Rising demand for Eli Lilly’s diabetes and obesity drugs have buoyed first-quarter sales to $8.77 billion, pushing the company to raise its full-year guidance by $2 billion. Its shares $LLY were up nearly 7% in premarket trading.
The pharma giant credited the sales boost — a 26% increase compared to the same period in 2023 — to increases in both volume (16%) and realized prices (10%). Its GLP-1/GIP drug tirzepatide alone accounted for more than $2 billion in revenue, including $1.8 billion for the diabetes brand Mounjaro and $517 million for the weight loss brand Zepbound, which launched in November.
On the other hand, Lilly reported that sales of its older GLP-1 diabetes drug, Trulicity, dropped 26% to $1.46 billion, with lower sales volume “primarily due to supply constraints and competitive dynamics.”
“Strong demand for the company’s incretin medicines outpaced supply increases,” the company wrote in a press release, adding: “In the short to mid-term, Lilly expects sales growth for incretin medicines to primarily be a function of the quantity the company can produce and ship.”
At this point in the GLP-1 race with Novo Nordisk, analysts are more interested in conversations around the supply of the medicines and less fixated on the hard number of sales, Emily Field, a pharma analyst at Barclays, told Endpoints News last week ahead of earnings.
Other analysts said supply commentary would be of particular note since tirzepatide shortages worsened earlier this month. Shortages were expected for every dose, except for the 2.5 mg starting dose, through the second quarter, Leerink Partners analyst David Risinger wrote on April 17. Lilly said in February it expected production of sellable doses to ramp up 1.5x in the second half of this year compared to the same period of 2023, Risinger noted.
In addition to Mounjaro and Zepbound, Lilly cited the breast cancer treatment Verzenio and diabetes therapy Jardiance as main growth drivers of the quarter. Verzenio sales jumped 40% to over $1 billion even as it failed a prostate cancer trial, leading to a $75 million charge. Jardiance, on the other hand, saw a 19% jump to almost $690 million.
In Alzheimer’s, a disease that has perplexed Lilly and other drugmakers for decades, the company did not provide an update on timing of a planned FDA advisory committee for its drug candidate donanemab.
Lilly initially expected the amyloid-targeted antibody to win approval in the last quarter of 2023, but the FDA delayed its decision and is now seeking outside counsel. Lilly trails Eisai and Biogen’s Leqembi, which has had slower uptake than originally projected due to insurance constraints and rollout hurdles.