Following the market close on Monday, Hims & Hers Health Inc. stock went up after the company raised its sales forecast for the whole year. This is because the company is continuing to attract customers by providing more personalized care and weight-loss drugs.
As a result, drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic become very famous very quickly, which makes it harder to get them and makes the competition tougher. On Monday, executives said that the problems with supply were “not going away” and that it was still hard to get “consistent supply.”
Hims & Hers HIMS -0.18%, which sells medicines for hair loss, erectile dysfunction, nervousness, and other conditions, said it expects sales for the whole year to be between $1.46 billion and $1.465 billion. In August, they thought it would be between $1.37 billion and $1.4 billion.
The company also said it expected sales in the fourth quarter to be between $465 million and $470 million, which was more than what Wall Street thought it would be ($421 million).
Monday after hours, shares went up 9%. By Monday night’s finish, the stock had gained 133.3% for the year.
Chief Executive Andrew Dudum said in a statement, “We are able to reach millions of people across the country because we are implementing a strategy that gives customers easy, clear, and affordable access to care that is tailored to their needs.”
GLP-1 drugs, like Ozempic and compounded drugs that can be made to order, have been used to help people lose weight. Hims & Hers has started offering these drugs. The company told its owners on Monday that users would be able to get Liraglutide, the first generic GLP-1 on its platform, next year.
But the people in charge said that tens of thousands of people couldn’t buy the most popular drugs.
In Hims & Hers’ letter to shareholders, officials said, “What we are also hearing from our customers is that the shortage of available name-brand GLP-1s in this country is not going away.” “Over the last two months, almost 80,000 people have told us through our platform that they have not been able to get name-brand GLP-1s. The number of these reports has been going up over time.”
“The regulatory landscape is always changing, but the data we’re seeing shows that the shortage is still going on. We are actively communicating with state and federal legislative and regulatory agencies to let them know what customers on our platform have been going through,” they said.
The Food and Drug Administration said last week that Novo Nordisk NVO -0.47%, the company that makes Wegovy and Ozempic, can now get some of those drugs, though supplies are still limited. Last year, the business said it would spend more than $6 billion to make more things.
But Truist experts said last week that the FDA’s news probably made the share price of Hims & Hers go down.
Analysts said, “Shares have responded more to external factors and developments, such as the noise around the shortage of GLP-1 drugs and the role/viability of compounders in such a world. With relatively less focus being on the ongoing trends and demands for its solutions.”
“This volatility makes investors even more worried about how long the company will be able to make money from compounded GLP-1s,” they said.
Yemi Okupe, the chief financial officer of Hims & Hers, said on Monday that the company’s business was still strong even though GLP-1 demand wasn’t there. He said that in the third quarter, the number of subscribers grew 40% year over year, even when our combined GLP-1 solutions were taken into account.
At the end of the quarter, the business had 2 million members. Sales went up 77% year over year to $401.6 million, which was more than the $382 million that FactSet had predicted. Hims & Hers made 32 cents a share during the quarter, which was more than the 11 cents that were expected.