CSL boss Paul McKenzie is confident that weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic are no threat to the company’s success as the biotech giant champions growth opportunities after a week of heightened investor scrutiny.

Shares in the $116 billion blood plasma treatments maker hit lows not seen since before the pandemic last week, after the company faced a protest vote on executive pay and narrowly avoided a first “strike” at its annual meeting.

But it was news of a study from Novo Nordisk suggesting drugs such as Ozempic could help delay the progress of kidney disease that spooked CSL investors, with its shares falling more than 5 per cent over the past five days.

Analysts immediately began running the ruler over the impact that drugs such as Ozempic could have on CSL Vifor, the Swiss pharma firm that cost CSL more than $16 billion and is focused on kidney disease treatments. “We think this could be a potential negative catalyst on CSL,” Morgan Stanley analysts said last week.

McKenzie, who took the reins as CSL boss in March, was quick to quell investor concerns at the company’s capital markets day on Monday, saying in his opening remarks that the punchline on the research results last week was that “we do not see GLP-1s [weight-loss drugs] to have any material impact on our business”.

In a break between sessions of the company’s day-long investor presentations, he said CSL was comfortable that the kidney disease study did not spell trouble for CSL Vifor’s portfolio.

“There is not a big correlation between obesity reduction and the disease states that we work in,” McKenzie said.

The company’s head of research and development, Bill Mezzanotte, said he was keen to review the data when it was published in full but told investors he did not believe the research reduced the importance of CSL’s portfolio.

“Much of the press has to do on the impact on weight loss … [but] the obesity impact has little relevance to the impact on kidney or cardiovascular disease.”