Eli Lilly (LLY) got another boost to grow stronger. A high-speed racing biopharma monster just confirmed the globally rising need in its weight-loss drugs at the practical level. What we can ascertain is that the price bottoming stage is finally complete after an overlong correction from early September 2024 to mid-January 2025. As we pointed to a chance for Eli Lilly's brief visits to the major technical support area between $700 and $750, before inevitable recovery to the levels above $950, that's how it perfectly goes. A cowardly attempt to retest its November 18 intraday low at $711.40 per share was limited to touching $725 after two months on January 17. Now the price is soaring to nearly $888 on solid quarterly numbers issued in the first week of February.
Zepbound treatment to make it easier to fight obesity cases is another brand name for tirzepatide, which was initially developed as Mounjaro for diabetes. This dual action injection drug, approved by the U.S. FDA in May 2022 for type 2 diabetes and then in November 2023 to reduce excess body weight and maintain weight reduction long term. Backed by a celebrity effect from Hollywood stars, this kind of medicare gradually became crazy popular among hundreds of millions of patients. Temporary signs of weakness in sales of the drugs last autumn were rather related to logistical bottlenecks. For this reason, sales of Mounjaro were $3.11 billion, and Zepbound sales amounted to $1.26 billion in Q3, even though analyst polls predicted $4.20 billion for Mounjaro and $1.69 billion for Zepbound. It was too optimistic scenario, and failure to meet it disappointed market bulls, following the stock's doubling in value in the previous two years. This problem appears to be fixed after the most valuable healthcare company in the world reported Q4 sales for its Zepbound and Mounjaro of $1.91 billion and $3.53 billion, respectively. The total increase was almost 25% over the course of one quarterly period. The company's current estimate is that U.S. growth of its diabetes and weight-loss drugs to be consistent with 2024, which apparently satisfied the investing crowd.
Lilly also projected its annual profit well above Wall Street estimates, as it is planning to grab between $22.50 and $24.00 per share in 2025, compared to average bets on $22.86 per share, according to LSEG data, with the midpoint of the announced range being 32% up from the last year. This means it is back on track hopefully after a harsh period with restoring order in supply chains. In addition, Lilly CEOs noted they are building manufacturing capacity for its new experimental oral obesity drug Orforglipron to ease some worries over its advance cycle. Eli Lilly is launching its Mounjaro in new markets like China, India, Brazil and Mexico, for both diabetes and obesity. Analyst polls expect revenues of above $59 billion for 2025. Lilly's rival Novo Nordisk, a Danish producer of Wegovy drug, forecasted slower growth vs its results in 2024. JAMA Internal Medicine reported that patients taking Mounjaro were 76% more likely to lose at least 5% of their body weight, more than twice as likely to lose at least 10%, and more than three times as likely to lose 15% or more of their weight, compared with patients taking the second-place drug by Novo Nordisk.
The entire market for weight-loss treatments is widely estimated at more than $150 billion by the early 2030s. To put it in perspective, Eli Lilly is three times larger in terms of market value than Merck and five times more expensive than Pfizer, the other two giants of the pharmaceutical industry. Eli Lilly's achievements include the U.S. regulatory approval of Kisunla, the brand name of Donanemab, which is a treatment of Alzheimer's disease, and of Jaypirca in Japan to treat lymphoma.
