When Greg Bradley started the his gym equipment company 14 years ago, someone told him he would never sell outside the island of Ireland.
“I remember thinking, ‘I’m going to prove you wrong’,” he said. “Thankfully, we have been able to do that.”
BLK BOX is based in Newtownabbey – but it has secured contracts with high-profile customers all over the world, from sports teams like Manchester United to chains like PureGym.
Bradley is just one of many success stories, with official figures showing economic activity in Northern Ireland in the second quarter of this year grew faster than the UK and Republic of Ireland.
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BLK BOX works internationally across the EU and markets like the US, Sri Lanka, Maldives, India, Australia and has grown its workforce to 180 staff.
Bradley said Covid had made people realise the importance of their health and “a lot of young people are into going to the gym”.
“We have won high profile contracts and expanding internationally across France, Spain, Germany and other countries,” he told BBC News NI.
He added that the Windsor Framework had also been advantageous compared to English competitors.
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“We’ve been able to win a contract with a large French gym chain, Stade Français rugby team, so it’s actually worked out good for us and we are really doubling down on that.
“There’s still a bit of an education process with it, not everyone knows that we can ship frictionlessly across Europe, they are a bit scared of tariffs but once you explain it, everyone is really interested.”
Mark Pownall is joined by Gary Adshead, Claire Tyrrell and Isabel Vieira to talk about the big events of the week in WA business and politics. In this edition they look at the Perth city council, biggest builders in WA, Satterley management changes, Equus ownership, Oxford Hotel, Innovaero, state funds Cliff Head and, of course, a brief word about the Dockers.
A version of this article appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
Trusts are designed to keep wealth out the public eye, and inheritance battles usually happen behind closed doors. But a first-of-its-kind study of hundreds of contested trust cases offers a rare look at the circumstances that can send heirs to court.
One of the biggest pitfalls for handing down wealth is choosing one child to control a family trust when siblings or other relatives would also benefit, according to the analysis of 640 trust disputes, published in the Washington University Law Review earlier this month.
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Christopher Ryan, one of the study’s authors and a professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, described this specific trustsetup as “an important recipe for conflict.”
“That arrangement could combine ordinary sibling rivalry with a genuine power imbalance,” he told CNBC via email. For instance, he added, giving one child privileges such as discretion over trust distributions can deepen preexisting feelings among siblings that a parent played favorites.
The study identified contested trust disputes by examining thousands of civil filings that were scheduled to come before San Francisco Superior Court between 2014 and 2020. Ryan co-authored the study with Reid Weisbord and David Horton, law professors at Rutgers Law School and University of California, Davis, School of Law, respectively.
Nearly a quarter of the reviewed disputes involved a descendant beneficiary suing another descendant beneficiary who was also a trustee. Many of the petitioners were siblings — whether through blood or marriage — though some may have been grandchildren, noted Horton.
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Nearly all of the petitions involved revocable trusts, a common tool to allow a successor trustee to manage the settlor’s property long after their death.
While trusts are often used to avoid the time and expense of probate, they can draw families into costly disputes that span months or years. The average case, including filings that were settled, lasted 481 days.
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The study found that in 74% of cases a trustee was accused of misconduct, often specifically breach of duty of care or loyalty.In nearly a third of petitions, beneficiaries requested a detailed accounting of the trust’s finances, which Horton said reflects beneficiaries who suspected their trustees were mismanaging funds or ripping them off.
Many of these fights appeared to be driven more by emotion than money, according to Horton. He highlighted the case of the Mar siblings, who spent their trust’s entire cash assets and more than five years in litigation.
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Raymond Mar, who died in 2016, gave his son the right to live rent-free in his home for the rest of his life. The siblings went to court after they disagreed over whether the son could accept a tenant. In 2024, a judge scolded both sides for excessive litigation and ruled for the trust to be dissolved and for the house to be sold. Despite the ruling, Raymond Mar’s daughters filed in October 2025 to deduct attorney fees from their brother’s share of the trust.
Horton said the study’s results suggest that feelings can cloud a litigant’s judgment. When parties refused to settle, people who challenged the trust generally lost. Petitioners’ odds of winning or reaching a settlement dropped by 48 percentage points if their cases required a formal trial rather than a judge ruling based on filings and oral arguments.
“A petitioner who is hellbent on getting everything they want due to emotional reasons is less likely to compromise or recognize that their case is flawed,” Horton said via email.
The study estimated as much as three-quarters of petitions resulted in a settlement. The exact percentage is unclear as about a third of petitions dropped from the docket without a ruling on the merits, but the authors believed many of them were settled.
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To help stave off conflict, the study’s authors said, parents should be proactive about tough conversations and should consider an independent or professional fiduciary.
“Death brings out strong emotions,” Horton said. “It may be a good practice to explain your estate planning choices to your loved ones while you’re alive to flush out any conflict.”
Ryan added that parents cannot rely on provisions that attempt to prevent court battles, such as no-contest clauses, which disinherit beneficiaries who raise legal challenges. The effectiveness of no-contest clauses depends on the state, he said.
The study found that 85% of instances that went to mediation ended in settlement, compared with 47% without it.
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“I would plan for conflict rather than assuming drafting can eliminate it,” he said.
Puzzle number 1,202 of The New York Times’ Connections game challenged solvers Friday with a grid blending words for luxury, mechanical clock parts, a lineup of famous men named Dan, and a wordplay category built around altered scientific terms.
Connections presents players with 16 words that must be sorted into four hidden groups of four, with each group sharing a common category. The puzzle rates each group’s difficulty using a color system: yellow for the most straightforward connection, green for slightly trickier, blue for more difficult, and purple, typically the most wordplay-heavy or misleading group, as the hardest.
For those still working through Friday’s puzzle, here are hints for each category, organized loosely from easiest to hardest, without giving away the specific words involved.
One category groups together words that all describe something upscale, stylish or expensive, the kind of vocabulary someone might use to describe a lavish hotel or an extravagant outfit. A second category brings together technical components found inside a traditional mechanical clock, the kind of vocabulary a clockmaker or watch enthusiast would recognize immediately, even if it is less familiar to everyday puzzle solvers. A third category groups together the surnames of several well-known men who all share the same first name, spanning entertainment, journalism and advice writing. The fourth and trickiest category takes standard scientific vocabulary learned in a biology classroom and alters each word slightly by adding an extra letter, transforming familiar taxonomic terms into words that look similar but mean something entirely different.
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SPOILER WARNING: The full solution to Friday’s Connections puzzle follows below. Stop reading now if you’d rather work through the categories on your own.
Friday’s puzzle resolved into the following four groups. The category Luxe consisted of BOUGIE, FANCY, POSH and SWANK, four words used to describe something stylish, upscale or extravagant. The category Parts of a Mechanical Clock grouped ESCAPEMENT, PENDULUM, RATCHET and SPRING, four technical components found inside traditional clockwork mechanisms. The category Famous Dans brought together AYKROYD, LEVY, RATHER and SAVAGE, referring respectively to actor and Ghostbusters co-creator Dan Aykroyd, Schitt’s Creek co-creator and star Dan Levy, longtime CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather, and journalist and relationship advice columnist Dan Savage. The final and trickiest category, Taxonomic Ranks Plus a Letter, consisted of BORDER, CLASSY, FOAMILY and GENIUS, wordplay entries formed by adding a single letter to the standard biological classification terms “order,” “class,” “family” and “genus,” respectively.
Puzzle guides covering Friday’s grid noted that the clock-related category required more specialized, technical knowledge than the other groups, since words like “escapement” are unlikely to be part of most solvers’ everyday vocabulary despite being fundamental components of how mechanical clocks actually function. The famous-name category similarly demanded recognition of specific public figures rather than relying on word meaning alone, requiring solvers to correctly identify which surnames paired with the first name Dan. The purple wordplay category, meanwhile, rewarded solvers who inspected the words closely for hidden patterns, such as an unexpected extra letter, rather than searching for a more conventional thematic connection between the four entries.
Connections has grown into one of the Times’ most consistently played daily puzzles since its official launch in 2023, expanding the newspaper’s games portfolio well beyond its traditional crossword offerings. Puzzle guides recommend a general strategy of scanning the full grid first for any words that seem to share an obvious connection, then working through the remaining words methodically to identify less immediately apparent categories, an approach puzzle trackers said worked particularly well for Friday’s grid given how distinctly separate the puzzle’s four categories were from one another in terms of subject matter.
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Players attempting Friday’s puzzle are permitted up to four incorrect guesses before the game ends, with each group color-coded upon a correct guess to indicate which of the four difficulty tiers it belongs to. Players looking to track their performance on Friday’s puzzle, or compare notes with friends, can share their results through Connections’ built-in results screen, which uses colored emoji squares to display a player’s guessing sequence without revealing the actual category words, a sharable format that has become a familiar sight across social media in the years since the game’s launch.
With Friday’s puzzle now solved, players will have a fresh set of 16 words and four new hidden categories to work through when Saturday’s edition of Connections goes live at midnight local time, continuing the daily puzzle’s steady run as one of the Times’ most widely shared games alongside Wordle, Strands and the Mini Crossword.
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The council said the acquisition was part of its homelessness support strategy
10:23, 25 Sep 2026Updated 10:29, 25 Sep 2026
Lime Tree Mansions.
Cardiff Council has acquired a 40 apartment building as part of efforts to tackle homelessness in the city.
In a multi-million-pound deal, the exact value of which has not been disclosed, the council has acquired Lime Tree Mansions on Whitchurch Road in the Maindy area of the city.
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The council has bought the apartment scheme from JCPS Homes. Law firm Hugh James acted the council on the deal.
Lynda Thorne, Cardiff Council’s Cabinet Member for Housing and Communities, said: “Cardiff continues to face significant housing and homelessness pressures, which is why we have been exploring a wider range of delivery options alongside our new-build programme to help meet the urgent need for affordable housing.
“The acquisition of Lime Tree Mansions represents an important investment that will enable us to provide additional temporary accommodation for households in need, while supporting our wider efforts to improve housing outcomes across the city.
2We are grateful to Hugh James for their expert support throughout the transaction, helping us secure this acquisition and take another important step towards delivering the homes and housing support that Cardiff residents need.”
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The apartments are currently vacate.
The Hugh James team was led by senior associate in the firm’s commercial property team, Kylie Underhill. She said: “We are proud to have supported Cardiff Council on the acquisition of Lime Tree Mansions.
This was an important transaction for the Council and one which required a focused and collaborative approach to meet the required timeframe. It is always rewarding to support public sector clients on acquisitions which have the potential to deliver real benefit to local communities.”
The deal further reinforces Hugh James’ experience in advising local authorities and public sector bodies on strategic property acquisitions, including residential, regeneration and investment-led projects.
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Caroline O’Flaherty partner in Hugh James’ commercial property team said: “This is a fantastic result and reflects the strength of our Commercial Property team’s public sector expertise. We are proud to have assisted Cardiff Council in its continuing strides to provide vital housing across the city.”
Last year the council acquired the former prime office Scott Harbour building in Cardiff Bay from Rightacres.
In a £28.5m investment Cardiff Council has provided 78 apartments as permanent tenancies. The apartments are mainly occupied by families as part of its strategy of addressing a critical shortage of affordable homes.
LONDON — Prince William and Catherine, Princess of Wales, may be among the most recognizable royals in the world, but according to a former palace employee, staff members saved their contact information under a set of far less regal nicknames, alongside details of how heavily the royal family has relied on WhatsApp to stay in touch with relatives and staff.
Jack Stooks, a former royal gardener who worked for King Charles at Highgrove for decades, shared the details in an interview with GB News, describing how the royal family communicated privately both with each other and with staff. “The Royal Family are big WhatsApp users,” Stooks said, describing a range of group chats used across the family, including one for friends and a separate family group that included Prince William, Zara Tindall, Peter Phillips, and Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.
According to Stooks, senior royals shared their personal phone numbers with trusted members of staff to allow for more practical, direct communication. He said both William and Prince Harry actively encouraged aides to contact them through the messaging app whenever needed, rather than relying solely on more formal channels. To protect their privacy, however, staff reportedly avoided saving the royals under their real names, instead using coded nicknames. Stooks revealed that William was listed in staff phones as “Bobcat,” while Harry went by “Baz.” Following Kate’s marriage to William, she was reportedly added to contacts as “Mrs Bobcat.”
Beyond the nicknames themselves, Stooks offered a broader account of William’s working style with palace staff, describing him as considerate of employees’ existing workloads. He said the Prince of Wales made a habit of checking whether staff members were already busy before asking them for additional help, and that William would often thank staff afterward by telling them, “You’re a legend.”
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Stooks also reflected on King Charles’ relationship with technology during his time working at Highgrove, describing the monarch as considerably less engaged with mobile devices than his sons. According to Stooks, Charles owned a simple mobile phone but rarely used it regularly during that period. Stooks said William and Harry frequently encouraged their father to embrace newer technology, but that Charles generally preferred a more traditional approach and showed limited interest in using his phone on a consistent basis.
The account offers a rare glimpse into the more informal, day-to-day dynamics between senior royals and the staff who work closely with them, a side of royal life that rarely receives public attention given the family’s general preference for formality in public-facing communications. The described use of WhatsApp for both personal and work-related messaging reflects a broader pattern common across many modern workplaces and families, even as the specific coded nicknames used to protect the royals’ identities in staff members’ phones point to the particular privacy and security considerations that come with working in close proximity to some of the world’s most closely watched public figures.
Stooks’ comments add to a broader body of insider accounts from former royal staff members that have periodically surfaced in British media over the years, offering the public occasional windows into aspects of royal family life that differ considerably from the family’s carefully managed public image. Such accounts typically cannot be independently verified beyond the credibility of the individual sharing them, and neither Kensington Palace nor representatives for William, Kate or Harry have issued any public confirmation or denial of the specific details Stooks described regarding the nicknames or the family’s use of WhatsApp.
The revelations arrive at a moment of heightened public attention on the relationship between William and Harry more broadly, following Harry and Meghan Markle’s return to the United Kingdom in late August and the more recent publication of excerpts from Charles Spencer’s memoir about Princess Diana, both of which have kept the royal family’s internal dynamics under close media scrutiny in recent weeks. Against that backdrop, lighter anecdotes such as Stooks’ account of staff nicknames and WhatsApp habits offer a notable contrast to the more serious and often tense coverage that has otherwise characterized recent reporting on relations between the brothers.
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Stooks’ extended tenure working at Highgrove, King Charles’ private residence in Gloucestershire, gave him a vantage point on the family’s private habits and communications that few outside the household would typically have access to, lending a degree of specificity to his account that has helped it circulate widely since it was first published. Even so, as with most insider accounts from former staff, the details remain unverified beyond Stooks’ own recollection and cannot be independently confirmed through any official palace source.
With no official response yet issued addressing the specific claims about the royal family’s phone nicknames or messaging habits, Stooks’ account is likely to remain one of several recent behind-the-scenes anecdotes shaping public perception of the more private, informal side of royal family life, even as the family’s official public engagements continue to be defined by considerably more formal presentation.
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Every time Novo urges investors to look ahead, Eli Lilly gives them another reason to look back at its widening lead over the Danish drugmaker.
Novo this week laid out an ambitious strategy to reignite growth beyond its top-selling Wegovy and Ozempic injections, which face patent expirations in key markets in the early 2030s. At its Capital Markets Day on Monday, the company promised a pipeline of potential blockbuster products, including drugs that would diversify from its core area of obesity and diabetes.
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But Wall Street so far isn’t convinced by Novo’s road map. Investors pummeled the drugmaker’s stock, underwhelmed by growth targets that matched industry averages rather than outpacing them. They were also skeptical of the lack of clarity around a near-term turnaround plan.
At the same time, Lilly continues to chip away at its rival’s market share — including in the burgeoning obesity pill space.
Novo hopes to keep its early lead in the oral weight loss market after the successful launch of the Wegovy pill, months ahead of Lilly’s rival pill, Foundayo. Novo CEO Mike Doustdar told CNBC on Tuesday that early adoption suggests patients may have been waiting for an alternative to injections.
“If that continues to the extent that we have seen, then yes, mathematically, by the end of the decade, there is going to be a larger portion on the pill than injectable,” he said.
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But Lilly is hot on its heels, backed by its commercial firepower.
In an exclusive interview with CNBC on Monday, Lilly CEO Dave Ricks said the drugmaker’s new obesity pill, Foundayo, is slowly gaining ground in the U.S. One-third of new GLP-1 pill patients are taking Lilly’s drug, and its share of that oral market is growing “week by week,” Ricks told CNBC in Houston, Texas.
Lilly is also claiming an early lead in the newly established Medicare market for obesity drugs, after the federal program started covering those treatments in July. Ricks said 700,000 seniors have started GLP-1s in Medicare following the start of coverage, and 70% of those patients are on Lilly’s drugs.
He added that Medicare patients have shown a particular preference for Lilly’s obesity injection Zepbound, which has helped the company become the dominant player in the broader market. Lilly said in August that it held about a 61% share in the U.S. GLP-1 space in the second quarter, while Novo held roughly 39%.
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While investors appeared to want more detail on Novo’s plans for post-Wegovy and Ozempic growth at Monday’s investor event, the drugmaker is betting that there could be more than one successor to the mega-blockbuster franchise.
For Novo, the challenge is not solely replacing revenue from Wegovy and Ozempic when they lose exclusivity and face more generic competition. It is convincing investors that the company can regain momentum in a GLP-1 market it helped establish years before Lilly came into the picture, even as its rival continues to build its lead.
Lilly likely to keep its upper hand
Even as Novo works to turn itself around after two bruising years marked by multiple setbacks, analysts say Lilly has several advantages that could help it maintain its spot at the top of the obesity drug market.
“Lilly is in the leadership position, and we think that they will remain in this strong leadership position, given their substantial commercial advantage, their global initiative to globalize their products further, and then their advanced pipeline of novel candidates as well,” Leerink Partners analyst David Risinger said in an interview.
Risinger expects Foundayo’s share of the oral GLP-1 market to continue growing, pointing to Lilly’s “tremendous commercial firepower” and greater spending capacity to promote the drug. But Risinger expects Foundayo to eventually dominate the pill market globally, in part because it should be less costly to manufacture at scale than the Wegovy pill.
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Foundayo is a small-molecule drug, which can be manufactured differently and more easily at scale than peptide drugs such as Novo’s Wegovy pill and existing injectable GLP-1s. While Foundayo leads to less weight loss on average than the Wegovy pill, it doesn’t carry any food and water restrictions, which could be a selling point for some patients.
Novo executives this week did not directly answer questions about whether Foundayo is easier to manufacture and scale. Novo is investing billions in manufacturing facilities and, executives said this week, the company aims to be able to increase the number of patients on its GLP-1 drugs tenfold by 2030. Executives have repeatedly said supply is not an issue and that Novo will not face the same shortages it did with injectable versions in the earlier days of Ozempic and Wegovy.
For Lilly, Zepbound’s higher efficacy than the original doses of Wegovy has also been key to securing its market share lead over Novo in the injectable space. Novo has sought to narrow that efficacy gap with a higher-dose version of Wegovy launched this year, which leads to roughly similar weight loss as Zepbound.
But Lilly is not standing still.
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The company has a pipeline of next-generation obesity drugs that could extend its lead beyond Zepbound and Foundayo, Risinger said. That includes retatrutide, a triple-agonist that targets three gut hormones and has produced greater weight loss than existing obesity drugs in clinical trials. Lilly plans to seek approval for the drug in the first quarter of 2027.
Lilly is also developing a weekly injection that targets the amylin receptor, a pathway involved in appetite and satiety that differs from those targeted by existing treatments. Risinger said the drug has “much greater potential than the Street currently realizes,” particularly because a large population of patients does not tolerate or respond adequately to GLP-1 drugs.
“We’re quite enthusiastic about the company’s pipeline for follow-on agents beyond Zepbound and Foundayo,” Risinger said.
While investors have been laser-focused on the headline weight loss number of Novo and Lilly’s next-generation drugs, Novo sees a fragmented market ahead.
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Chief Scientific Officer Martin Holst Lange told CNBC this week that the breadth of Novo’s future pipeline would give physicians and patients more options and increase uptake. The company is studying the effect of new drugs on factors like tolerability, muscle preservation, their effect on obesity-linked conditions, convenience and more.
“We can’t do that with one single drug,” Lange said.
Novo bets on its next generation
Mike Doustdar, left, CEO of Novo Nordisk, and David Ricks, CEO of Eli Lilly, listen as President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office during an event about weight loss drugs on Nov. 6, 2025.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | Afp | Getty Images
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For Novo, the answer to Lilly’s dominance is a sweeping bet on what comes next.
Novo is targeting the launch of more than five potential multi-blockbuster drugs by 2030 and more than 150 billion Danish kroner, or about $23 billion, in pipeline sales by 2035. It also plans to have at least five Phase 3 programs in obesity and diabetes and another five across other therapeutic areas, as it tries to diversify its pipeline.
The scale of that plan highlights the problem Novo is trying to solve. It has patent protection on semaglutide, the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic, until 2032. Those two drugs account for roughly two-thirds of Novo’s sales, racking up combined sales of $31 billion in 2025.
Novo needs to convince investors that its pipeline of new drugs can fill the hole when generic competitors enter the market. So far, it hasn’t been able to shake off a multiyear stock selloff after a series of setbacks.
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The new lineup the company is banking on includes CagriSema, Novo’s combination of semaglutide and a drug called cagrilintide that targets amylin, which is expected to launch early next year. That will be followed by standalone cagrilintide and a higher-dose version of CagriSema in 2028, among other new obesity products. Wall Street isn’t particularly excited about CagriSema, whose previous late-stage clinical trials disappointed investors because the drug showed weight loss efficacy below expectations.
Novo, however, maintains CagriSema is effectiveand differentiated enough to be commercially viable. Lange told CNBC individualized doses may be the way forward for the company’s next big bet and highlighted new late-stage data released this week. It showed CagriSema produced greater weight loss than tirzepatide — the active ingredient in Zepbound and Lilly’s Mounjaro — in a head-to-head trial among people with Type 2 diabetes.
Meanwhile, Novo is still betting on the growth of the obesity pill market.
Novo believes market share isn’t the only measure of success investors should look at going forward. The sheer volume matters too, Doustdar told CNBC, highlighting that the obesity market can still grow significantly.
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Novo plans to scale manufacturing capacity enough to serve 15 million people taking oral obesity treatments by 2030, and has said pills could ultimately account for as much as half of the global obesity drug market. The company says its Wegovy pill has already reached 7 million U.S. prescriptions, with 90% of those sales coming through cash-pay channels.
The problem is that investors appear to be demanding more than a promising pipeline.
Analysts on Monday pressed Novo executives on their pricing assumptions, questioning whether the company’s next pipeline of drugs can sustain premium price points once Wegovy and Ozempic lose exclusivity.
Novo’s 2026 to 2030 revenue outlook also targets growth in line with its pharmaceutical peers, rather than a return to the outsized growth from when Wegovy and Ozempic first boomed.
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That leaves Novo with a difficult balancing act. It has to defend its existing obesity franchise against Lilly while simultaneously investing in the drugs that are supposed to replace it.
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