Why Viking Therapeutics Stock Is Up More Than 9% Today
2026-02-23 13:03:19 ET
If you're looking for the company-specific headline that sent shares of Viking Therapeutics (NASDAQ: VKTX) soaring today, don't bother. You won't find one. Rather, investors are proverbially connecting dots based on other pharmaceutical companies ' headlines. In this instance, what's bad for (much-bigger) Novo Nordisk (NYSE: NVO) is good for Viking.
Getting straight to the point, Novo Nordisk's injectable weight-loss drug CagriSema is good, but not better than Eli Lilly 's (NYSE: LLY) tirzepatide when administered the same way for the same length of time. Specifically, whereas patients receiving subcutaneous injections of Lilly's tirzepatide lost an average of 25.5% of their body weight over 84 weeks, CagriSema users only lost an average of 23%.
To win the FDA's approval, a new treatment must be at least as effective as an alternative that's already on the market, or offer some other discernible benefit like better patient tolerability.
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