Diet Drugs Launch Lilly Into $1 Trillion Club | 24 November, 2025

Lilly shares closed at $1,059.70 on Friday, giving it a market cap slightly above the 13-figure milestone.

Lilly’s market value is more than twice as big as its next closest rival in the industry, Johnson & Johnson, which is worth about $490 billion.

The Indianapolis-based drug-maker is the 10th company to surpass $1 trillion. The others are Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon.com, Broadcom, Meta Platforms, Tesla and Berkshire Hathaway, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

Investors prize Lilly because it has racked up tens of billions of dollars in sales for Mounjaro and Zepbound, injected drugs for diabetes and weight loss that work by mimicking gut hormones including GLP-1. Introduced in 2022 and 2023, the drugs’ U.S. prescription volume has surpassed that of Novo Nordisk’s competing GLP-1 drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy.

Lilly is poised to dominate the $72 billion global market for years to come, helped by its plans to introduce newer drugs such as a weight-loss pill, analysts say.

Demand has soared for GLP-1 drugs because they can help people shed many more pounds than older diet drugs, up to nearly one-fourth of their body weight. And researchers have been discovering a growing list of additional health benefits for the drugs, such as preventing heart attacks, alleviating sleep apnea and treating liver disease.

Lilly's annual sales of these types of drugs could top $100 billion by 2034, Morningstar analysts said in a recent report. That is well above the $63 billion Lilly is expected to generate this year from all of its drugs, which include treatments for cancer and immune conditions.

The company recently struck a deal with the Trump administration to cut prices for its GLP-1 drugs for some patients, in exchange for broader coverage of them in Medicare and Medicaid. Lilly sees the move as trading price for volume gains, as well as providing more certainty on pricing and an exemption from tariffs.

The company’s market-cap milestone marks a striking turnaround from just over a decade ago, when sales and profits were under pressure from the loss of patent protection for its older drugs like Prozac and Zyprexa and a series of drug research setbacks. The company turned things around by overhauling its research engine and speeding up drug development.

Aside from the company’s prospects in weight loss, investors also see continued sales growth for cancer drug Verzenio and psoriasis treatment Taltz, as well as potential in other areas, such as Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular disease.

(Source: Wall Street Journal)