TheChek News Flow

Activist takes on Swatch maverick as Omega empire falters

Nick Hayek has overseen a decade of decline at the watchmaker. Can he see off the threat to his grip on the group?

When Nick Hayek was asked last year why Swatch Group did not engage more with the financial community, the watchmaker’s maverick chief executive told investors that if they did not like the way the company was managed, they could invest elsewhere.

They appear to have done exactly that.

Shares in Swatch, owner of 16 watch brands including Omega, Longines and Tissot, have dropped 24 per cent in the past 12 months. That has extended a poor run in which the Swiss group’s shares have fallen from a peak of nearly SFr600 in 2014 to SFr147.85, valuing the company at SFr7.7bn.

The group’s weak performance — net profit tumbled 75 per cent to SFr219mn ($261mn) last year — is partly down to shrinking demand from Chinese consumers, amid a broader slowdown in luxury spending.

But some analysts and investors argue that many of Swatch’s problems are homegrown.

Hayek has served as chief executive since 2003 and his sister, Nayla, has chaired the board since 2010. Oliver Müller, founder of LuxeConsult, a consultant to the watch industry, said the Hayeks were running Swatch like a family business rather than a public company.

“In German we say beratungsresistent: resistant to advice. That is the essence of the problem . . . it is a sad story”, he said.

Investors, however, may soon force the family to pay more attention to their wishes.

Steven Wood, founder of US investment firm GreenWood Investors, which owns 0.5 per cent of Swatch shares, is pushing to be elected to the board of directors at Swatch’s annual meeting on Wednesday.

Wood told the Financial Times this month that Swatch was “only being run for one shareholder”, a thinly veiled reference to the Hayek family, which owns 25 per cent of Swatch’s shares but controls 44 per cent of the voting rights.

Hayek, 70, revels in needling the Swiss business establishment. As well as berating analysts and investors, Swatch’s uncompromising chief executive has been known to smoke cigars at press conferences. During his tenure Swatch has occasionally published its annual report in Swiss-German — a dialect incomprehensible to many investors — or in a font so small it requires a magnifying glass to read.

The Swiss watchmaking industry owes a significant debt to Swatch. The Biel-based company’s embrace of quartz technology in the 1980s helped make Swiss watches accessible to the masses and stave off an existential threat from cheap Asian manufacturers.

Founder Nicolas Hayek, Nick’s father who died in 2010, is widely credited with transforming Swatch into a global symbol of Swiss innovation and craftsmanship.

That dynamism has been lost under today’s management, according to Roce Capital co-founder Michael Niedzielski, a former Swatch shareholder.

“The communication with the investor community is poor and they do not take feedback,” he said, adding that “disastrous” working capital management had drained free cash flow over the past decade.

Another former Swatch investor said they had wanted to see the executives leading its various brands given more control over their strategy, “but the Hayek family did not allow it”.

Meanwhile, any attempt to offer advice to management on refreshing the portfolio to try and boost growth was rebuffed, according to a Switzerland-based investment banker. “They shut down any attempt to meet with them and offer advice,” they said.

Swatch said analysts are invited to participate in calls with executives twice a year and that investors visit the company “very frequently.” It also defended the company’s working capital management, pointing out that trade receivables were equivalent to only 31 days of outstanding invoices at the end of December.

Swatch’s brands collectively cater to virtually every corner of the market. The group sells everything from £44,000 Breguet timepieces right down to £50 watches under the Swatch brand.

However, the Swiss watch industry has been in decline since enjoying a pandemic-era boom, and faces fresh challenges in the form of US tariffs and the impact of a strong franc on export values and profitability.

Caroline Reyl, head of premium brands at Pictet Asset Management, said the “very high end” is the only part of the watch market in growth, “namely Patek Philippe, Rolex and Audemars Piguet”.

“This polarisation effect of a few brands dominating is only increasing,” she added.

Swatch’s high-end brands, however, have fallen out of favour. Jean-Philippe Bertschy, head of Swiss equity research at Vontobel, says Patek Philippe and Breguet were both making about $300mn to $400mn in annual sales 20 years ago.

Since then, the bank estimates Patek Philippe’s sales have grown roughly sevenfold to almost $2.3bn, while Breguet’s annual sales have fallen by almost half to $221mn.

It is a similar story with sales of Omega and Longines watches, which declined 20 per cent and 29 per cent respectively between 2019 and 2024, according to Vontobel.

“There is no other company that has seen sales decrease in watches by as much in the past few years,” Bertschy said, adding that “investors have really started to lose patience”. Swatch said the FT should not “listen to, rely on or trust analysts”.

Hayek has previously said his family is “not at all dissatisfied with Swatch Group” and that he is more concerned with the company’s long-term development than short-term share price moves.

“If you are a shareholder with us, you can be sure that you are part-owner of a company that is solid and will not get into trouble if a storm comes up. That’s a big difference compared to some of our competitors,” he added, referring to Swatch’s robust balance sheet.

Swatch still retains some structural advantages over rivals. Its 150-plus production sites make almost all of the components in its watches, as well as those sold by third-party watchmakers. Micro Crystal, another Swatch business, is also regarded as a leader in the production of quartz crystals used in watches and smartphones.

There have also been some successful innovations. The recent MoonSwatch collaboration between Omega and Swatch, a popular collection of affordable, colourful watches, has boosted sales.

But analysts have called for Swatch to focus on revitalising other brands to capture more of the relatively resilient high-end market. Breguet, which currently loses money, is perceived as a neglected brand with huge potential, because of its 250-year history and association with European sovereigns such as Queen Marie Antoinette and Napoleon Bonaparte.

For now, Hayek appears trapped in an unhappy marriage with the public markets. Swatch’s chief executive has repeatedly raised the prospect of taking the company private, but no deal has materialised and he is now facing a threat to his grip on the company.

Wood is seeking to be elected to Swatch’s board of directors on Wednesday as a representative for holders of so-called bearer shares, which represent 55 per cent of Swatch’s share capital, but carry a minority of voting rights.

Swatch’s board has recommended shareholders vote against Wood’s resolution for several reasons, including that he is neither a Swiss national nor a Swiss resident.

Regardless of which way the vote goes, a consensus is forming that Swatch is in need of a shake-up. But with no known succession plan, many observers have given up hope of a quick turnaround.

“Omega, Longines, Breguet . . . are among the most prestigious brands in the industry [but] unfortunately they are consistently losing market share,” said Vontobel’s Bertschy. “We strongly believe that some changes in corporate governance are urgently needed.”

Paris wins approval from Berlin to remove anti-nuclear bias in EU legislation, say officials

Germany has dropped its long-held opposition to nuclear power, in the first concrete sign of rapprochement with France by Berlin’s new government led by conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Berlin has signalled to Paris it will no longer block French efforts to ensure nuclear power is treated on par with renewable energy in EU legislation, according to French and German officials.

The move resolves a major dispute between the two countries that has delayed decisions on EU energy policy, including during the crisis that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“The Germans are telling us: we will be very pragmatic on the issue of nuclear power,” said a senior French diplomat involved in the talks. This meant that “all the biases against nuclear power, which still remain here and there in EU legislation, will be removed.”

“This will be a sea-change policy shift,” said a German official.

The reversal comes as Merz is seeking to explore ways for Germany to join France’s nuclear shield as a deterrent against future Russian aggression. “We are now actually finally open to talk to France about nuclear deterrence for Europe. Better late than never,” the German official said.

“It’s a welcome rapprochement that will make the topic of energy easier in the EU,” said Guntram Wolff, senior fellow at think-tank Bruegel. “Politically, Merz is also thinking about the nuclear umbrella.”

Berlin’s reversal on nuclear power is part of efforts by Merz to revive Franco-German co-operation, a precondition for major decisions at EU level that stalled under former chancellor Olaf Scholz.

“When France and Germany agree, it is much easier for Europe to move forward,” said Lars-Hendrik Röller, a professor at Berlin-based ESMT business school who was chief economic adviser to former chancellor Angela Merkel. “While several challenges remain, I believe this issue will be solved.”

Merz, who won elections in February, has been critical of his country’s decision to exit nuclear energy in 2011, under party rival Merkel, which he said was depriving Germany of cheap and reliable electricity.

Merz also criticised his predecessor Scholz for shutting down Germany’s last three nuclear power stations even as the country was grappling with high energy prices. While he does not plan to reopen conventional nuclear power stations, he has vowed to invest in new technologies, including small modular reactors and nuclear fusion, which, unlike fission, produces no long-lived nuclear waste.

The new Franco-German entente on energy builds on a groundswell of enthusiasm for nuclear power since gas prices reached record highs following Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

It leaves Austria as the only EU state strictly opposed to nuclear power. Countries including the Netherlands and Belgium have recommitted to atomic energy, having previously pledged to shut reactors.

In a letter sent to the European Commission on Friday, seen by the Financial Times, ministers from 12 EU member states with nuclear reactors said it was “imperative” that the EU recognised the “complementary nature of nuclear and renewable energy sources”.

They called for an update to an existing survey of the bloc’s nuclear sector to pave the way for governments to give state aid to nuclear projects and send a “clear signal” to businesses and investors about the benefits of atomic power.

Germany, which covered more than 60 per cent of its electricity consumption with renewable energy last year, long opposed Paris’ push to label atomic power as “green”. France derives about 70 per cent of its electricity from atomic power.

Berlin’s concerns in part stemmed from concerns that French industry would gain a competitive edge thanks to its 56-strong fleet of reactors, while German industry still struggles with the impact of high gas prices following the cut-off from cheap Russian fuel.

It has also been an ideological issue in Germany, where the anti-nuclear Green party were a part of Scholz’s government. 

The stand-off resulted in long debates over the inclusion of the words “low carbon” — seen as a synonym for nuclear power — across EU legal texts, particularly those relating to renewable power and the production of hydrogen, which Berlin sees as a critical energy carrier for decarbonising German industry.

“To ensure our energy sovereignty while respecting national choices, we are calling for an end to all discrimination at European level against low-carbon energies, whether nuclear or renewable,” said French President Emmanuel Macron during Merz’s trip to Paris on May 7.

For example, Germany’s new stance means that hydrogen produced from nuclear power should now be treated on par with hydrogen made from wind or solar energy, the French official said.

If you are a fan of Apple’s own-brand over-ear headphones, the AirPods Max, you may be wondering when to expect a new generation model. Apple revised the headphones last fall, adding a USB-C port, but the model was otherwise unchanged. Despite costing the most, AirPods Max lack features that are available in even the cheapest AirPods 4, and are driven by the outdated H1 chip.

And if you believe analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, you’ve still got a while to wait before Apple will be ready to release a next-generation model. In a tweet, Kuo reports that next-generation AirPods Max will not arrive until 2027.

Kuo says the 2027 AirPods Max will feature a new design. This suggests the 2027 generation will actually be a significant update, rather than a minor revision like the USB-C change.

Specifically, Kuo says the new AirPods Max will feature a lighter weight design. This would directly address one of the biggest complaints about the current Max, in that their liberal use of aluminium makes them rather heavy on the head, which some customers can find uncomfortable for long listening sessions.

For comparison, the current AirPods Max weigh in at 386 grams. The comparable Beats Studio Pro weigh just 260 grams.

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo today tweeted that he does not forecast major updates to the AirPods lineup coming this year. Instead, he reiterates that new AirPods Pro with Infrared cameras are set to arrive in 2026.

This contradicts reporting from other publications that have suggested AirPods Pro 3 will launch in 2025, including new features such as improved active noise cancellation.

This claim seems a little sketchy given AirPods Pro 2 are approaching three years old, and as Apple’s most popular and most profitable AirPods model, it would be unusual for the company to let them languish for so long.

One of the rumored features for the next-gen AirPods Pro was the inclusion of a heart rate monitor. The heart rate capability has already debuted in the new Powerbeats Pro 4.

Apple also stole much of the AirPods Pro thunder with the launch of the cheaper AirPods 4 line in the fall last year, adding features like Active Noise Cancellation in wireless earbuds priced as low as $179.

However, while Apple has not released a new hardware generation of AirPods Pro since 2022, the company has continued to expand what the headphones can do through software updates. Most notably, AirPods Pro 2 are now able to act as licensed hearing aids, correcting for mild-to-moderate hearing loss.

The news is even bleaker for over-ear AirPods Max users, who may not see a new revision until 2027 at the earliest.

Are you waiting for new AirPods Pro? Let us know in the comments below.

New schemes seek to attract international talent and lock in funding security for researchers

The UK’s scientific institutions are stepping up investment plans in the face of attacks on research by Donald Trump’s administration, unveiling 10-year official funding guarantees and fellowships open to experts fleeing the US.

The initiatives to be unveiled by the UK government, the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering within days will bolster efforts to woo international talent and give extra financial stability to long-term projects in fast-advancing fields such as quantum computing and bacterial resistance.

The measures amount to an effort to Trump-proof British science against the kind of sudden funding cuts and ideological suppression of research seen in the US.

“International science is in a state of flux, with some of the certainties of the postwar era now under question,” said Sir Adrian Smith, president of the Royal Society, the UK’s national science academy. “With funding streams and academic freedom coming under threat, the best scientific talent will be looking for stability. The UK can be at the front of the queue in attracting that talent.”

The Royal Society will announce a new Faraday Fellowship for international researchers, backed by up to £30mn. The money will be used to award up to £4mn, or more in exceptional circumstances, to individual scientists or teams for work lasting between five and 10 years.

Two-thirds of the £30mn will come from an existing government-funded scheme run by the society aimed at attracting mid-career researchers interested in relocating to the UK. The remainder will be new money from the society itself and will be focused on scientists at other career stages.

Simultaneously, the Royal Academy of Engineering will launch an accelerated route to make it easier for “exceptional international researchers and inventors to come and work in the UK”.

It will give successful applicants up to £3mn over 10 years to develop and scale up breakthrough climate solutions, as part of the academy’s existing £150mn Green Future Fellowship programme.

The initiatives add to a similar £54mn programme announced by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology this month. The money will pay relocation costs and project funding for about 10 teams of researchers in government priority areas such as life sciences, artificial intelligence and green energy.

The initiative has been welcomed by scientific institutions, although many have also raised concerns about the potential deterrent effect of high visa costs on broader efforts to recruit internationally.

The department will separately unveil a plan to provide a decade-long funding guarantee for researchers in frontier fields.

The extended financing aims to give institutions extra certainty to recruit and collaborate internationally, build needed infrastructure and forge partnerships with the private sector.

The 10-year grants could account for about £2bn of the £20.4bn in annual research and development (R&D) spending across government, said Lord Patrick Vallance, science minister and a former government chief scientific adviser.

Vallance said he believed “very strongly” that investment in science and technology was a “national endeavour, not a party political endeavour” — even though he conceded any future administration could theoretically reverse the funding changes.

Since the Trump administration took office in January, it has sought to impose big cuts on science funding. It has also ordered the scrapping of research work in areas including diversity, vaccines and climate change.

In Britain, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, which is ahead of Labour in the polls and won hundreds of seats in this month’s local elections, has attacked official policies on net zero carbon emissions and diversity, equity and inclusion. It has also promised to “slash government waste”.

Vallance acknowledged there was “always a risk” that established long-term research funding streams could be cancelled by a future government with a radical approach to science policy. The minister, who used to be president of R&D at pharmaceuticals company GSK, said he would “continue to push” for the long view on investment.

“Chopping and changing in R&D is a very bad way to get progress,” he said. “You damage things”.

Orly (France) (AFP) – A control tower breakdown forced the cancellation of about 130 flights at Paris Orly airport Sunday, leaving thousands of passengers to scramble for alternative routes, officials said.

A spokesman for Aeroports de Paris, which operates the French capital's second busiest airport, said about 40 percent of the day's departures and arrivals had been called off.

France's DGAC civil aviation authority blamed "a failure of the air traffic control systems at the Orly tower early in the afternoon" for what it said had been a "significant" reduction in the number of flights.

An aviation source told AFP that a radar breakdown caused the airport chaos.

The airport spokesman said about half the 130 cancelled flights were departures and half incoming flights.

Flights across France and to other European destinations and North Africa were among those hit. The DGAC would not say whether flights would return to normal on Monday.

Stood near a line of suitcases, Agnes Zilouri, 46, tried desperately to find a seat for her 86-year-old mother and six year old son. The family had been meant to take a flight to Oujda in Morocco on Sunday evening to go to a funeral.

"The flight is cancelled. Fortunately I am with my mother," she said.

Last year Orly handled about 33 million passengers, approximately half the number of the main Paris Charles de Gaulle international airport.

Boutique groups have rushed to fill the gap left by Wall Street heavyweights

A new cast of boutique banks is fuelling a fresh fervour for blank-cheque companies — one of Wall Street’s hottest and most controversial products during the pandemic-era bull market.

Special purpose acquisition vehicles, or Spacs, exploded in popularity during the Covid-19 crisis, with around 600 deals in the US raising a record $163bn in 2021 before the frenzy died down as global stocks tumbled the following year due to rising interest rates. 

But the market has revved up again since Donald Trump won his second term as president, despite volatility sparked by his tariffs delaying several traditional initial public offerings. There have been 44 Spac offerings this year raising $9bn, compared with 57 raising $9.6bn during the whole of 2024, Dealogic data shows.

A Spac is a vehicle that offers private companies an alternative to IPOs; the blank cheque company lists on public markets and then later merges with a target.

Under former Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler, the regulator aligned the rules for mergers of companies with listed Spacs with those for standard IPOs. Investors expect more lenient policy under the SEC’s new chair Paul Atkins, who was nominated by Trump.

Four years ago, Credit Suisse, Citibank, Deutsche Bank and Jefferies were among the busiest Spac advisers. But a cluster of lesser-known firms including Cohen & Company Capital Markets, D Boral Capital, Clear Street and Maxim Group have since come to dominate the sector.

“There’s been a reordering of the deck chairs since the Gensler era,” said Matthew Michel, founder and managing partner at InvestorLink Capital Markets.

“When the SEC targeted Spacs by creating an uncertain regulatory environment, the big banks moved to idle their Spac origination businesses,” Michel said. “This shift cleared the way for smaller players to fill the void.”

Since 2022, no firm has advised on more deals between Spacs and groups seeking to go public — a process known as a de-Spac — than Cohen & Company, which has worked on 54 deals. Cohen & Company is also tied in first place this year with Cantor Fitzgerald for Spac IPOs.

Cohen & Company’s head of Spac investment banking Brandon Sun previously worked on Spacs at Deutsche Bank until he and three colleagues were let go in 2022 after their names appeared on a bill at a strip club, though Sun said he did not attend the event. Cohen & Company quickly snapped him up.

“2025 was meant to be the year of the IPO,” Sun said. “Given the volatility resulting from Trump’s tariff policies, those hopes have been dashed and crushed. The opportunity for Spacs is pretty incredible.”

D Boral Capital ranks second on de-Spac transactions over the past three years. In 2022, the bank — then named EF Hutton — helped Trump’s Truth Social list via a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp.

The median price performance on the 17 private companies that have gone public by merging with Spacs this year is a fall of 73 per cent, according to data provider ListingTrack. Many during the earlier boom also suffered steep falls.

While the Spac market’s main underwriters have changed, many of the same sponsors active during the pandemic are “coming back into the game”, ListingTrack’s Nick Gershenhorn said.

Former Citigroup executive Michael Klein was a prolific Spac sponsor in 2020 and 2021. His latest blank-cheque company Churchill Capital X filed to go public in late April. In recent months, serial sponsors in 2020 and 2021 including banking entrepreneur Betsy Cohen, Los Angeles billionaire Alec Gores and former California congressman and Trump Media & Technology Group chief executive Devin Nunes have also taken part in Spac deals, according to regulatory filings.

A Spac led by Brandon Lutnick, son of US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and chair of Cantor Fitzgerald, raised $100mn last year and in April merged with Twenty One Capital to form a bitcoin acquisition vehicle in the image of Michael Saylor’s bitcoin-focused group Strategy. Its shares have tripled since announcing the crypto deal.

Spac market participants credit Cantor and a recent flurry of new vehicles sponsored by the brokerage for reopening the market. “This vintage of sponsors are people who know how to get deals done,” said Sun.

Investors say the dash for Spacs is unlikely to slow even as the traditional IPO market begins to thaw on hopes that the worst of Trump’s tariff threats have passed.

“All the usual suspects are back. And if they are not back yet they will be back soon,” said one large Spac investor who did not want to be named. “People don't care that [Spacs] were disasters before because they want to back dealmakers and guys that do something.”

Providers of compounded obesity drugs are finding—for now—a new way into the booming market by tweaking formulations

Key Points

A government crackdown on cheaper copies of Ozempic and similar diabetes and weight-loss drugs was intended to shut the door on that booming market.

It hasn’t exactly worked out that way.

Instead, some compounding pharmacies and telehealth companies that make the copies have found new ways in. They are making and selling dosages slightly different from the standard, FDA-approved amounts or including additives such as vitamins B3 and B12. Others have changed how the drug is taken, switching from injectables to under the tongue drops or pills.

These providers are relying on a law that allows bespoke versions of drugs that are unavailable commercially. Though some patients report delays in receiving the compounded medications, many are still getting them—at least for now—said patients and industry professionals.

Patients originally turned to these less-expensive alternatives not approved by the Food and Drug Administration because their insurance didn’t cover the brand-name drugs. But the FDA recently set spring deadlines for compounders to stop providing the copycat drugs.

Jessica Nelson, 28 years old, has mixed feelings about the new formulations. She turned to a telehealth platform called Emerge for a compounded version of tirzepatide last fall, when her health plan denied coverage of the branded versions, Mounjaro and Zepbound. This spring, Emerge notified her that it was switching pharmacies and adding niacinamide, a form of vitamin B3, and then levocarnitine, an amino acid, to the formulations.

Nelson, who has lost 50 pounds on the medication, said she would prefer that there weren’t any additives. “But if it’s that or nothing, then I would still take it,” Nelson said. She pays $379 a month, less than half of what brand-name alternatives cost until recently.

“It has been life-changing,” she said.

Emerge didn’t respond to requests for comment.

A long-running shortage of blockbuster obesity drugs allowed compounding pharmacies to make cheaper copies over the past few years—and the market for them to explode. The Outsourcing Facilities Association, a pharmacy trade group, estimated in November that larger compounding pharmacies were supplying more than two million patients with compounded semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy.

By comparison, about 3.4 million prescriptions for the brand-name counterparts were filled that November, according to the Iqvia Institute.

Now that the FDA has declared an official end to the shortages, providers are required to stop making the compounded copies in bulk. A section of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act still permits compounding if the drug is changed in a way that makes a “significant difference” for the patient compared with the commercially available drug.

Sellers are taking different tacks. In March, the telehealth site Clover Meds emailed customers to say that its compounded tirzepatide would soon be prescribed only to people who had excessive nausea with standard formulations. Patients would be prompted to answer a question to determine eligibility, the email said. The drug would change to a twice-weekly injection with vitamin B6 to mitigate nausea.

Southend, a compounding pharmacy, emailed its patients to say that it was tweaking several dose concentrations to avoid being considered a “copy.”

Southend said that it now prescribed the drug only to patients who couldn’t tolerate the dosages of the brand-name drugs and that its prescription volumes had fallen as a result. Clover Meds didn’t respond to requests for comment.

To comply with the law, the dose and formulation changes need to be tailored to individual patients, instead of on a mass scale, said Lowell Schiller, a nonresident senior scholar at the USC Schaeffer Institute and former head of policy at the FDA.

“There are lots of companies out there who are pushing the envelope on this,” he said.

The drugmakers agree. Novo Nordisk has filed more than 100 lawsuits against businesses marketing compounded semaglutide. In April, Eli Lilly, which makes Mounjaro and Zepbound, sued several telehealth companies, alleging that they are selling mass-produced versions of its drugs under the guise of offering personalized options.

Compounders are also expected to face more scrutiny from state and federal regulators, though the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy said state boards haven’t pursued action related to the issue. The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

One of the telehealth clinics that Eli Lilly sued is Mochi Health, which in recent months told customers the doses of its compounded obesity drugs would be automatically adjusted.

“There are no extra steps needed to stay on your treatment plan,” the company wrote in an email viewed by The Wall Street Journal. “We’ll automatically readjust your refill.” For example, it said, patients taking 2.5 milligrams of compounded tirzepatide, the standard starting dose, would be shifted to 2.2 milligrams.

Emily Martin, a 29-year-old Mochi patient in Tacoma, Wash., said that, within three months, the dose or formulation of her medication changed three times.

One included no additive, while the others included different forms of vitamin B12 or B6. Martin said she didn’t meet with any of Mochi’s medical providers beforehand to confirm the changes in the formulations or doses.

“I would have loved an update as to what they were adding in,” Martin said.

Mochi’s chief executive, Myra Ahmad, said that the company was compliant with federal guidance and regulations and that every dosage change at Mochi is reviewed and approved by a licensed medical provider.

“This lawsuit is, broadly, a PR play,” she said.

Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk have both recently lowered prices to $500 a month for most doses for patients who pay on their own. Yet many patients have said the compounded versions remain more affordable over the long term.

“I honestly don’t have any intention of stopping this,” said Martin. “It has made my life a lot better.”