Why You Should Think About Eli Lilly Stock Differently Now Trefis Team Wed, October 7, 2026 at 12:13 PM EDT 4 min read LLY +3.40% ^GSPC -0.30% ABBV +2.56% PFE +2.09% JNJ +2.08% Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
Eli Lilly (LLY) stock is priced at 38.7 times earnings, compared with 21.5 for the S&P 500. Investors evaluating that valuation should weigh what drives it, especially since the company's priorities have shifted. In late 2024, management opened its earnings call by detailing how many doses of its weight-loss and diabetes drugs it could manufacture. Today, the primary focus has broadened considerably beyond factory output. So what is it?
Lilly now highlights the medicines it is launching and the companies it is buying. During the fiscal Q2 2026 call on August 5, 2026, management noted that the U.S. launch of Foundayo, a new weight-loss pill, was continuing to build momentum. Lilly also reported positive results from three late-stage retatrutide trials in obesity and announced agreements to acquire several companies. The drugmaker plans to submit retatrutide for U.S. approval in the first quarter of 2027.
This marks a sharp pivot from 21 months earlier, when factories dominated the conversation. On the fiscal Q3 2024 call on October 30, 2024, management made manufacturing expansion the top priority. At the time, Lilly set a target to produce at least 1.5 times as many incretin doses in the second half of 2024 as it did in the second half of 2023. By the fiscal Q4 2024 call, the company had delivered on that target. Yet as late as the fiscal Q2 2025 call, management remained cautious about supply constraints when expanding internationally, noting that it was carefully pacing rollouts across markets like Mexico, Brazil, China, and India so that "demand doesn't exceed supply." For shareholders, factory output was the crucial metric to track.
That narrative has changed. By the latest call, management no longer highlighted supply as the primary talking point. Instead, the company reported being very well positioned on Foundayo supply, adding that supply would not hold back any launch.
Zepbound and Mounjaro, the weight-loss and diabetes drugs Lilly was racing to manufacture, brought in $14.9 billion in fiscal Q2 2026. That figure was $6.3 billion more than a year earlier, accounting for nearly two thirds of the company's $23.0 billion in revenue for the quarter.
Foundayo remains at a much earlier stage. By the August call, management reported that the drug had reached 36,000 prescribers, up from 8,000 at the prior call. When a question on the August call described the U.S. launch as somewhat slower than anticipated, management answered that volume had almost doubled in a month.
Overall, Lilly is growing faster today than when supply dominated its updates. Revenue over the past twelve months rose 50% from the year before. Two years ago, that growth rate was 32%.
Shareholders can now find reassurance on the supply front. Lilly met the production target it once prioritized, and growth has accelerated since. The concern has now moved to price. Across all U.S. sales, price fell 3% in fiscal Q2 2026, driven by Zepbound and Mounjaro. This decline would have been larger without a change to estimates for rebates and discounts. During the call, management explained that Zepbound's price will go down as coverage widens, though the company expects volume growth to more than offset the fall.
Lilly's forecast already assumes that lower price. The company expects 2026 revenue of $85 billion to $87 billion, compared with $65.2 billion in fiscal 2025. That represents growth of about 30% to 33%, which is slower than the 44.7% Lilly grew in fiscal 2025.
The fiscal Q3 2026 earnings call, scheduled for late October 2026, will show whether volume is keeping up. In fiscal Q2 2026, U.S. revenue grew mainly because Lilly sold more Zepbound and Mounjaro, even as their price fell. Management does not expect the favorable rebate adjustments that cushioned Q2 to repeat, exposing sales to the full weight of underlying price cuts—which ran closer to 9%. Consequently, a deceleration from Q2's 33% U.S. revenue growth will largely reflect this pricing headwind rather than definitive proof that prescription volume is faltering; the true test will be whether prescription growth continues to outpace net realized price declines.
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