富国银行：GLP-1药物使减重手术量两年降超30%

Tell us about this report and why now? Why look into this trend right now? Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. You know, one of the reasons why is we have a large health care practice, a dedicated team that specializes, and we like to make sure we stay ahead of a lot of the topics and conversations that impact those businesses. So for us, looking at GLP ones, we've all certainly seen a lot of conversation around how it impacts consumer purchasing and grocery store sales.

But we really wanted to dig in and understand the implications for the health care industry. And many of the things that we found were quite surprising to us. Like what? You know, I'll start with bariatric surgery. So if we look at the rate of bariatric surgery between 2022 and 2024, we saw them decline by over 30%. And that was at a time where we saw GLP usage rise by about 120%. So bariatric surgery has really been a go to for managing late stage obesity and helping to bring that weight down.

And when we look at the impact of GLP one is really a game changer in terms of results and being able to help people get that weight off in a very effective manner. So being able to use that pharmaceutical off ramp to avoid surgery is certainly a nice outcome for many people. Conversely, though, on the other side, we do see people that were not able to get the bariatric surgery, but the GLP ones are allowing them to get to a healthier weight that allows that surgery to be possible.

So great for people, right? But, um, you know, when I think about health care, great for people and great, uh, and probably extending their lives in so many different ways. But I do think about the impact to on like, health care systems and hospital systems, right? If they're doing less surgeries. Absolutely. And I think what we have to look at is understand that this is a long term solution to obesity. So it can take time for these drugs to take effect to have impact.

So certainly a lot of the care that these patients receive will be ongoing. It's going to be a slow offramp for them, but it's also nice to be able to have some other solutions and open the doors for others who have been battling obesity and some of the complications with it. I think for hospitals, it's an opportunity to really change the game and maybe the profit centers or helping these patients so it can become more about outpatient services, medication management, management of side effects.

And really you're on these weight loss drugs for life. So the ongoing help and support to patients. How are the drugs reshaping what pharmaceutical companies choose to pursue and do research on. You know that's a great question. And it's an interesting one. We can see that the late stage pipeline of pharmaceutical R&D is heavily weighted towards GLP ones. And it's not necessarily just for obesity. We are seeing other opportunities coming out of these drugs and potential opportunities.

One is the treatment of substance abuse, specifically alcohol abuse. And so we're seeing some research going into that. We've certainly heard about maybe some positive results around Parkinson's disease and dementia. So I think expanding and understanding these drugs and how they can help with other disorders is really a focus for some of these manufacturers. Okay. I feel like Robin, I'm the Debbie Downer here. I'm just going to go there.

Um, no, I I've kidded with our reporter, Madison Mueller, who has covered this space extensively and so smartly, but it does feel like this is the drug that can cure so much that ails us. Having said that, it's also a reminder that having extra weight or being obese is a problem for your health. It's a reality, and I don't want to get into how that can get, um, you know, people uncomfortable about criticizing that. But but it's just a fact of life, right?

In terms of your health. Um, but the other thing, uh, what I'm thinking about is how does the emphasis and stress on GLP once maybe crowd out R&D spending on other drugs that also need to be discovered? You know, so they're taking a bigger share of the late stage R&D pipeline. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're taking up dollars. So we can see that GLP drugs have outpaced oncology, you know, as a percentage of R&D spend.

But that doesn't mean that those dollars towards oncology have diminished. In fact they haven't. So I think what we're seeing is that we have a very widespread problem, specifically here in the US, with 40% of U.S. adults classified as obese. It's a medical diagnosis. And so finding treatment for this population, as you said, it's all aspects of their health. So there's a cardiovascular element to this too. So it's really not just a weight loss drug.

It's a cardio metabolic drug. And so it can be a game changer towards the health and prevention for many, many people, impacting several that can benefit from this drug and enjoy a much healthier life. I've seen it directly like impact people and just they are so much healthier. And it's just their their outlook and situation is so much better. Yeah. I mean, Robin, what are the this is pivoting a little bit, but I do want to ask what are the investment implications from this report.

What do investors need to know. You know I think we're looking at a situation where it's heavily weighted towards these drives. And so any sort of disruption that could happen supply constraints, those would ripple through and they would have an impact maybe broader than most people would expect. I do think there's a lot of research still to be done. And so the fact that there's money in capital going into it is a good thing.

The other good thing is we are seeing the results. And so it is very promising in many areas. I'm encouraged by the investment. But I would just caution that it could have some larger impact. Should any hiccups happen along the way. You know, one of the things I wanted to ask you, um, like orthopedics or something like that, where losing weight or being slimmer can be better on your joints, it's not so much stress and so on and so forth.

So maybe there's less demand for surgeries or so on, but at the same time, if GLP ones, which is a good thing, is enabling folks to live longer. Um, and being a drug that's so productive and helping a lot of different things that certainly age and individual that might orthopedics benefit because we're just around longer, we're going to all need kind of an overhaul. Yeah, I think it's an excellent point, and I don't think the data has set on it yet.

So, you know, on one hand, one of the side effects of long term obesity is that we're entering the joints. It's any replacement of the hip replacements. If we're able to prevent, um, the weight and keep the weight off, that could, in theory, reduce the need for those extra, uh, interventions. However, you know, as you point out, you become healthier, you lose weight, you can become more active. Um, you know, we can see a whole new slew of runners out there, right?

And people embracing, you know, exercise. So it's a mixed bag. Um, and I'll go back to, to the other opportunity that that weight loss presents again, people who wouldn't otherwise qualify, uh, for the surgery. Now it opens the doors for them as well by allowing them to lose weight and get a little healthier.