Eli Lilly forecasts huge 2024 from weight-loss and diabetes drugs

Eli Lilly got an even bigger injection of revenue from its new weight-loss drug, Zepbound, than Wall Street was expecting when the drugmaker announced its fourth-quarter earnings Tuesday.

Years after launching clinical trials for the weekly injection and its identical twin for diabetes, Mounjaro, Lilly expects its bet to pay off with revenue growth as dramatic as the weight-loss results it touts in its wonder drugs.

Despite Zepbound’s arrival on pharmacy shelves in early December, with less than a full month left in the quarter, it brought in $175.8 million—$100 million more than analysts forecast, according to Barron’s. That’s just a fraction of the $2.2 billion sales for Mounjaro, whose spring 2022 approval gave it an 18-month head start on Zepbound.

In October, Goldman Sachs projected that the market for anti-obesity drugs like Zepbound could hit $100 billion a year by 2030, a 16-fold increase from 2023. Seamus Fernandez, analyst for Guggenheim, told CNBC in December that Zepbound and Mounjaro’s active ingredient, tirzepatide, could become “the best-selling molecule of all time in the pharmaceutical industry.”

Lilly expects the dramatic results to continue from both Zepbound, its challenger to Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, and from its diabetes drug Mounjaro, whose revenues grew nearly eightfold from 2022. Mounjaro is Lilly’s rival to Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic.

Lilly forecast its 2024 revenue will be $40.4 billion–$41.6 billion, up from the $34.1 billion it reported for 2023 and is expected to be "largely driven by New Products,” according to its earnings release. That category does include three other drugs, but only Mounjaro and Zepbound are major sales drivers. Earnings per share and net income of $2.2 billion both grew 19% year over year.

Had the pharmaceutical giant not been dealing with the decline of Trulicity, the Indianapolis drugmaker would have even more impressive earnings and forecasts to share. While Trulicity closed 2023 as Lilly’s largest driver of revenue, its $7.1 billion in sales represented a 4% fall from 2022, and its fourth quarter revenues shrank 14% year over year as Mounjaro surpassed it as the top earner. Lilly reported that Trulicity, which has been selling fewer units at lower realized prices, will continue to suffer sales declines in 2024.