Earlier this year, the drugmaker announced plans to slash 400 jobs in its research and development unit and 250 more positions in the U.S.
The announcement of the new layoffs comes as the Danish insulin maker reports a decline in profits to $1.37 billion in the third quarter of 2018.
About half of the job cuts will affect Novo Nordisk’s commercial operations. The savings generated by those layoffs will be reinvested in artificial intelligence, cloud services and automation technologies, Novo CFO Karsten Munk Knudsen told The Wall Street Journal.
Some of the layoffs “are due to changes in our strategic resource allocation,” Mr. Knudsen said. “The financial resources that have been freed up are being reinvested.”
The insulin maker said it is facing pressures in the U.S. because it can’t push through price increases and has to accept flat or declining prices for its products. The prices for basal insulin are down 15 percent to 20 percent year over year, for example.
About 650 of job cuts will be in the U.S., according to the report.
Read the full report here.
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