Two of the largest obesity-drug makers report Q1 earnings next week. Eli Lilly reports April 30, and Novo Nordisk follows May 6. The April 26 peptide news digest ↗ framing is that this is a transitional pause: AACR 2026 just ended, the FDA Category 2 peptide notice is settling into industry interpretation, and the next major catalysts now sit in earnings season and Phase 3 readouts.
For Lilly, the number every analyst is watching is Foundayo's prescription trajectory. Foundayo (orforglipron) ↗ is the first non-peptide oral GLP-1 drug. The week-two IQVIA tracker showed 3,707 scripts in the United States, well behind Wegovy ↗'s oral pill at 18,410 prescriptions for its second week earlier this year. Lilly's stock fell on that print. RBC's Trung Huynh said early comparisons should be viewed cautiously but acknowledged the uptake is likely to be received negatively. Lilly previously guided 2026 sales of $80 to $83 billion, which would be 25% growth on 2025. The Q1 call is where the company explains how that line bends.
For Novo, the question is structural. Guidance points to a 5 to 13% Q1 sales decline as semaglutide ↗ (the molecule behind Ozempic ↗, Wegovy, and Rybelsus ↗) loses exclusivity in China, Brazil, and Canada, and as Wegovy's oral pill ramps. The PIONEER TEENS pediatric trial ↗ Novo reported April 23 extends the Rybelsus franchise into the 10-to-17 age group orforglipron does not yet have data on. Exclusivity loss in three large markets is structural. Oral-formulation label breadth is the moat the company can defend.
Goldman Sachs models the long-term split as 60% of the daily-oral segment going to Lilly's orforglipron by 2030, and 21% to Novo's oral semaglutide. The split assumes Foundayo's small-molecule manufacturing advantage and once-daily dosing translate into wider distribution than oral semaglutide's SNAC-formulated tablets. The first two weeks of prescription data are too early to confirm or refute that thesis. The Q1 calls are the first time Lilly explains the curve from inside the launch.
The longer-term context is the open peptide-therapeutic stack. The Coracle Research disclosure last week ↗ describes a generic-friendly oral peptide tablet stack covering seven GLP-1-class drugs with two-to-seven-times Rybelsus bioavailability. The Q1 calls will not address that disclosure directly. The 2027 calls might.