoured by the rich and influential.

Now they seem to be moving towards being standard medical infrastructure, perhaps even part of the consumer drugs landscape like paracetamol, antihistamines and loperamide. Prices are falling faster than we’d expected, generics are coming and uptake is rapidly accelerating, especially now that GLP-1 drugs are available in pill form.

These are major developments for the world’s food and drink producers, and farmers, whether they realise it or not. 

GLP-1 Sales Keep Rising

GLP-1 sales are rising rapidly. But this isn’t translating directly into ever-increasing margins for the big two manufacturers, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, because the prices they can charge are falling. While this is bad news for both companies, it’s good news for consumers who wish to take the drugs, as they are becoming more affordable.

For example, Novo Nordisk’s latest quarterly financial results showed like-for-like revenue down 4% year on year at constant exchange rates, even though their GLP-1 sales for obesity treatment rose by more than 20%.

Part of the problem is that the company discounts entry-doses, and it has a lot of new GLP-1 users. But part of the problem is also pressure on prices from governments and, in some markets, generic manufacturers.

Eli Lilly showed a similar pattern. The company raised its full-year revenue guidance by around USD 2 billion, owing to its sales performance to date. But executives highlighted in their recent quarterly earnings that their own pricing power is slowly diminishing too, especially in the US. This was framed as a positive, with lower prices helping to attract new users.

In summary, more people are using GLP-1 drugs, they are becoming available through increasing numbers of channels and prices are falling. This resembles a virtuous cycle for GLP-1 adoption.

Oral GLP‑1 Breakthrough

Part of the recent growth in GLP-1 sales come from pill versions of the drugs. In its first full quarter of sales in the USA, Novo Nordisk’s pill version of semaglutide, oral Wegovy, became one of the fastest drug launches of all time.

• There were 1.3 million prescriptions in Q1, taking the drug above 2 million prescriptions since launch.

• 65% of new US GLP-1 prescriptions in the quarter were for Wegovy.

• One bank estimates that 80% of oral Wegovy users are new to GLP-1 drugs.

Source: Novo Nordisk and IQVIA Xponent

This is interesting because our assumption had been that fear of needles was a potential barrier to GLP-1 uptake. Pills make it much easier to take GLP-1 drugs, and not just because of the needles.

Pills don’t require cold supply chains, which do not exist at scale in many regions. Home storage is also therefore simplified. More people are more used to taking pills than self-administering injections. Pills may also help people mentally move from seeing GLP-1 drugs as treatment, and instead push the drugs into being part of their routine, perhaps helping to remove stigma around taking them.

Eli Lilly’s daily oral GLP‑1 drug Foundayo (orforglipron) also launched in Q2’26. We don’t have much in the way of concrete data for this drug.

More Patients, but Uptake Still Small

Put this together and we can see that GLP-1 drugs are still on track to become major blockbusters.

Source: Drug Discovery and Development

Novo Nordisk confirmed in their reporting that more than 4 million patients around the world are using GLP-1 drugs for obesity treatment. Eli Lilly’s reporting implies a further 1 – 2.5 million people are using their GLP-1 drugs for obesity treatment.

These are big numbers. But we need to remember that virtually all the sales are in high-income cohorts in affluent countries, notably the US. And we also need to remember that around 6 million people globally is a tiny fraction of the overall obesity market.

Source: Novo Nordisk

For example, Novo Nordisk’s own estimates show there are almost 430 million people with a body mass index above 35. That is to say that around 5% of the world’s population is obese with a high risk of health complications.

The addressable market is therefore large and largely untapped. Lower prices and increased government payments/programs should lead to even faster adoption in the coming quarters.

What Do we Mean by Government Payments/Programs?

We’ve always been intrigued by the possibility that a government buys widespread supplies of GLP-1 drugs to make available to their population at a discount. In a conversation with Jonathan Kingsman in October 2025, we speculated that the NHS estimates obesity costs the UK GBP 11.4 billion each year. With around 10 million obese adults in the UK, once the drugs become cheaper than GBP 95 per month, it becomes beneficial for the UK government to buy GLP-1 drugs and make them available for free to eligible patients. The cost/benefit analysis becomes positive.

Prices are already trending in that direction, and now the NHS is moving towards our speculative view.

The UK’s drug watchdog, NICE, has recommended that semaglutide be used to treat patients who have a body mass index (BMI) of more than 27 and established cardiovascular disease. They argue that “the cost-effectiveness estimates for semaglutide are within the range that NICE considers an acceptable use of NHS resources.”

As a result, NHS England is required to fund treatment within 90 days. This could lead to more than 1 million new GLP-1 patients alone in the UK, and, because it’s on the NHS, the GLP-1 drugs will be free to eligible patients.

This is another step on the GLP-1 journey we described before, where they stop being obesity treatment and start being part of standard medical infrastructure. It’s likely other governments follow the UK’s lead in the coming months.

Generics

All of the discussion above is for branded GLP-1 drugs, like Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound and Foundayo. But we’ve previously highlighted how 2026 is a big year for GLP-1 drugs because semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, comes off-patent in India, China, Canada and Brazil this year.

Generic Ozempic has already been launched in India, and availability is widespread. One online commentator reported being able to secure a 0.25mg dose of semaglutide over the counter from a pharmacy for the Rupee equivalent of USD 11.

In this context, it was interesting that Novo Nordisk reported 40% growth in semaglutide sales in India in April, the first full month after its patent protection expired. It’s possible that lower-cost generics may be expanding the overall size of India’s GLP-1 market rather than taking market share from branded GLP-1s.

We will need to continue to monitor this, but it’s possible there’s a future for India where prices collapse, sales increase and usage becomes normalised. That would be big news for the sugar market and food/beverage companies.