How to buy Novo Nordisk stock
As a public company, anyone can invest in Novo Nordisk. Here's a four-step guide to help you add the pharmaceutical stock to your portfolio.
Step 1: Open a brokerage account
You'll have to open and fund a brokerage account before buying shares of any company. If you don't currently have one, you can open one in minutes from our list of the best-rated brokers and trading platforms.
Step 2: Figure out your budget
Before making your first trade, you'll need to determine a budget for how much money you want to invest. The Motley Fool's investing philosophy recommends building a diversified portfolio of 25 or more stocks you plan to hold for at least five years.
You don't have to get there on the first day, though. For example, if you have $1,000 available to start investing, you might want to begin by allocating that money equally across at least 10 stocks and then grow from there.
Step 3: Do your research
It's essential to thoroughly research a company before buying its shares. You should learn about its competitors, review its balance sheet, find out how it makes money, and consider other factors to make sure you have a solid grasp on whether the company can grow value for its shareholders over the long term.
Step 4: Place an order
Once you've opened and funded a brokerage account, set your investing budget, and researched the stock, it's time to buy shares. The process is relatively straightforward. Go to your brokerage account's order page and fill out all the relevant information, including:
- The number of shares you want to buy or the amount you want to invest to purchase fractional shares.
- The stock ticker (Novo Nordisk is NYSE: NVO).
- Whether you want to place a limit order or a market order. The Motley Fool recommends using a market order since it guarantees you buy shares immediately at market price.
Demand for Wegovy and Ozempic has reshaped the obesity and diabetes treatment market and fueled rapid growth in Novo Nordisk’s revenue, profit margins, and stock price.
Should you invest in Novo Nordisk?
Deciding whether to invest in any company is a personal decision that should be based on a number of factors.
Reasons to consider NVO
- You take one or more medications sold by Novo Nordisk.
- You believe the company's semaglutide products for weight loss and type 2 diabetes have tremendous sales growth potential.
- You want to invest in a company that pays a growing dividend.
- You're comfortable with the risks of investing in a pharmaceutical stock.
- Adding Novo Nordisk would help diversify your portfolio by adding some international exposure.
- You believe the company can grow into its high valuation (over 30% growth rate in operational profit in early 2025).
Reasons to be cautious
- You're unsure whether weight loss drugs like Wegovy will live up to their hype.
- You're concerned about the company's high valuation or a stock bubble.
- You prefer to take a more natural approach to health and wellness.
- You're in or approaching retirement and need more dividend income than Novo Nordisk currently supplies.
- You already own several other pharmaceutical and healthcare stocks and are worried about over-exposure.
- You'd prefer to only invest in companies headquartered in the U.S.
NYSE: NVO
Key Data Points
Is Novo Nordisk profitable?
Researching a company's profitability is important because profits are crucial to its long-term success. Profit growth tends to drive a stock's performance over the long term. That's why investors will want to see that a company is growing its earnings or at least on track to make money.
Novo Nordisk is a very profitable company. It reported 129 billion Danish kroner (about $20.2 billion at the exchange rate in mid-2025) of gross profit in Q3 of 2025. The company's sales were up 21% when compared to 2024. Driving that strong growth was the blockbuster performance of its diabetes and obesity treatments.
The company expects those blockbuster drugs to continue driving strong sales growth in 2025 and beyond. It anticipates sales rising 14% in 2025, which should drive more than 20% operating profit growth.
Meanwhile, the company expects to deliver solid sales and operating income growth in 2026, driven by a target of capturing a third of the global diabetes market and controlling over 71% of the market for more specific drugs across the world.
Novo Nordisk's growing sales and profits position it to deliver strong free cash flow, which should enable it to return lots of money to shareholders in the coming years through dividends and share repurchases.
Does Novo Nordisk pay a dividend?
Novo Nordisk's guiding principle is to return any excess capital after funding its growth to investors via dividends and share repurchases. It has a long history of paying dividends to its shareholders. Payouts have steadily risen over time as the company's profits and excess cash flow have increased. As of 2025, Novo Nordisk is paying 3.2% in dividends, but this is always subject to change.
One thing worth pointing out about Novo Nordisk's dividend is that it pays on a different schedule than its counterparts in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. Whereas most U.S. companies pay quarterly dividends, European companies tend to pay annual or biannual dividends. Novo Nordisk moved from paying annual to biannual dividends in 2016.
How to invest in Novo Nordisk through ETFs
If you'd rather not buy individual shares, another way to invest in Novo Nordisk is through an exchange-traded fund (ETF). ETFs bundle many companies into one investment, which can help spread out risk and simplify your portfolio.
According to ETF.com, 32 U.S.-based ETFs held 2.7 million shares of Novo Nordisk in mid-2025.
A few examples:
ETF Name | Why it may fit | Allocation to Novo Nordisk |
|---|---|---|
Avantis International Equity ETF (AVDE) | Broad international exposure | ~0.34% |
VanEck Pharmaceutical ETF (PPH) | More targeted healthcare and pharma exposure | Higher weighting |
If you're looking for:
- Broader diversification: a global or total-market ETF like AVDE might make sense.
- More focused exposure to pharma and healthcare: a sector ETF like PPH may align better.
ETFs can be a good option if you want passive exposure to Novo Nordisk without researching or managing individual companies, or if you already own a diversified portfolio and want to avoid overweighting any single stock.
Will Novo Nordisk stock split?
Novo Nordisk didn't have an upcoming stock split as of early 2024. However, the leading global healthcare company completed a 2-for-1 stock split in September 2023. That was one of several stock splits it has completed throughout its history.
Given how recently the company split its stock, it likely won't complete another split soon. Its share price was around $125 in early 2024, a reasonably accessible level for most investors. However, if shares continue to rise, the company could split its stock again.
Stock Split
The bottom line
Novo Nordisk has developed several blockbuster drugs over the years. Its latest breakthroughs for Type 2 diabetes and weight loss are selling briskly, which could drive robust profit growth for the global pharmaceutical giant. That could send its share price higher in the coming years, making it a potentially lucrative investment.
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