Nanexa Stock Skyrockets More Than 100% After Signing Drug Deal With Wegovy Maker Novo Nordisk

Shares of Swedish drug-delivery company Nanexa exploded higher Friday after the small biotech landed a licensing agreement worth as much as $1.33 billion with Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical heavyweight behind blockbuster obesity drugs Wegovy and Ozempic.

Nanexa shares surged more than 100% in Stockholm. the company announced Thursday evening that it had entered into a global exclusive licensing and collaboration agreement with Novo covering its PharmaShell drug-delivery technology.

Under the deal, Novo gets the right to use PharmaShell in as many as five development programs for peptide-based medicines targeting obesity, type 2 diabetes and other cardiometabolic diseases. The companies are aiming to develop long-acting formulations that could eventually be administered monthly or even quarterly.

That could be significant in the rapidly expanding obesity-drug market, where many of the leading injectable treatments currently require weekly dosing. PharmaShell uses atomic layer deposition, or ALD, to apply an ultra-thin inorganic coating to drug particles.

The coating is designed to regulate how quickly a medicine is released in the body, potentially allowing the active ingredient to remain effective for much longer between injections.

The financial terms are enormous relative to Nanexa's size. Nanexa is eligible for payments totaling as much as €1.165 billion, or approximately $1.33 billion. That includes €615 million tied to an upfront payment and development and regulatory milestones. Additional payments are linked to sales milestones, while Nanexa could also receive low single-digit royalties on global net sales of products developed through the collaboration.

Novo will be responsible for global development and commercialization. The scale of the agreement helps explain investors' reaction. Nanexa generated full-year revenue of only about $3.9 million in 2025. The deal therefore gives the microcap company access to potential payments many times larger than its existing annual business.

"With this agreement, Nanexa enters a new era of considerable financial strength," Chairman Göran Ando said, adding that the company would be able to expand applications of its ALD technology into other therapeutic areas.

CEO David Westberg said the partnership also provides a foundation for expanding PharmaShell while allowing Nanexa to selectively move additional internal drug programs toward clinical proof of concept.

For Novo, the agreement adds another weapon as competition intensifies in the booming weight-loss market. The Danish company faces increasingly aggressive competition from Eli Lilly and a growing field of pharmaceutical companies developing injectable and oral obesity treatments.

The global market for weight-loss drugs could eventually reach $100 billion in annual sales, making improvements in convenience, dosing and effectiveness increasingly important differentiators.

Novo is also preparing for the eventual expiration of key patents protecting semaglutide, the active ingredient behind Wegovy and Ozempic, while developing its next generation of metabolic treatments. The company has said it wants to launch more than five new blockbuster drugs by 2030.