Oprah Winfrey is walking back comments she made suggesting that those who use Ozempic to lose weight were taking an “easy way out.”
The former talk show host, who once owned a 10% stake in WeightWatchers before selling off most of her shares, bought nearly 3,700 shares of company stock last week after endorsing the use of drugs like Ozempic to treat obesity, according to The Wall Street Journal.
As of August, Winfrey, who remains a board member of WeightWatchers, owned a stake in the company worth about $12 million, according to The Journal.
In March, WeightWatchers paid $106 million to acquire Sequence, a tele-health subscription service that prescribes Ozempic and other drugs used for weight loss.
Customers pay around $100 a month to use the service.
Last month, Winfrey said she would not take Ozempic and similar drugs in the class of weight-loss medications because she viewed them as an “easy way out” during a discussion with WeightWatchers CEO Sima Sistani.
The comments led to WeightWatchers stock nosediving by as much as 15% the next day.
Winfrey, who has famously battled weight issues over her long career, told The Journal in a statement that her comments were “misconstrued” and “taken out of context.”
“To be clear, I believe that prescription medications are an important and viable option to consider for people who struggle with weight and health related issues,” Winfrey told The Journal.
“Every person should be able to choose what wellness and good health means for them without scrutiny, stigma or shame.”
Winfrey’s stake in the company fell from 10% in 2015 to just 1.4% this past summer. She owns more than 1.1 million shares of WeightWatchers stock.
“I chose to rebalance my overall portfolio, which had included a significant stock position in WeightWatchers,” said Winfrey in her statement.
“I’m enthusiastic about the company’s Sequence purchase and am in favor of potential new treatment options for obesity and related health issues.”
WeightWatchers’ pivot to encouraging users to take Ozempic is a sharp change in strategy for a company that has acknowledged it may have played a role in “shaming” customers into thinking it was their fault for being obese, according to Sistani.
“We introduced the shame for people for whom diet and exercise wasn’t enough,” Sistani was quoted as saying during the livestream event with Winfrey.
“We want to be the first to say where we got it wrong,” Sistani said.
In the first six months of the year, Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, has raked in profits of some $7 billion — up 32% from the same time a year ago.
Eli Lilly, the New York-based pharmaceutical company, made $1 billion in sales of Mounjaro in the second quarter of this year.
The popularity of the drugs have led to stocks of major companies to take a hit — particularly after Walmart said that the medications were causing shoppers to pare back on groceries.
