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Have Eli Lilly’s weight-loss drug gains hit a plateau?

Sales of Lilly’s weight-loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound are eking higher and underwhelming analysts.

10/30/24 10:48AM

Revenues from popular weight-loss drugs made by Eli Lilly are flattening out. That’s disappointing to investors who were hoping for bigger gains.

The company’s GLP-1 medications, Zepbound and Mounjaro, have made billions since they entered the market in 2023 and 2022, respectively. But they’re not delivering the same double-digit growth they once did.

Investors sent the stock down more than 12% in early trading.

Eli Lilly made $1.25 billion in sales from Zepbound, up from $1.2 billion in the previous quarter and sharply below the $1.76 billion that analysts had expected. It made $3.1 billion from Mounjaro, basically flat from the previous quarter and also falling short of analysts’ estimates.

Mounjaro and Zepbound are Eli Lilly’s smaller, but still mighty, competitors to Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy, which got in on the weight-loss drug craze early.

But even Novo Nordisk has been experiencing normalization in sales: Ozempic, the most popular GLP-1 drug, had its best quarter in December when it made the company more than $30 billion, and it hasn’t beat that level since.

The drugs make so much money in part because they’re not cheap. A month’s supply of Zepbound will run you about $1,000. Employers and patients have had to eat that price, and have been looking for bargain versions.

Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, naturally, don’t like that other companies are making their drugs for cheaper.

The active ingredient in Zepbound and Mounjaro, tirzepatide, was recently taken off the FDA’s shortage list. Eli Lilly was quick to send cease-and-desist letters reminding bargain pharmacies like Hims & Hers that they aren’t able to make copycat versions anymore.

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Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind’s CEO and founder, was also an early Anthropic investor

A chess prodigy and an actual a knight of the realm in the UK, it’s perhaps no surprise that Demis Hassabis has made some strategic moves about his exposure to AI upside. According to people familiar with the matter, the influential AI architect became an angel investor in Anthropic, currently behind many of the leading AI models, per Arena AI leaderboards.

The Nobel Prize winner’s position in the Claude creator was previously undisclosed and, per the Financial Times, highlights Hassabis’ “growing influence across the AI industry.”

Google, which bought DeepMind, the company that Hassabis cofounded and heads to this day, for a reported ~$400 million in 2014, is also a key Anthropic investor. The tech giant reportedly plans to invest up to $40 billion in the AI company as part of the mutually beneficial relationship the pair have forged, with reports that Anthropic has committed to spending $200 billion in the other direction on Google’s cloud services over the next five years.

I’m playing all sides, so I always come out on top

In addition to his financial support for Anthropic, Hassabis has also invested in a range of AI startups launched by colleagues, such as Inflection AI, a company set up by DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman (who is now CEO of Microsoft AI), as well as efforts from other collaborators, like David Silver’s Ineffable Intelligence.

Hassabis also emerged as a recurring figure on the fringes of the recent Elon Musk v. Sam Altman trial, cropping up repeatedly in testimonies and court documents and appearing to live, as The Verge put it, “rent-free” in Musk’s head.

Founded in 2021, Anthropic has recently raised funding at a reported $900 billion valuation, sending it soaring ahead of competitor OpenAI.

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The Nobel Prize winner’s position in the Claude creator was previously undisclosed and, per the Financial Times, highlights Hassabis’ “growing influence across the AI industry.”

I’m playing all sides, so I always come out on top

Founded in 2021, Anthropic has recently raised funding at a reported $900 billion valuation, sending it soaring ahead of competitor OpenAI.

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