That’s the message from many corporate executives who have lately been peppered with questions about how Wegovy, Ozempic and other drugs widely used for weight loss may impact their bottom line.
One company even opened its earnings call by asking analysts to please shut up already about the GLP-1s. “I’m aware that there is with GLP-1s one dominant topic in healthcare research overall,” Dominik Heger, head of investor relations at dialysis company Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co. FMS, -0.44%, said near the start of the company’s call. “But we would appreciate if we could focus in this call on the quarterly business developments.
Facing GLP-1 questions on earnings calls in recent weeks, executives have turned to a few popular defenses. Many, like Anheuser-Busch’s Doukeris, say their products are relatively healthy, so they’re not threatened by the GLP-1 craze. What’s more, many executives say, the whole issue is overhyped because relatively few people currently take these medications, and there’s not enough data to show how the drugs might affect consumer behavior over the long term.
At PepsiCo Inc. PEP, -0.10%, the maker of Tostitos, Doritos and other snacks, CEO Ramon Laguarta also responded to an analyst’s question about GLP-1s on the company’s October earnings call by emphasizing the company’s efforts to make its products healthier. Over the past five or six years, he said, the company has cut sodium, fat and sugar and trimmed portion sizes. So far, he said, the impact of the drugs “is negligible in our business.
Some companies have emphasized that there’s not enough data yet to draw any conclusions about the drugs’ impact. “We’ve spent a lot of time digging into the most robust data that’s available,” Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. KDP, +0.21% CEO Robert Gamgort said in response to a GLP-1 question on the company’s October earnings call. The data “is really limited at this point,” he said. Even so, he added, “in the beverage industry, I really think that there is little to be concerned about here.
Medical-device makers, whose stocks in some cases have suffered more direct hits from GLP-1 anxieties, have fired back with more data-driven arguments. At Teleflex Inc. TFX, -0.71%, products that have potential direct exposure to increased use of GLP-1 drugs account for about 1% to 2% of the company’s total revenues, CEO Liam Kelly said on the company’s early November earnings call.
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