Eli Lilly shares tumble over 10% after disappointing weight-loss pill data

Mint

12 hours ago

Eli Lilly & Co. tumbled as disappointing data on its new weight-loss pill overshadowed strong growth from the company's current obesity medicine, which helped drive it to raise its yearly profit and sales outlook.
Lilly's results from an obesity pill study, a drug key to unlocking billions of dollars of growth, didn't perform as well as Wall Street expected. It resulted in lower weight loss and higher rates of nausea and vomiting than anticipated, side effects associated with so-called GLP-1 drugs. The data was a boon for rival Novo Nordisk A/S.
'There was hope that this would be a wonder drug,' BMO analyst Evan Seigerman said of Lilly's pill. 'What this shows to me is that it's still a good drug, but it's bound by the limitations of being a GLP-1.'
Lilly fell more than 10% when markets opened in New York on Thursday. Novo rose as much as 14.3% in Copenhagen, the most in almost four months.
Drugmakers are in a hotly contested race to dominate the market for obesity medications. Lilly had moved into pole position against Novo thanks to Zepbound, its powerful injectable drug, but Lilly's sky-high valuation is tied in part to eventually turning its weight-loss pill into a blockbuster.
Investors say pills are a vital part of reaching more patients in the market that's expected to grow to $95 billion by 2030. But the science has proved to be a challenge. Pfizer Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc are among a handful of companies that have faced setbacks as they race to develop potent pills of their own.
In Lilly's pill study, patients on the highest dose shed roughly 11% of their body weight, or 25 pounds, the company said. In late-stage trials, patients on Novo's injectable Wegovy lost about 15% of their weight over a 68-week period.
The most common side effects were nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, which occurred at rates similar to existing GLP-1 drugs, Lilly said in a statement detailing the results. Notably, the medication didn't cause liver issues, a concern with other weight-loss pills in development. About 10% of patients dropped out of the study due to side effects.
Lilly's data raise doubts over whether the pill, called orforglipron, can meet Wall Street's estimates of $12 billion in annual sales by 2030, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts John Murphy and Christos Nikoletopoulos wrote.
The company defended the results, and said that small differences in weight loss in a clinical trial are of little importance to doctors and their patients.
'I know Wall Street has kind of focused on the exact numbers here and making cross-trial comparisons, but I don't think that carries over to to the real world at all,' Lilly Chief Scientific Medical Officer Daniel Skovronsky said on a conference call.
The company plans to submit the findings from the 18-month study involving more than 3,100 adults to regulatory agencies for approval by the end of the year. Detailed results will be presented at a medical conference in September.
If approved, Lilly's once-daily pill would likely hit pharmacy shelves next year. Orforglipron is easier to manufacture than its current injectable Zepbound and is expected to be a cheaper option for patients.
Novo has filed an oral version of its weight-loss blockbuster Wegovy for US approval, but it's more complicated to produce than Lilly's and will likely have more dosing restrictions, such as when patients can eat and drink. For investors, it has been a further example of Novo slipping behind after its next-generation obesity drug, CagriSema, also fell short of expectations in clinical trials.
But Lilly's result offered Novo a welcome narrative shift on the same day that Maziar Mike Doustdar takes over as CEO from Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen.
Novo executives said their pill had the potential to be the best in its class on a call Thursday afternoon with analysts after Lilly's pill data was released. 'The numbers speak for themselves,' Chief Scientific Officer Martin Holst Lange said.
On Thursday, Lilly also increased its sales projections for the year and now expects revenue between $60 billion and $62 billion, up from a range of $58 billion to $61 billion. The company said in a statement it expects 2025 profit to reach $21.75 to $23 a share, up from $20.78 to $22.28.
Lilly's second-quarter sales were $15.6 billion, beating analysts' average estimates of $14.7 billion. Zepbound surpassed expectations, while the diabetes medicine Mounjaro beat the Street's view.
Adjusted profits were $6.29 per share, which outpaced analysts' $5.57 per share expectation.
The company expects CVS Health Corp.'s decision to drop Zepbound from its preferred list of medications for pharmacy patients to slow third-quarter growth. CVS earlier this year negotiated a deal with Novo to make Wegovy cheaper for health plans.
Lilly executives initially shrugged off concerns over the move, but Chief Financial Officer Lucas Montarce said Thursday it took a bite out of Zepbound prescriptions in July.
Adding to pressure, the entire pharmaceutical industry faces the threat of sector-specific tariffs and policies that would restrict what they can charge for medicines in the US. President Donald Trump said in a television interview on Tuesday pharma tariffs would be announced 'within the next week or so.'
Last week, Trump also sent letters to 17 of the largest drugmakers, demanding they slash the price of medicines for US customers. Chief Executive Officer Dave Ricks was one of the executives to receive a personal letter from the president.
The CEO said the company would work with the administration but warned that Trump's so-called most-favored nation policy could 'import foreign price controls' into a complex US system.
'We risk embracing the worst of two worlds: the low productivity and output of Europe's biopharma sector and the high out-of-pocket costs and distorted prices of the US insurance market,' Ricks said on a conference call with analysts.