The news: Hims & Hers will soon expand its business to Canada, where it plans to sell generic semaglutide.

How we got here: Novo Nordisk is set to lose its patent protection for semaglutide in Canada next year after missing a key administrative deadline. It’s unclear whether Novo intentionally missed the deadline. (We’re not sure why it would, but Novo released a statement saying it wasn’t a mistake.) For context, semaglutide is expected to be patent-protected in the US until 2032. Generic drugmaker Sandoz is currently developing a generic version of semaglutide and is awaiting approval from Canada’s regulatory agency. The door is open for other drugmakers to do the same.

The market opportunity: Hims won’t be the only company that pounces on the opportunity to sell generic semaglutide in Canada once it's developed and approved.

• Canada is the second-largest market in the world for semaglutide, per Sandoz’s CEO.
• Hims cited government data that nearly two-thirds of adults in the country have obesity or are overweight.
• Plus, generics are far cheaper than their brand-name counterparts—-affording the medications won’t be an issue for Canadians.

The bottom line: Novo just gave a massive gift to healthcare companies that are in the weight loss drug market but can no longer sell compounded GLP-1s now that the brand-name versions are available again. Generic semaglutide will be even more compelling to consumers than the compounded forms since they’ll have regulatory approval and will probably be cheaper.

We’ll likely see more players in this space that primarily operate in the US expanding north of the border, while others could take advantage of President Trump’s executive order that calls for the FDA to authorize more states to import lower-cost drugs from Canada.

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