How Weight Loss Made Eli Lilly a $1 Trillion Company
A trillion rolls easy on the tongue to comprehend it takes imagination. Even a couple of decades ago, if anyone had said companies would be valued at a trillion dollars few would have thought it possible. Even now, most companies that broke the milestone has been Big Tech which is driving the artificial intelligence revolution. There is now a new entrant to the club and from quarters that have nothing to do with AI or technology. On November 21, the market capitalisation of Eli Lilly went over one trillion, the first pharmaceutical company to do so.
This is on the back of their new weight loss drug Mounjaro, itself an indicator of a seminal change in how health and fitness are being addressed. The medicine is an injectable that has to be taken frequently and is near miraculous in how it successfully and quickly leads to weight loss. It targets hormones--GLP-1 and GIP--leading to a sense of satiety and so to those taking the medicine, the weight loss feels very natural without disrupting their lives. Mounjaro was first made for diabetic patients but is now approved for even those who simply have obesity.
In India, even though not cheap, within months of launch this year Mounjaro became the top selling prescription medicine, indicating both its efficacy and how much being overweight figures as an issue in people's minds. But markets also value companies for the future, and Eli Lilly's US$ 1 trillion valuation tells us that there are many more leaps anticipated. Like a version which can be taken in pill form, which would mean incredible scale. An injection is still a forbidding medium but popping a daily pill like a supplement brings an entirely new universe of users.
