Hims & Hers Health (HIMS) stock soared Monday, ending the day up over 40% as Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk (NVO) said it had agreed to distribute its products through the Hims platform, ending a longstanding feud between the companies.
Novo Nordisk announced that customers will “soon have access” to the drugmaker’s wildly popular Ozempic and Wegovy injectables, as well as its Wegovy pill — all different versions of Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide weight-loss drug — through the Hims platform.
“Our goal is simple: ensure that every patient who can benefit from our medicines has the opportunity to access them, wherever they choose to receive care,” Mike Doustdar, president and CEO of Novo Nordisk, said in a statement.
Hims said in a separate press release that as part of the deal, it “will no longer advertise compounded GLP-1 offerings on its platform or in its marketing, and existing patients will have the opportunity to transition to FDA-approved medicines when determined clinically appropriate by their providers.”
The deal ends an ongoing conflict between the two companies over allegations from Novo Nordisk that Hims was distributing copycat versions of its Wegovy weight-loss pill and violating patent protections.
Novo Nordisk shares gained roughly 2% in mid-morning trading on the news.
Hims announced in February that it would begin offering off-brand, compounded versions of Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy. Novo Nordisk called the product “an unapproved, inauthentic, and untested knockoff” of its own formulations.
Hims dropped the plan to distribute the off-brand Wegovy formulation two days later, after the US Food and Drug Administration announced a crackdown on copycat drugs and said it would cut off access to the ingredients Hims would need to produce them.
As part of the deal announced Monday morning, Novo Nordisk is dropping its copyright lawsuit against Hims, according to the Associated Press.
This deal also marks the second time the companies have reportedly entered into a partnership of this kind. Novo Nordisk exited the first deal within two months after accusing Hims of refusing to stop distributing copycats of Novo Nordisk’s drugs.
“The big issue with Hims is that we had an agreement that the mass compounding would stop, and unfortunately, it didn’t stop,” Ludovic Helfgott, executive vice president of product and portfolio strategy at Novo, said in an interview with Bloomberg. “That’s why we ended the partnership.”
Jake Conley is a breaking news reporter covering US equities for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X at @byjakeconley or email him at jake.conley@yahooinc.com.