A rare happy good luck! For anyone who has long been looking for a high-quality US asset with at least $500 billion in market capitalization, but much cheaper than what people call a "fair price". Eli Lilly delivered a stunning second-quarter financial performance, by far shattering all its previous records once again and beating already too hot and much elevated consensus estimates for the profitability of its best-selling weight-loss drug by 12.88%. But its stock price suddenly plunged nearly 15% due to a quite controversial clinical miss of a new oral pill. I don't tell you to grab the first price found on the street tomorrow morning, but a procrastinating delay for too long would be even a bigger mistake.

Eli Lilly was a measly $30 shy of hitting $1,000 at its 2024 peaking price and about $80 distance short of touching that same milestone in 2025. And it's currently trading below $650, which means another $300 of headroom for nearly 50% of the future recovery potential. Perhaps the fortune will grant us an even lower price, but for me it's very unlikely that the asset may fall below $600 for more than a day. Here are some major details, and you draw your own conclusions.

To be very brief, the company's main profit has so far been made by anti-diabetic and weight loss products under the Zepbound and Mounjaro brands, and they have broken all previous records and average expectations once again. Those key medications are in the forms of injections. Together, they provided sales that grew to $10.40 billion, with Mounjaro generating $5.20 billion (up 68% YoY) and Zepbound contributing $3.38 billion (up 172% YoY). This is a unique achievement. No competitors like NovoNordisk, whose drugs reportedly and allegedly have unacceptable side effects like vision damage, can even come close to Eli Lilly's current achievement. Its EPS (earnings per share) jumped 92% YoY to $6.29 against $3.92 in the same period of 2024 and the previous record of $5.32 in Q4 2024. Beside that, Lilly raised its full-year sales guidance by another $1.5 billion to a higher range of $60 billion to $62 billion, also raising its inner profit expectations to $20.85-$22.10 per share.

This is all on the positive side. So what else could the market want? First, a few months ago the crowd wound itself up with even higher expectations, which prevented the $1000 from being taken by storm and brought about a rollback and correction phase. However, that would be only half the self-made trouble for too brave investing minds. And the other half of the same trouble is that Eli Lilly has vowed to make and promote a very effective pill so that patients do not have to take injections. And the market has too high hopes for that pill. Morgan Stanley experts, for example, estimated the financial effect of the pill revenue at an extra $40 billion each year by 2033. But the most recent weight loss pill trial effect was modest compared to high market bets. In particular, the last phase of a clinical trial led the group of patients to lose an average weight of 12.4% (27.3 pounds) over 72 weeks. 59.6% of all participants lost at least 10% of their corresponding body weight and 39.6% lost even 15% or more. Despite this being statistically significant, specialists expected even higher results.I don't know what you'll say, but for me, I'd rather swallow one pill a day than inject myself in the stomach or anywhere else, even if the pills would burn off my weight more slowly. The company also emphasized that its innovative pill (named orforglipron) still represents a significant advancement as a "once-daily oral therapy that could support early intervention and long-term obesity management, though the commercial opportunity may be more limited than originally anticipated".

Well, you can do whatever you want, but next week I’m personally buying a few shares of Eli Lilly for my mostly tech portfolio, without looking at the particular share price at all. And if it suddenly falls below $600 for a while, then I’ll buy the same amount more of Eli Lilly and I'll wait for the $950 or higher target as long as it takes. A typical situation for brave hands. Remember when CrowdStrike shares nearly collapsed because of a stupid computer glitch that "buried" Windows on 19 July 2024. There was a huge price discount, with CRWD share price plunging to $200 per share. So what? Less than a year passed, and CrowdStrike shares were breaking new records above $500, as if nothing had happened. The same will happen with Eli Lilly.