👋 Good morning! Happy earnings season to those who celebrate. And judging by this week’s calls, guidance revisions, and investor reactions… not everyone is popping champagne.

This was a big week for pharma earnings, which means this issue is wall-to-wall commentary, confidence, caution, and a few carefully worded “we feel good about our long-term strategy” soundbites. Pfizer, Merck, GSK, AbbVie, Novartis, Amgen… everyone showed up with slides and opinions.

And yes, the story everyone actually wants to read about, Novo vs Lilly and the GLP-1 arms race, is waiting for you in the Deep Dive. Strap in.

💰 Pfizer Bets $10B on Monthly GLP-1 Convenience
Patients kept losing weight after switching to monthly dosing of Pfizer’s GLP-1 in a Phase 2b trial, validating its $10 billion Metsera acquisition. Placebo adjusted weight loss hit 10 percent to 12.3 percent at Week 28 with no plateau in sight, putting Pfizer squarely in the competitive range. Analysts liked the direction but wanted more differentiation, and investors agreed as shares slid 3.3 percent. Still, Pfizer says ten Phase III obesity trials are coming this year, and management insists convenience and tolerability can still carve out real market share.

🗺️ Merck Maps a $70B Future After Keytruda
Merck used earnings week to do something rare in Big Pharma: talk calmly about life after its biggest drug ever. CEO Robert Davis said the company sees more than $70 billion in annual revenue potential from new growth drivers by the mid-2030s, more than double Keytruda’s expected peak. Oncology still dominates, but newer assets like Winrevair and Capvaxive are starting to pull their weight. The wildcard remains Gardasil, which continues to slide in China and Japan even as Merck defends its post-2028 footing.

🙅‍♀️ GSK Says No to GLP-1 FOMO
New CEO Luke Miels opened his first earnings call with a philosophy statement: be more product centric. GSK posted solid 2025 growth and reaffirmed its long term revenue target, but made it clear it has no interest in joining the GLP-1 arms race. Instead, the company is betting on downstream obesity complications like liver fibrosis with efimosfermin alfa. Translation: let others fight for weight loss headlines while GSK goes after what comes next.

💵 AbbVie’s Immunology Engine Keeps Printing
Skyrizi and Rinvoq once again did the heavy lifting, driving nearly half of AbbVie’s $61.1 billion in 2025 sales and surpassing Humira’s historic peak. Management keeps talking up oncology and neuroscience, but immunology remains the company’s profit engine. Early Parkinson’s traction and a toe dip into obesity R&D hint at diversification, but the message was clear: this replacement strategy is working.

🧗 Novartis Keeps Buying Through the Patent Cliff
Facing the largest patent expiry in its history, Novartis is not slowing its dealmaking. CEO Vas Narasimhan reaffirmed a strategy focused on sub-$2 billion early stage deals and near-launch assets, pointing to three major acquisitions in 2025 as proof of execution. Growth drivers like Kisqali and Pluvicto are offsetting pressure from Entresto, and management says stability returns by year end.

🤷‍♂️ Amgen Defies FDA While Posting $36.7B Year
The company refused to pull Tavneos despite regulator concerns, as MariTide remains its long-term obesity wildcard.

⚖️ NIH Director Finally Draws a Line on Vaccines
Jayanta Bhattacharya told senators vaccines do not cause autism while sidestepping broader questions about research disruption.

👋 Sanofi CEO Gets Slapped for Vaccine Claims
UK regulators ruled Paul Hudson undermined confidence in Pfizer’s RSV vaccine with overly bold public comments.

🌏 India Puts $1.1B Behind Biologics Ambitions
The government is building institutes and trial infrastructure to capture 5 percent of the global biopharma market.

📝 Rare Pediatric Vouchers Are Back
Congress revived the FDA priority review voucher program through 2029, reopening a lucrative incentive pipeline.

🙄 FDA Voucher Program Faces Transparency Heat
Lawmakers questioned the legality and secrecy of the Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher awards.

When investors talk about the GLP-1 weight-loss battle, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are always the headliners. This earnings week made one thing crystal clear: Lilly is sprinting while Novo is trying to tie its shoes.

Novo Nordisk’s 2026 outlook surprised Wall Street, and not in a good way. The Danish drugmaker forecast that sales and operating profit could drop by 5 to 13 percent this year, mainly due to intensifying U.S. pricing pressure and growing competition. The company’s shares sank sharply after the warning, erasing recent gains and turning its year-to-date stock performance negative. Even though 2025 sales grew and its new oral Wegovy pill launch has early uptake, the softened guidance triggered a stark market reaction. Novo admitted that pricing pressure is “unprecedented,” and while international markets may grow, patent expirations and lower U.S. prices are dampening near-term expectations.

Eli Lilly’s story this quarter was almost the exact opposite. The company crushed fourth-quarter expectations with $19.3 billion in revenue, a 43 percent year-over-year increase, as its tirzepatide franchise (Mounjaro and Zepbound) powered results. Lilly’s GLP-1 drugs more than doubled sales compared with a year earlier, and management backed it up with aggressive 2026 guidance of $80 billion to $83 billion in revenue, a roughly 25 percent increase over 2025. Investors responded with enthusiasm, lifting Lilly’s stock ~10 percent.

The contrast is stark and telling. Novo is grappling with pricing concessions and slowing U.S. momentum at a time when the market expects relentless growth from weight-loss drugs. Lilly, meanwhile, is riding a virtuous cycle of volume growth that has largely offset pricing headwinds and is doubling down on manufacturing and new indications while introducing an upcoming oral GLP-1, orforglipron, that could further extend its lead.

Investors are pricing the divergence accordingly. Novo’s share performance is under pressure after its cautious outlook, while Lilly’s confident guidance and booming tirzepatide sales have reinforced its position as the dominant player in the rapidly expanding obesity and diabetes space. The GLP-1 era is far from over, but for now the scoreboard tilts heavily in Lilly’s favor.

That is the prize the U.S. government is dangling to jumpstart broad spectrum antiviral development. BARDA’s new SMART Prize targets viruses like dengue, Zika, and West Nile, where no FDA approved broad spectrum antivirals exist today. As vaccine enthusiasm cools in Washington, antivirals are suddenly back in fashion.

Here’s what biotech Redditors had to say this week:

😮‍💨 Burned Out at 30
A CMC project manager asked Reddit if retiring early or quitting outright made sense after years of nonstop workload. Advice split fast. Some pushed for a real break. Others warned that burnout follows you if nothing structurally changes. A few said the quiet part out loud: independence sounds great until your network has to pay the bills.

🏚️ Failed CEOs, Soft Landings
After four Bay Area biotechs folded, Redditors vented about leadership fallout. Executives fail upward. Employees do not. One commenter joked that in biotech, bankruptcy is apparently a credential. Dark humor, but not wrong.

🫁 Man Lives 48 Hours Without Lungs
Surgeons kept a critically ill patient alive using an artificial lung system until transplant was possible.

🤖 AI Doctor Raises $35M
Lotus Health launched a free, multilingual AI primary care platform backed by human physician oversight.

🌱 Laser Robots Learn New Weeds
Carbon Robotics trained an AI on 150 million images so farm robots can zap weeds without retraining.

🐓 Barnwell Bio Brings Pandemic Surveillance to Poultry
The startup raised $6 million to apply metagenomic sequencing inside poultry barns, creating microbiome fingerprints that detect disease weeks before outbreaks hit. Instead of testing birds one by one, Barnwell monitors the entire environment, giving producers early warnings and better control over flock health.

🌘 February 5, 1971 — Apollo 14 Sticks the Landing
After Apollo 13’s near disaster, NASA returned to the Moon with Shepard and Mitchell, collecting rock samples, running experiments, and famously hitting golf balls on the lunar surface.

If you were a Novo Nordisk investor this week, it probably felt a lot like Apollo 13. A thrilling ride up, a sudden problem mid-flight, and a tense trip back to Earth. The difference is Apollo 14 made it back to the Moon. Wall Street is still deciding if Novo does too. 🚀

That’s all for today. See you Tuesday for the next issue. 👋

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