Novo Nordisk reports Wednesday morning, November 4, 2026, expecting to post earnings of roughly $0.73 per share, against $1.02 in the same quarter a year ago, a projected drop of about 28%. The culprit is not a pipeline failure. It is the price of staying in the fight. Novo spent 2026 absorbing a Most Favored Nation pricing deal with the US government, intensifying competition from Eli Lilly, and compounding-pharmacy substitution. It also spent late 2025 in a high-profile bidding war for obesity biotech Metsera, which Pfizer ultimately acquired. Revenue for Q3 is expected to fall about 6% year over year to around $11.1 billion.

That is the context in which Amgen reports Tuesday after the close.

The Business

Amgen is one of the world’s largest biotechs by revenue. Its current earnings engine is built on established medicines: Repatha, the cholesterol drug that surged 37% to $953 million in the second quarter, and Evenity, the bone drug that jumped 38% to $714 million. Rare-disease drug Uplizna posted 90% sales growth. None of that is speculative. None of it depends on an obesity approval. The full-year guidance Amgen issued after Q2 called for $37.1 to $38.5 billion in revenue and $21.70 to $23.10 in non-GAAP earnings per share, raised from prior guidance on the strength of that commercial performance.

For Tuesday, consensus sits at roughly $5.74 to $5.79 in earnings per share on revenue of about $9.95 billion. Management has already flagged that operating expenses will rise meaningfully from Q2, so the bar is clear. Amgen has beaten consensus in each of its last four quarters, with an average earnings surprise above 11%.

Why Wall Street Is Paying Attention

MariTide is not on the market. It is not generating a dollar of revenue. And yet it may be the most interesting question on the call.

The drug is a first-in-class antibody-peptide conjugate that simultaneously activates the GLP-1 receptor and blocks the GIPR, a mechanistic distinction from both Wegovy and Zepbound. Its antibody scaffold gives it a half-life that supports monthly dosing, with Amgen targeting as few as four to six injections per year after the first year on treatment. No approved obesity drug offers that schedule.

The Phase 3 program is extensive. MARITIME-1 targets weight management in adults without Type 2 diabetes; MARITIME-2 in adults with Type 2 diabetes; MARITIME-CV is enrolling patients with established cardiovascular disease. Beyond those core studies, Amgen is also running trials in heart failure and obstructive sleep apnea, plus long-term extension cohorts and a switching study enrolling patients who want to move off weekly tirzepatide or semaglutide to a less frequent alternative. Nine Phase 3 studies in total.

What’s Driving the Opportunity

Here is the valuation argument. Amgen’s forward price-to-earnings ratio stands in the high teens, below the drug-manufacturer industry median, despite revenue growing at roughly 9% and gross margins near 70%. The stock has returned about 44% over the past twelve months, yet the multiple has not stretched to reflect what MariTide could be worth if even one of those nine trials goes well.

Compare that with Novo, where investors are paying for a business whose own management has described the 2026 pricing environment as “unprecedented” and whose 2026 guidance calls for adjusted sales and adjusted operating profit to decline between 5% and 13% at constant exchange rates. Novo had the obesity market largely to itself for years. That era is clearly over, and its income statement is confirming it in real time.

Pfizer bought its way into the obesity race through Metsera in November 2025. The deal was announced with an enterprise value of about $4.9 billion, with additional contingent payments possible, after a bidding war in which headline figures floated as high as $10 billion. MariTide, with a broader Phase 3 program and a dosing schedule that could go quarterly, is carried on no one’s balance sheet as an acquisition cost. It comes embedded in a company you are buying at a reasonable multiple for its existing business.

The obesity race is not limited to the three names dominating headlines. Viking Therapeutics is running fully enrolled Phase 3 obesity trials that the market has not fully priced.

What Could Go Wrong

MariTide’s Phase 3 weight-loss data are not yet in. The Phase 2 signal was encouraging, robust weight loss at 52 weeks without a plateau, but biotech history is full of drugs that impressed in smaller studies and struggled in larger ones. The operating expense increase management guided for in Q3 is partly the cost of running nine global trials simultaneously, and that spending will continue for years.

Amgen also carries about $57 billion in total debt, a legacy of its Horizon Therapeutics acquisition. That limits financial flexibility. A CFO transition this year adds a minor execution uncertainty heading into a period when capital allocation decisions will matter.

And the competitive field is only getting more crowded. Lilly’s Zepbound continues to take share. Pfizer is advancing Metsera’s obesity portfolio. If MariTide’s Phase 3 weight loss numbers disappoint relative to weekly alternatives, the dosing convenience story may not be enough.

The Bottom Line

The obesity drug market is worth owning. The question is at what price. Novo Nordisk has handed investors a clear illustration of what happens when a company cuts prices aggressively to defend volume: earnings collapse. Pfizer bought its way into the race and got a portfolio whose value the market is still debating. Amgen is running a larger clinical program, with a mechanistically distinct molecule and a monthly-to-quarterly dosing advantage, and the market is pricing the stock as though MariTide does not exist. Tuesday’s report may not settle whether MariTide works. But it will remind investors that they are getting nine Phase 3 shots on goal essentially for free.