Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk has reached a market capitalization larger than Denmark’s total after its weight loss drug Wegovy beat expectations in advanced clinical trials, Bloomberg reports.

Novo Nordisk’s share price jumped this week after results from an early-stage clinical trial showed Wegovy has clear medical benefits, and not just in terms of weight loss.

Immediately after the results were published, the pharmaceutical company’s share price rose by 10%, trading 150% higher than two years ago.

These gains mean that Novo Nordisk now has a market capitalization of more than 2.87 trillion Danish kroner ($423 billion), which is larger than the entire gross domestic product of Denmark in 2022.

The results also mean Novo Nordisk is a serious contender to become Europe’s most valuable company, a title currently held by luxury goods giant LVMH.

In April this year, LVMH became the first European company in history to surpass the $500 billion market capitalization mark, but since then its share price has fallen from $902 to $810.

Novo Nordisk has picked up the Nokia baton

In 2008, Novo became Denmark’s most valuable company, currently worth more than all other companies in the underlying OMCX25 index of the Danish stock exchange.

In 2013, the Copenhagen Stock Exchange changed the way the index worked because Novo had become too valuable and accounted for 45% of its total volume. The index now has a maximum limit, meaning that the weight of each individual stock cannot exceed 20% of the value of OMCX25.

If the index were calculated today as it was 10 years ago, Novo would be 58% of it.

However, the Danish company is a far cry from Nokia’s dominance in neighboring Finland for years, when it still made mobile phones.

In 2000, when Nokia was the most valuable company in Europe, Nokia’s market capitalization for the year was twice the GDP of Finland.