Eli Lilly cut its GLP-1 prices by 15 percent and still booked $24.4 billion in third-quarter revenue, up 39 percent. Wall Street had been looking for $22.5 billion, according to Bloomberg data.
By the numbers, volume did the work. The post that circulated on 24/7 Wall St. put it as 53% more patients on Lilly’s drugs, enough to swamp the lower price per prescription. The stock jumped as much as 8% on Thursday, and Yahoo Finance data has it up 20% for the year after a slide in the first half. Shares sit at a record high above $1,300.
Where the money came from
Two drugs carried the quarter. Mounjaro, the diabetes treatment, brought in $10.7 billion, a 65% jump. Zepbound, the weight-loss version of the same drug, tirzepatide, made $5.35 billion, up 49%. Tirzepatide was 56% of Lilly’s 2025 revenue.
Lilly now holds 63% of the U.S. market for these drugs. Novo Nordisk led once, and Ozempic and Wegovy still grow, but Lilly took share steadily.
The new pill matters too. Foundayo, the oral weight-loss drug approved this year, drew 40% of new patients starting an oral obesity medicine, and its new-patient count doubled from the prior quarter. A pill reaches people who would never use a weekly injection.
Lilly raised its full-year revenue forecast to $91 billion to $92 billion. That is the third increase this year; the earlier range was $85 billion to $87 billion.
Retatrutide
The next product is already in late trials. In an 80-week Phase 3 study of nearly 1,300 adults with Type 2 diabetes, people on the 12-milligram dose of retatrutide lost an average 20.9% of body weight. Those on Ozempic’s 2-milligram dose lost 9.4%. A1C fell 2.2 percentage points on retatrutide and 1.8 on Ozempic.
Retatrutide hits three hormone receptors, where Ozempic targets one. The results are Lilly’s own. The trial did not pit the drug against Wegovy, and it did not show protection against heart attacks or strokes. Nausea and diarrhea were common, and more people on the top retatrutide dose quit because of side effects than on Ozempic. Lilly plans to file for FDA approval in the first quarter of next year.
Valuation
The stock is not cheap at 42 times forward earnings estimates, though in 2024 it traded above 70 times. Lilly reached a $1 trillion market value in November 2025, the first health-care company to do so.
CEO David Ricks told CNBC that only 3% to 10% of potential patients in the U.S. access weight-loss care. “Room for expansion here of this market is dramatic,” he said. Profits from the franchise are also being steered into gene editing, cancer drugs and cell therapies.
Sources
- After Eli Lilly’s Explosive Earnings Report, Is It Too Late to Buy the Stock? | The Motley Fool
- Eli Lilly and Company
- Eli Lilly stock jumps as drugmaker raises outlook on booming sales of diabetes and obesity treatments
- Eli Lilly grew revenue 39% even after cutting GLP-1 prices 15%
- [Chugai Pharmaceutical] The Shock of a 50% Operating Margin! Foundayo's 2027 Revenue Forecast of 270 Billion Yen: Is the Next Growth Engine Growing?｜ALPHA INSIGHT LAB
- Lilly Drug Shows Double Ozempic Weight Loss
Photo: Raimond Spekking (CC BY-SA 4.0)
