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Eli Lilly Hits Trillion Dollar Market Cap

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Roll out the oversized sheet cake and throw on some Pitbull, because Eli Lilly hit a $1 trillion market cap yesterday. The drugmaker’s shares surged over 1.6% Friday, pushing it to become the first healthcare company and second non-tech company to hit the milestone.

It’s all thanks to the GLP-1s. Obesity and diabetes drugs, including blockbusters Zepbound and Mounjaro, now account for over half of Eli Lilly’s total revenue, bringing in $10.09 billion of its total $17.6 billion last quarter. The company’s stock has rocketed up more than 75% since it introduced its obesity drug Zepbound in 2023, according to Reuters. The stock has jumped up 36% this year alone.

And the company is well positioned to take on its rivals, including Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk, which sells the GLP-1s Wegovy and Ozempic.

  • When Novo Nordisk first gained approval to sell Ozempic for weight loss, the drugmaker struggled with supply shortages, allowing Eli Lilly to swoop in and establish its stronghold on the $72 billion weight loss drug market. Other pharma companies are playing catch-up and desperately trying to acquire smaller drugmakers to get a leg up in the market.
  • Eli Lilly was set up to take the top spot after a massive overhaul of its research and development process in the last decade, following a number of expensive rollouts that flopped.
  • The company’s market value is more than twice that of its closest US competitor, Johnson & Johnson, which currently has a ~$490 billion market cap.

Returns you can’t even comprehend

The pharmaceutical industry’s white whale right now is a GLP-1 in pill form. Analysts think Eli Lilly has a better version in the works. It’s called orforglipron, and it doesn’t require patients to fast when taking it, like Novo’s oral GLP-1 does.

Looking ahead…Eli Lilly plans to file for FDA approval of its pill by the end of the year and put it on the market by mid-2026. Wall Street expects it could bring in $40 billion a year at its peak.—MM

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