New slimming drugs can bring greater profits for airlines such as United Airlines, according to the analysis company Jefferies.
New anti-obesity drugs are sending shock waves through several industries. According to a Jefferies analysis, the airline United Airlines can save as much as 80 million dollars on lighter passengers. Photo: CHRIS HELGREN / ReutersPublished: Published:
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Around 130,000 commercial flight departures are made every day in the world. What they have in common is that the consumption of fuel is enormous, and the airlines’ biggest cost today is precisely related to fuel.
– Weight is a critical element for fuel efficiency, write Jefferies aviation analysts in a recent report.
It has long been important for aviation to reduce weight where possible, but the weight of passengers is difficult for the companies themselves to do anything about.
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Now, Jefferies’ airline analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu believes that airlines can save large sums of money on recent advances in slimming drugs, such as the drug Wegovy from Danish Novo Nordisk. Bloomberg mentioned the matter first.
870 million for United
If every passenger at the large American airline United Airlines were to lose an average of 10 pounds, or around 4.5 kilograms, it could save the airline a staggering 80 million dollars a year, according to Kahyaoglu’s estimates.
This corresponds to around NOK 870 million.
– This advantage should be the same across airlines, she emphasizes in the analysis.
Such a potential weight reduction will have much more to say than measures United have previously chosen to take. In 2018, the company changed the paper quality in the Hemispheres in-flight magazine, which cut around 30 grams from each magazine.
It should have saved the airline around 650,000 liters of fuel annually, according to Jefferies. In comparison, the airline used a total of around 13.6 billion liters of fuel in 2022.
The slimming medicine Wegovy has taken the market by storm. Novo Nordisk, the Danish stock exchange giant behind the drug, has increased its market value by more than 60 percent in the past year. Photo: STAFF / Reuters
Fuel for the planes was United’s largest expenditure item last year, according to the annual report.
The company spent more than 13 billion dollars on this in 2022, a year characterized by higher oil prices in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine and the corona pandemic. This corresponds to around NOK 125 billion at the exchange rate of the time.
Danish success
Wegovy from Novo Nordisk is among the anti-obesity drugs that have come on the scene recently. The Danish giant recently increased its stock market value by 500 billion in one day, following strong study results for its slimming drug.
The demand for slimming medicine is increasing sharply, and around 1.7 per cent of the population in the USA has, according to CNN received such medicines on prescription in 2023.
Morgan Stanley estimates in an analysis that nearly 7 percent of the US population could be on diet pills by 2035, according to CNBC.
According to the analysis, the global market for this type of slimming medicine could reach a staggering 100 billion dollars.
Novo Nordisk recently took over the throne as Europe’s most valuable company. Today’s market value is more than 2,200 billion Danish kroner, which corresponds to more than 3,400 billion Norwegian kroner.
2023-10-07 17:23:36
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