Hims & Hers, a telehealth platform aimed at millennials, announced on Monday the addition of Kåre Schultz to its board of directors. Schultz is a seasoned executive from Novo Nordisk, where he worked for over 25 years, holding positions such as president and chief operating officer. Currently, he serves as the CEO of Teva Pharmaceuticals.
Schultz expressed enthusiasm for the company’s mission, stating, “Hims & Hers is on a trajectory to upend the healthcare industry. In my long career in the pharmaceutical industry, this is the first company I have seen leveraging today’s modern tools to break down barriers and change the status quo of how people access the health solutions they need.”
Following the announcement, Hims & Hers stock rose by 3% during Monday’s trading, marking a 125% increase since the start of the year.
This development comes on the heels of Hims & Hers beginning to offer a compounded version of semaglutide, which is the active ingredient in popular diabetes and weight loss medications Ozempic and Wegovy, both manufactured by Novo Nordisk. Hims & Hers is pricing a month’s supply of their semaglutide at $199, significantly lower than Ozempic’s nearly $1,000 price and Wegovy’s $1,349 cost.
The ongoing shortage of these high-demand medications has led several telehealth platforms to utilize a provision in the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that permits the sale of compounded medications that are currently in short supply. Compounding involves customizing an FDA-approved drug to cater to the specific needs of individual patients.
While the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act generally prohibits the compounding of medications that are mere replicas of commercially available drugs, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not classify medications in shortage as commercially available.
In a conversation with Bloomberg, Schultz indicated that the company sees a “long future” in distributing compounded semaglutide. When queried about the potential continuation of compounded semaglutide production after shortages are resolved, Schultz expressed confidence that there would still be situations necessitating individualized prescriptions.