What Was Eli Lilly Telling You Before Its Stock Ran? Trefis Team Fri, October 16, 2026 at 10:57 PM EDT 4 min read LLY ^GSPC JNJ MRK PFE 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.
An investor who put $10,000 into Eli Lilly (LLY) stock on October 14, 2025 held about $15,500 by October 15, 2026. Placing that same sum in the S&P 500 over the identical period would have yielded about $11,790. By mid-2026, two drugs, Zepbound and Mounjaro, accounted for most of the company's sales. How early did those two drugs show up in what Lilly said and filed?
Lilly Pointed To Both Drugs In October 2024
The drugmaker highlighted both treatments during its fiscal Q3 2024 call on October 30, 2024, nearly a year prior to the twelve months measured here. Executives noted that new product revenue expanded by over $3 billion, led by Mounjaro and Zepbound. Expanding manufacturing also emerged as a top priority during that presentation.
Those remarks suggested the primary constraint on the business was production capacity rather than prescription demand. The quarter detailed on that call ended September 2024 and posted a 20.4% year-over-year revenue increase. Stripping out the olanzapine portfolio, management noted that revenue actually grew 42%. In short, executives focused heavily on supply at a moment when growth was already strong.
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Lilly's Supply Caught Up, And Revenue Jumped
Subsequent filings showed sales rising as new supply hit the market. Management confirmed on a February 6, 2025 call that the company had successfully delivered on its production target. On that call, Lilly reported that revenue grew 44.7% from a year earlier in the quarter ended December 2024. That pace held steady, with growth registering at 45.2% in the quarter ended March 2025.
The drugmaker also retained more of each dollar of sales. Its operating margin reached 45.1% in the quarter ended June 2025, an increase from 38.8% in the quarter ended September 2024. Supply remained a focal point on the August 7, 2025 call, with executives stating they wanted to "ensure demand doesn't exceed supply".
Yet the financial picture was not perfectly clear at the time. Revenue growth slowed to 37.6% in the June 2025 quarter, and the company filed no later quarter before October 14, 2025. Shares of Lilly rose 7.7% in the six months leading up to that date while all of this data was public. The signs were present, but they are much easier to read now than they were then.
Where Do Zepbound And Mounjaro Stand For Lilly Now?
During an August 5, 2026 call, management reported that Zepbound and Mounjaro generated $14.9 billion in the quarter ended June 2026. This figure represented about 65% of Lilly's revenue for the quarter. Combined sales for the treatments increased $6.3 billion from the June 2025 quarter. Lilly was not the only drugmaker to rise, however: Merck returned 76.5% over the same twelve months, outpacing Lilly's 55%.
The company's messaging remains consistent with its statements prior to the stock run. Management reported that U.S. revenue grew 33% in the June 2026 quarter, mainly on higher volumes of the two drugs. Excluding a change in estimates for rebates and discounts, U.S. prices actually fell 9%. This indicates that the growth came from more prescriptions, not higher prices. Lilly is also still adding supply: the drugmaker produced its first batch of commercial material at a new site in Limerick, Ireland.
Growth has eased since the March 2026 quarter. Lilly's revenue rose 47.7% from a year earlier in the June 2026 quarter, compared with a 55.5% expansion in the March quarter. Combined sales of Zepbound and Mounjaro are the number to watch in the company's next report, expected on or around October 29, 2026.
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