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Hims & Hers falls after Novo Nordisk launches discounted Wegovy for uninsured

The reduced price for Wegovy is still roughly double what compounded versions cost.

J. Edward Moreno
3/5/25 11:06AM

Hims & Hers shares fell and Novo Nordisk shares rose after the drugmaker announced Wednesday morning that it launched a telehealth platform, NovoCare, designed to give uninsured patients access to Wegovy, its blockbuster weight-loss drug.

Novo Nordisk, the Danish drugmaker that makes popular GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, said NovoCare will allow patients without insurance to access their drugs directly at almost a third of the cost it typically charges insurers. This comes after the Food and Drug Administration declared on February 21 that the shortage of semaglutide, the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic, is over, ending the allowance for copycat pharmacies like Hims & Hers to sell exact copies.

Hims & Hers has said its game plan moving forward is to sell Novo Nordisk’s older, less effective GLP-1 drugs and oral medications.

NovoCare will offer Wegovy for $499 a month for patients without insurance. While that is more affordable than the upward of $1,300 Novo Nordisk charges patients with insurance, its still more than double what the compounded versions cost.

That said, Wegovy comes in individual pens that are prefilled with the patient’s dose. Compounding pharmacies typically send a vial and the patient is responsible for administering the dose. That makes Wegovy (and similar GLP-1 drugs) more costly to produce than compounded versions.

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Eli Lilly, which makes competing GLP-1 drugs, announced a similar platform dubbed Lilly Direct that offers its drugs to insured patients at similar price points as NovoCare. (Hims & Hers has never sold copycat versions of Eli Lillys drugs, though other compounding pharmacies have.)

Compounding pharmacies have been a pain in the side of Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, chipping away at the edges of their market share for GLP-1 drugs. The pharmaceutical giants have launched ad campaigns questioning the safety of compounded drugs.

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Super Micro rises as the company begins shipments of Nvidia Blackwell chips

Super Micro Computer jumped over 6% in pre-market trading on Friday after the company announced it has started shipping “Plug-and-Play (PnP)-ready” racks powered by Nvidia’s new Blackwell Ultra chips, giving data center customers a ready-made option to scale up their AI infrastructure.

The rollout enables what SMCI calls “turn-key day-one” operations, with the entire racks pre-assembled and tested to work out of the box.

“Data center customers face many AI infrastructure challenges: complex network topology and cabling, power delivery, and thermal management,” CEO Charles Liang said. "Through Supermicro Data Center Building Block Solutions with our expertise in on-site deployment, we enable turn-key delivery of the highest-performance AI platform — critical for customers seeking to invest in cutting-edge technology."

The company says the new system's performance jumps up to 7.5x over Nvidia's previous generation chips. It's also designed to run more efficiently, using less power and water while taking up less floor space, cutting the overall operating costs by 20%, according to the statement.

The launch comes after a rocky August, when SMCI’s shares plunged on weaker-than-expected quarterly results and management trimmed its annual revenue target.

Investors in Super Micro have endured much volatility this year, as the company has failed to deliver on multiple occasions. Even so, the shares are up nearly 50% year-to-date.

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Warner Bros. Discovery jumps after Wells Fargo ups price target on dealmaking buzz

Warner Bros. Discovery shares popped 7% Tuesday after Wells Fargo raised its price target on the media giant to $14 from $13 while keeping an equal-weight rating.

The bank’s optimism stemmed largely from the media giant’s potential for dealmaking. In June, WBD announced that it would split its operations into two companies, with the Streaming & Studios division (home to Warner Bros. Television, DC Studios, HBO, and Max) standing alone from the networks side (CNN, TNT Sports, and Discovery).

That separation could make the Streaming & Studios unit more attractive to buyers, the analysts said. They valued the segment at about $65 billion, which could translate to a takeover price north of $21 a share. Potential suitors range from Amazon and Apple to Sony and Comcast, though analysts flagged Netflix as the “most compelling” option despite its limited acquisition track record:

“While NFLX has historically not been acquisitive, [streaming and studios’] $12bn in annual content spend + library + 100+ acre studio lot offers a lot. It kickstarts a theatrical IP strategy, quickly scales video games and most importantly provides premium content to members.”

At Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia + Technology Conference this week, CEO David Zaslav also highlighted growing traction at HBO Max and hinted at future crackdowns on password sharing.

WBD shares are up 26% year to date, and up more than 93% over the past 12 months.

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Duolingo up on bullish note, hopes for a user rebound

Duolingo rose by the most in nearly a month after an analyst note painted a more bullish picture of the gamified language-learning company despite a dearth of news otherwise.

A quick check-in with analysts covering the stock on Wall Street found most of them otherwise flummoxed on the reason behind the uptick Thursday.

Some, however, suggested the rise may reflect optimism that the company has been able to reverse a monthslong downturn in daily active user metrics — a slump that set in after a social media backlash to a somewhat artless LinkedIn post from the company about its AI first strategy.

The bullish analyst note, published Thursday by Citizens JMP, suggested Duolingo could be a big beneficiary from a change to Apple’s rules governing its App Store driven by a ruling on a federal antitrust case against the company. The analysts wrote:

Given “Apple’s recent changes to U.S. App Store rules that allow developers to steer payments to the web where fees are similar to typical credit card fees rather than Apple’s 30% fee for in-app purchases and 30% fee on subscriptions for the first year and 15% thereafter, we expect mobile app companies including Duolingo, Life360, and Grindr Inc. to unlock meaningful cost benefits.”

At any rate, the next big event on the company’s calendar is its Duocon 2025 conference on Tuesday, where analysts are hoping to hear more hard information on all of the above topics.

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