Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) shares rose 6% in the premarket on Thursday after the drugmaker beat Wall Street expectations with its third-quarter results and raised its outlook for full-year 2025 amid solid demand for its widely popular weight-loss and diabetes drugs.
The firm also raised its full-year outlook, expecting revenue of $63B to $63.5B, compared to $60B–$62B previously, above the $61.63B expected. Adjusted EPS guidance was raised to be in the range of $23.00 to $23.70 from $21.75 to $23.00, compared to $22.50 projected by analysts.
As for Q3, Eli Lilly generated better-than-expected adjusted EPS of $7.02 on revenue of $17.6B that jumped nearly 54% year-on-year, led by strong demand for diabetes drug Mounjaro and weight loss therapy Zepbound.
Key Products revenue grew to $11.98 billion in Q3, led by Mounjaro and Zepbound. Mounjaro generated revenue of $6.52B with 109% Y/Y growth, while Zepbound added ~$3.59B, indicating 185% Y/Y growth. Meanwhile, the company’s breast cancer therapy, Verzenio, brought in ~$1.47B in revenue, implying ~7% Y/Y growth.
LLY’s adjusted gross margin improved 1.4 percentage points to 83.6%, primarily driven by favorable product mix, partially offset by lower realized prices.
LLY rose 6.3% premarket to $865, while shares of rival Novo Nordisk (NVO) (OTCPK:NONOF) were down 1.3% premarket.
“The results seem to massively outperform most bullish expectations, and what’s also important, LLY’s management raised EPS guidance. With their prior high-end of EPS guidance range is now their lower end of the update range, and it’s a strong signal to the market, in my opinion, that the previous pessimism was largely unfounded. The competition is fierce, and it’s getting to get hard for LLY to grow beyond 2026-2027 the way it did in the past, but the TAM is so large that it’s clear that LLY will keep expanding its business in a very rapid fashion,” Seeking Analyst Oakoff Investments commented.