Hims & Hers, one of the largest publicly traded telehealth companies in the country, has supercharged its business in the last several months by offering compounded versions of the patented weight loss drugs known as GLP-1s. It’s staking its future on the drugs, with plans to continue selling compounded GLP-1s even when shortages of the versions approved by regulators come to an end — a strategy that policy experts say could land the company in court.
Broadly speaking, compounders are allowed to sell versions of FDA-approved drugs when those drugs are in shortage. That has regularly been the case lately with GLP-1 drugs marketed by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly.
Hims, as the company is often referred to, has become one of the most prominent public faces of compounded semaglutide, offering it in more than 30 states and spending nearly $145 million in a single quarter on marketing its drugs, which include injections with “the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy” alongside other weight loss offerings that have attracted tens of thousands of customers.
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