On September 17, 2020, the Eli Lilly and Company logo was displayed in an office of Eli Lilly and Company in San Diego, California, USA.
Mike Black | Reuters
Eli Lilly and Company The company reported first-quarter adjusted profit on Tuesday that beat Wall Street expectations and raised its full-year guidance on strong sales of its best-selling diabetes drug Mounjaro and newly launched weight-loss drug Zepbound.
The drugmaker now expects full-year adjusted earnings per share of $13.50 to $14.00, up from previous guidance of $12.20 to $12.70 per share. Eli Lilly also expects revenue this year to be between $42.4 billion and $43.6 billion, an increase of $2 billion on either end.
Analysts surveyed by LSEG expected full-year adjusted earnings per share of $12.50 on sales of $41.44 billion.
The company said the higher guidance was driven in part by optimism about increased production of Zepbound, Mounjaro and similar drugs through the remainder of the year.
“Four months into the year, we have a clearer picture of these capacity nodes,” Eli Lilly Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi told investors on Tuesday’s earnings call. Understand and feel more confident.
She noted that Eli Lilly has multiple manufacturing sites “under construction or under construction,” including two in North Carolina, two in Indiana, one in Ireland and one in Germany base, and the company’s seventh production site recently acquired From Nexus Pharmaceuticals.
Eli Lilly said demand this season for Mounjaro and Zepbound, which are known as incretin drugs, mimic hormones produced in the gut that suppress a person’s appetite and regulate blood sugar, outstripped supply growth. Ashkenazi said the company expects supply to remain “fairly tight” in the near to medium term due to continued demand for the drugs.
But she noted that Eli Lilly expects the most significant increase in production in the second half of the year.
“Our top priority is to make more product, and we’re doing everything we can to do that,” Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks told CNBC on Tuesday.scream box“We are actively increasing our efforts. But it is capital-intensive, technically complex and highly regulated.”
The results and guidance upgrade reflect Zepbound’s first full quarter in the U.S. market after receiving regulatory approval in early November.The drug’s first-quarter sales were $517.4 million, although most of the drug’s doses falling into shortage In the United States, it is expected to last until June.
Analysts say the weekly shot could bring in more than $1 billion in sales in its first year on the market and could become a biggest drug ever.
This is Eli Lilly’s report Season one Compared to Wall Street expectations, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG:
- Earnings per share: Adjusted $2.58, expected $2.46
- income: $8.77 billion vs. $8.92 billion expected
Eli Lilly reported first-quarter net income of $2.24 billion, or $2.48 per share. That compares with profit of $1.34 billion, or $1.49 per share, a year ago.
Excluding one-time items related to the value of intangible assets and other adjustments, the company reported first-quarter 2024 profit of $2.58 per share.
The pharmaceutical giant’s first-quarter revenue was $8.77 billion, a year-over-year increase of 26%.
Eli Lilly shares rose more than 5% on Tuesday. The stock is up 26% this year after surging nearly 60% in 2023 amid insatiable demand for the company’s weight loss and diabetes drugs.This is despite their high price taguneven insurance coverage and intermittent supply shortages.
Eli Lilly, with a market capitalization of approximately US$700 billion, is the largest pharmaceutical company in the United States
Mounjaro, Trulicity results
The company’s two best-selling diabetes drugs both missed Wall Street expectations in the first quarter.
Mounjaro’s first-quarter revenue of $1.81 billion was more than three times the $568.5 million in the same period last year. However, analysts expected sales of $2.11 billion, according to StreetAccount.
Eli Lilly said higher prices for Mounjaro helped boost revenue, particularly as usage of its U.S. savings card program declined
But the company said those savings card dynamics should “no longer have a significant impact on actual price comparisons” because a $25-per-month coupon for patients without Mounjaro insurance expired in June.
“Beginning in the second half of each year, we should see typical pricing for Mounjaro,” Patrik Jonsson, Eli Lilly’s executive vice president of diabetes and obesity, said on a conference call Tuesday.
Meanwhile, sales of Eli Lilly’s veteran diabetes drug Trulicity plunged 26% to $1.46 billion in the first quarter. That was below analysts’ expectations of $1.59 billion, according to StreetAccount.
Eli Lilly said the sales decline in the U.S. was primarily due to supply constraints and competition with other diabetes treatments. Revenues outside the U.S. also declined due to lower demand and real prices and tight supply.
Other drugs fall short of expectations
Revenue growth was also boosted by sales of Eli Lilly’s breast cancer drug Verzenio, which rose 40% in the quarter to $1.05 billion due to increased demand.
However, those results were below analysts’ expectations, which had expected sales of $1.11 billion in the period.
Sales of Jardiance, a pill that lowers blood sugar in people with type 2 diabetes, rose 19% to $686.5 million in the first quarter. Analysts had expected Jardiance sales of $718.3 million.
Jardiance, which Eli Lilly shares with Boehringer Ingelheim, is one of the first 10 drugs selected for price negotiations with the federal Medicare program.
