Eli Lilly Raises 2026 Revenue Forecast by $5.5 Billion as Mounjaro and Zepbound Drive 39% Sales Jump

Eli Lilly posted a 39 percent jump in third-quarter revenue and raised its full-year sales forecast by $5.5 billion, sending its shares to a record close and underscoring how far the company has pulled ahead in the market for weight-loss and diabetes injections. The results, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on October 29, showed quarterly revenue of $24.4 billion, up from $17.6 billion a year earlier, driven almost entirely by two drugs: the diabetes treatment Mounjaro and the obesity drug Zepbound.

Shares of the Indianapolis-based drugmaker closed at $1,373.70 that day, a gain of 6.6 percent from the prior session's close of $1,288.30, according to trading data compiled by stockanalysis.com. The move pushed Lilly's market value further past $1 trillion, a threshold it crossed earlier in the year, and extended a run that has made it the most valuable pharmaceutical company in the world by a wide margin.

A guidance raise built on volume, not price

Lilly lifted its 2026 revenue guidance to a range of $91.0 billion to $92.0 billion, up from the $85.0 billion to $87.0 billion it had forecast in August. Reported earnings per share came to $7.22, up 16 percent from $6.21 a year earlier, while non-GAAP earnings per share rose a smaller 7 percent to $7.48. The gap between the two growth rates reflects $4.18 billion in acquired in-process research and development charges taken during the quarter, mostly tied to Lilly's purchases of the mental-health drug developer AtaiBeckley and the vaccine maker Curevo, which together cost the company $4.57 per share. Set those charges aside, and underlying non-GAAP earnings guidance for the year actually rose by roughly $4.07 a share at the midpoint.

About $900 million of the quarter's revenue came from one-time items: a final $410 million milestone payment tied to the diabetes drug Jardiance, which Lilly markets with Boehringer Ingelheim, and favorable adjustments to rebate and discount estimates. Research and development spending rose 23 percent to $4.2 billion, or 17 percent of revenue, while marketing, selling and administrative costs climbed 14 percent to $3.1 billion.

"Lilly had another strong quarter, exceeding our prior expectations and allowing us to raise our full-year outlook," said David A. Ricks, the company's chair and chief executive.

Mounjaro and Zepbound carry the quarter

Mounjaro, Lilly's injectable treatment for type 2 diabetes, generated $10.7 billion in worldwide sales, up 65 percent from a year earlier. Sales outside the United States nearly doubled, rising 93 percent to $5.7 billion, while U.S. sales grew a more modest 41 percent to $5.0 billion, a sign that international expansion is now doing more of the work than the home market. Zepbound, the obesity version of the same molecule, brought in $5.4 billion worldwide, up 49 percent, almost all of it from U.S. patients.

Foundayo, Lilly's oral obesity pill known chemically as orforglipron and approved earlier this year as the first GLP-1 pill that can be taken without fasting, generated $184 million in the quarter and $281 million for the year to date — figures that trail some analysts' earlier projections and that the company has described as reflecting a deliberately slow, controlled rollout rather than weak demand. Lilly's rival Novo Nordisk, the Danish maker of Wegovy and Ozempic, has also pushed its own GLP-1 pill, and its most recent disclosed results show the scale of the fight: Novo's second-quarter filing reported adjusted sales growth of 7 percent at constant exchange rates, with its Wegovy pill adding 3.2 billion Danish kroner in sales and cumulative prescriptions for that pill passing 5 million since launch. Novo's chief executive, Mike Doustdar, said in that filing that the "Wegovy product portfolio remains a key growth driver for Novo Nordisk in 2026," even as the company's own full-year guidance still points to a decline in adjusted operating profit for the year — a contrast that illustrates how much ground Novo has ceded to Lilly in the U.S. market since 2024.

A pipeline bet and a spending spree

The quarter's spending was not limited to marketing an existing lineup. Lilly used its acquired-research charge to fold in AtaiBeckley's work on treatment-resistant depression and other psychiatric conditions, and disclosed that it completed a separate purchase of Merida Biosciences, an autoimmune and allergic-disease drug developer, after the quarter closed. The company also broke ground on new manufacturing sites in Richmond, Virginia, and Houston, Texas, part of what it says is its tenth and eleventh U.S. plant built since 2020, as it races to keep up with demand for its injectable drugs and insulate itself from potential tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals.

On the science side, Lilly disclosed topline results a day before the earnings release from TRANSCEND-T2D-2, its first head-to-head Phase 3 trial pitting an experimental triple-hormone drug, retatrutide, against Novo's top-dose Ozempic in patients with type 2 diabetes. Coverage of the data in outlets including the American Journal of Managed Care and BioPharm International reported that both tested doses of retatrutide cut blood-sugar levels by 2.2 percentage points on the HbA1c measure, against 1.8 points for Ozempic, while weight loss ran to 19.5 percent and 20.9 percent on the two retatrutide doses, roughly double the 9.4 percent seen with Ozempic. Discontinuations due to side effects were higher on retatrutide, at 4.8 percent and 7.9 percent of patients on the two doses, against 2.7 percent for Ozempic. Lilly has said it intends to seek U.S. approval for retatrutide in early 2027; the drug is not yet authorized by the Food and Drug Administration or any other regulator for any use.

Regulatory approvals arrived on several other fronts during the quarter. The Food and Drug Administration cleared Mounjaro for reducing cardiovascular risk in adults with type 2 diabetes, approved the once-weekly basal insulin Onswik, cleared Inluriyo in combination with Verzenio for a form of advanced breast cancer, expanded the leukemia drug Jaypirca's approved use, and authorized Olumiant for severe alopecia areata in children — a run of five separate approvals and label expansions that Lilly highlighted alongside its financial results.

What comes next

The quarter leaves Lilly with a widening lead over Novo Nordisk in the U.S. incretin market, which Lilly's own investor materials had put at above 50 percent of prescriptions earlier this year, and with a deeper, more diversified pipeline funded by this year's string of acquisitions. It also leaves the company more dependent than ever on two drug franchises for its growth, at a time when rebate pressure, compounded-drug competition and potential political action on drug pricing all remain live risks to the obesity-drug business Lilly has built. Foundayo's slower-than-hoped U.S. uptake, even as the company frames the rollout as intentional, will be watched closely in the current quarter, as will the pace of new capacity coming online in Virginia and Texas. Lilly is scheduled to report full fourth-quarter and full-year 2026 results in the first half of February, when it typically issues its initial guidance for the following year.