Samsung Asset Management Lists KODEX Global Obesity Treatment Top 2 Plus ETF

Samsung Asset Management announced on the 14th that it will list the KODEX Global Obesity Treatment TOP2 Plus Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF), the first in Korea to consist solely of global obesity treatment companies.

The KODEX Global Obesity Treatment TOP2 Plus ETF holds 25% each of Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, the leaders in obesity treatment drugs. Novo Nordisk, the largest European company by market capitalization, is a pioneer in the obesity treatment market known for "Wegovy" and held a 94% market share in 2023. Eli Lilly is currently the world's largest healthcare company by market capitalization, and Goldman Sachs expects Eli Lilly to capture about 50% of the obesity treatment market by 2030 by leveraging its abundant resources and systems.

Additionally, the ETF invests equally in eight global pharmaceutical companies currently conducting clinical trials for obesity treatments approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Among these are four promising small and medium-sized pharmaceutical companies with high potential growth rates due to expectations of technology exports based on clinical results. The portfolio includes Zealand Pharma from Denmark, which has already signed a license agreement related to obesity treatment development with the global pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim, and Viking Therapeutics from the U.S., which announced positive comprehensive results from Phase 1 clinical trials for obesity treatment in February, attracting significant interest from major global pharmaceutical companies.

Samsung Asset Management explained that the KODEX Global Obesity Treatment TOP2 Plus ETF adopts an equal-weighted portfolio composition because selecting stocks based solely on market capitalization weighting has limitations in sufficiently including small and medium-sized pharmaceutical companies with a high focus on obesity treatments.

According to the 2023 report by the World Obesity Foundation Atlas, out of the global population of 8.1 billion, 1 billion people are obese. By 2035, more than half of the world's population is expected to be classified as obese or overweight, making obesity a major area in healthcare. Goldman Sachs also forecasts that the obesity treatment market will grow from approximately $6 billion in 2023 to about $100 billion (136 trillion KRW) by 2030, with an average annual growth rate of 50%.

Kim Cheonheung, manager at Samsung Asset Management, said, "The obesity treatment market is now in its early stages and is expected to have high global demand. We focused on designing the ETF to directly reflect the high market growth by including only companies approved or in clinical trials by the U.S. FDA and European EMA."

The KODEX Global Obesity Treatment TOP2 Plus ETF is based on the iSelect Global Obesity Treatment TOP2 Plus index. It consists of 10 stocks, with regular index rebalancing conducted every June and December, and has a total expense ratio of 0.45% per year.

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