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The headlines about weight loss drugs have been hard to avoid—even if you’ve long ago stopped tracking which celebrities have responded to rumors that their rapid transformations were pharmaceutically induced.
Ozempic, along with its cousins Wegovy and amycretin, have transformed the treatment landscape for diabetes and other conditions—and boosted the value of Danish pharmaceutical manufacturer Novo Nordisk to $100 billion above Denmark’s entire GDP in the process.
But some of the biggest barriers for many looking to try this medication have been cost and access. Drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic are priced at about $1,000 per month without insurance coverage, while even patients with insurance are having trouble getting a prescription.
Enter telehealth platform Hims & Hers. The digital pharmacy announced today that it will begin offering “compounded” versions of these drugs to its customers. Its version of the weight loss shots include the same magic ingredient, GLP-1, but cost only $199 per month—over 80% cheaper than the brand names without insurance. Hims & Hers shares jumped 30% today on the news.
Hims & Hers, which has reached about $1 billion in sales by offering cheaper, off-label versions of popular drugs such as Viagra and hair regrowth medication, is up a staggering 98% year-to-date. It announced its weight loss program in December, but offering GLP-1 prescriptions via its telehealth platform will certainly give that program a shot in the arm.
Shares of Novo Nordisk, the dominant player in the weight-loss drug market, have surged 447% over the past five years as it rolled out some of the first GLP-1 medication brands, but the company has also faced supply constraints due to growing demand. While the brand-name shots are under a patent until 2032, the FDA allows pharmacies to make “compounded” versions of these drugs using the same key ingredient, GLP-1, imitating Ozempic and Wegovy. Yet these compounded drugs, like the one Hims & Hers is offering, are not actually FDA approved—and therefore aren’t held to the same safety standards.
In a press release, Hims & Hers CEO Andrew Dudum said that the platform has “leveraged our size and scale to secure access to one of the highest-quality supplies of compounded GLP-1 injections available today”.
The platform follows Ro, another telehealth pharmacy that offers its own version of weight loss shots. Weight Watchers also bought prescription platform Sequence last year to get into offering GLP-1 medication.—LB