GLP-1 drugs are changing the market. Who stands to lose from the weight-loss revolution?

According to Morgan Stanley forecasts, by 2035 as many as 55 million Americans, or 15% of the population, will be taking GLP-1 drugs. KPMG estimates that people using these drugs consume about one-fifth fewer calories. JPMorgan estimates that as early as 2030, GLP-1 therapies could cost the food and beverage industry annual revenues of USD 30–55 billion. This is an amount roughly three to five times greater than the current annual sales of Conagra, one of the largest packaged food producers. It also affects giants such as PepsiCo and fast-food chains.

The growing popularity of modern GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, such as Ozempic or Wegovy, is beginning to trigger deep, structural changes in the food and retail industries. Processed food and snack producers, as well as fast-food restaurant chains, are grappling with changing consumer habits, as patients taking these drugs not only lose weight but, more importantly, drastically reduce their appetite and desire to reach for high-calorie snacks. While pharmaceutical companies are posting record profits and beating stock market valuations, the food market is seeing a noticeable decline in sales volume. However, this phenomenon is not solely due to the use of the drugs themselves. As analysts point out, a broader economic trend is overlapping with it: American households, exhausted by earlier inflation, are starting to save more intensively and cut back on eating out. As a result, the decline in retail food sales is a combination of both the pharmacological suppression of appetite in a growing segment of society and general belt-tightening by consumers. For food giants, this means having to immediately adjust their offerings — from reducing product portion sizes, through modifying formulas to include higher protein content, to seeking new marketing strategies that will help maintain margins in a world where customers are simply buying less food.

This phenomenon perfectly illustrates how a medical breakthrough can destabilise industries that, at first glance, seem completely unrelated to medicine. The stock market has already coined the term "anti-GLP-1 basket". Investors have begun selling off not only shares of chip and soda producers, but also medical companies that manufacture... sleep apnoea devices and insulin pumps. Why? Because sleep apnoea, type 2 diabetes, and joint problems are directly linked to obesity. If millions of people successfully lose weight thanks to these drugs, demand for complex bariatric surgeries, hip replacements, and nighttime breathing assistance equipment will decline significantly. This means that weight-loss drugs are not only changing consumer habits and restaurant menus, but in the long run could reshuffle the income of certain healthcare sectors.

Source: own analysis, as of 21.08.2026.

Summary of the session in Europe and the US

Yesterday's session on the main Old Continent exchanges once again ended on a weaker note. Apart from symbolic gains on the FTSE100 and FTSE MIB, all leading indices closed lower, losing between 0.12% (Stoxx 600) and 0.57% (CAC40).

Wall Street also started the week with a sell-off in indices. Yesterday's trading was again conducted under pressure from rising US bond yields. The Dow Jones lost 1.32%. The S&P500 fell by 0.87%. The technology-focused Nasdaq lost 1%.

Asian stock markets in mixed sentiment

For the past six weeks, Asian stock markets have been searching for direction. This week has also been under selling pressure. Today, sentiment on the market is somewhat better. The Nikkei is down 0.4%. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 is up 0.3%. South Korea's KOSPI is rising by 1%. On other exchanges: Hong Kong (0.7%), Shanghai (-0.1%), Sensex (0.1%), Singapore (0.15%).

Summary of the WSE session

Little remains of yesterday's gains. As early as Monday, tentative signs of a possible correction appeared on the WSE, which continued during yesterday's session. The 4,000-point level on the WIG20 was breached again, and a head-and-shoulders pattern could be a cause for concern. Yesterday's session wiped out almost all of Wednesday's gains. The upward trend that began in July now appears to be threatened by profit-taking. Nevertheless, there is still a lot of optimism on our exchange. On the WIG20, June's declines were halted at local support around 3,553 points, from which a solid buying reaction was observed. Yesterday's session ended with a solid increase in index values. June brought a sell-off in indices, which became an opportunity to buy at a discounted price. So far, there is no sign of fear. However, uncertainty is appearing in the quotations of European indices as well as the S&P500 and Nasdaq 100. The situation in the global risk asset market is highly dynamic and tense. The biggest problem for markets, and directly for Wall Street, in the short term is not the spectre of interest rate hikes, but the rapidly shrinking financial liquidity, as the Treasury Department has halved the scale of bond purchases. Combined with an acceleration in lending activity, this creates a drain of capital from the system. Much will depend on the US bond market. Rising yields will heighten concerns about inflation, which could in turn lead to higher interest rates later in the year, and this, in turn, to higher costs of financing business activity. However, feelings of uncertainty are currently being ignored by investors. Our exchange is not detached from the rest of the world, and if scepticism returns to global markets, a correction should be taken into account.

Turnover on the broad market amounted to PLN 2.59 billion. The WIG lost 1.02%. The blue-chip index lost 1.21%. WIG20 futures fell by 1.39%. Mid-cap companies were also part of the market picture. The mWIG40 fell by 0.72%. Only the sWIG80 ended the day with a gain of 0.41%.

The zloty, recently under pressure, is trying to recover its losses

GBPPLN – the pair is currently trading at 5.03.

EURPLN – today the euro is priced at 4.31.

USDPLN – the dollar is trading today at 3.69.

CHFPLN – currently, one franc costs 4.61.

PLNJPY – the pair is trading at 43.04.