Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) and NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) just delivered blockbuster quarters that captured two different secular waves.

Lilly is riding the incretin revolution, with Mounjaro and Zepbound reshaping obesity care. NVIDIA is powering the AI factory build-out, shipping Vera Rubin at full tilt. Both stocks now carry mega-cap expectations, and a $10,000 decision between them comes down to which secular story you trust more heading into 2026.

Incretins Carry Lilly. Vera Rubin Carries NVIDIA.

Lilly booked $22.97 billion in Q2 2026 revenue, up 47.7% YoY, with Mounjaro at $9.94 billion (+91%) and Zepbound at $4.93 billion (+46%).

International Mounjaro sales jumped 172% after China’s NRDL listing, and management raised FY2026 revenue guidance to $85B to $87B. CEO Dave Ricks said “Lilly’s momentum continues, as we delivered 48% revenue growth and raised our full-year guidance.” The catch: U.S. prices fell 9% excluding rebate adjustments, so volume is doing all the heavy lifting.

NVIDIA reported $96.22 billion in Q2 FY2027 revenue, up 105.8% YoY, with Data Center hitting $89.02 billion. Q3 guidance points to $108 billion, which excludes any China Data Center compute.

Jensen Huang framed the moment bluntly: “AI has reached its inflection point. It’s doing useful work. Its tokens are productive and profitable.” Supply commitments have swelled to $279 billion, mostly memory tied to the Vera Rubin ramp.

Two Very Different Bets on Scale

Lilly is widening its net. It committed another $4.5 billion to Indiana manufacturing, absorbed $2.78 billion in IPR&D charges from acquisitions of Orna, Ajax, Centessa and Kelonia, and lined up a retatrutide BLA filing in Q1 2027 across obesity, sleep apnea and knee OA pain. This is a pharma giant trying to build a portfolio that outlives any single molecule.

NVIDIA is tightening its grip on the AI stack. Vera Rubin is in full production at CoreWeave, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Oracle, and Nebius, and NVIDIA is mobilizing over $500 billion in third-party AI infrastructure capital with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR.

That is a platform strategy at work. The vulnerability is memory pricing, which management warned could pull Q4 gross margins into the 71% to 72% range.

What Decides 2026

For Lilly, I will be watching whether retatrutide’s Phase III data package translates into a smooth BLA, and whether the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge Program (covering 20 million Americans at $50 per month) offsets the pricing drag from broader CVS formulary access. Forward EPS estimates sit at $47.26 for 2027, up from $44.49 ninety days ago, so analysts are still nudging higher.

For NVIDIA, the tell is whether hyperscaler capex, nearly $800 billion in 2026 and $1.3 trillion in 2027 among the top five, actually shows up in supply-constrained bookings.

That spend also flows to the power, cooling, and networking names behind the racks, which we profiled in a free report on seven AI infrastructure suppliers. Fiscal 2028 EPS estimates have jumped to $15.46 from $12.63 ninety days ago.

Why I’d Split the $10,000, Tilted to NVIDIA

If I had to pick one, I lean NVIDIA. A forward P/E of 25 for a business compounding revenue at triple digits, with a 55.6% net margin, is genuinely unusual.

Lilly trades at a forward P/E of 24 on much slower growth and real pricing headwinds. If you want defensive exposure to a demographic megatrend, Lilly’s 0.502 beta and dividend hikes make sense. For growth-first investors, NVIDIA’s platform economics still look like the sharper edge for 2026.

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Eli Lilly has joined the trillion-dollar club, and the question every long-only investor is asking is whether the run has more room. My take: yes, but the easy money is behind us.

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) trades at $1,123.98 with a market cap of $1.002 trillion. Our 24/7 Wall St. price target for Lilly is $1,220.42 over the next 12 months, implying 8.58% upside. The recommendation is buy with high confidence at 90%.

24/7 Wall St. Price Target Summary

How Lilly Got to a Trillion, and Where Shares Sit Now

Shares are up 50.72% over the past year but down 8.61% over the past month as investors digest a scorching run. LLY sits below its 52-week high of $1,292.65 and well above the low of $707.59.

The engine remains Mounjaro and Zepbound: Q2 2026 revenue reached $22.974 billion, up 47.67% year over year, with EPS of $8.38 beating consensus by 27.27%. Mounjaro alone posted $9.94 billion (+91% YoY), and management raised full-year revenue guidance to $85 billion to $87 billion.

Bull Case for $1,381 and Higher

The bull path takes LLY to $1,381.62, a 22.92% gain. The catalysts are real. Retatrutide, Lilly’s triple-agonist, delivered what management called “unprecedented efficacy” across three Phase 3 trials, with a BLA submission planned for Q1 2027.

Foundayo, the first oral GLP-1 with no food or water restrictions, expanded to 36,000 prescribers, and the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge Program opened access for 20 million eligible Americans at $50 per month. International incretin market share of 55% and China revenue growth of 93% in constant currency show the runway is global.

What Could Go Wrong

The bear scenario takes shares to $1,045.34, a 7% decline. Realized prices fell 13% in Q2, and concentration risk is real, with the incretin franchise generating roughly $14.87 billion of the quarter’s revenue.

Acquired IPR&D charges of $2.78 billion pressured reported earnings, and insider activity leans net selling. To be fair, bulls would note the IPR&D charges reflect aggressive pipeline building (Orna, Kelonia, Ajax, Centessa) that expands the long-term shot count, and pricing declines have been more than offset by 60% volume growth.

How Lilly Compares to Novo Nordisk and Merck

Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) is the only true GLP-1 peer, and the valuation gap is stark. NVO trades at a forward P/E of 14 with quarterly revenue growth of just 2.1%, versus Lilly’s 47.7%. That gap validates Lilly’s premium multiple.

Merck (NYSE:MRK) offers a diversified big-pharma contrast. Merck’s forward P/E of 16 looks cheap on paper, but quarterly earnings shrank 19.3% year over year on Keytruda patent-cliff concerns.

The peer set makes our 24/7 Wall St. price target look reasonable: Lilly deserves a premium, but not an unlimited one.

Eli Lilly Price Prediction 2026-2030

The 24/7 Wall St. price target of $1,220.42 and buy rating at 90% confidence reflect a company still executing at the top of its industry.

The tipping factor is guidance: four straight EPS beats and a raised outlook are hard to fade. I’d be a buyer here if retatrutide’s BLA stays on track for Q1 2027. I’d stay on the sidelines if realized-price declines accelerate past 13% in coming quarters.

Looking further ahead, here is where our model projects LLY could trade, assuming continued execution.

These projections assume Lilly continues executing on its GLP-1 leadership and pipeline. Significant upside could come from a clean retatrutide launch, while downside risk centers on payer pricing pressure and eventual GLP-1 competition.

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A failed cholesterol trial from Novartis (NYSE:NVS) is dragging the Lp(a) drug class lower and hitting Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) harder than any large-cap peer in Tuesday trading. The selloff is unfolding even as Amgen posted a positive Phase 3 readout of its own in small cell lung cancer, an unusual split that captures how brutally the market can price competitor risk in biotech.

Amgen stock is down 10% to $394.38 at midday, interrupting a gain of 23% year to date (YTD) heading into the session. The move carries added weight because Amgen holds the fourth-largest position in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, so today’s decline pressures that index alongside health care specifically.

Meanwhile, Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) shares are down 2% to $1,124.77 on read-through concerns about its own Lp(a) program. As for Novartis stock, it’s tumbling 14% to $137.63 on Tuesday afternoon. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) is down 0.37%, so today’s pharma-sector pain isn’t washing across the broad tape. That gap between the biotech names and the benchmark tells you the market is pricing pipeline risk at the sector level.

Pelacarsen Miss Rattles the Lp(a) Class

Novartis said last Thursday that pelacarsen, an experimental heart drug developed with Ionis Pharmaceuticals, failed to reduce cardiovascular risk in a late-stage trial. The Novartis 8,323-patient Phase III study lowered Lp(a) levels while missing its primary composite endpoint covering cardiovascular death, non-fatal heart attack, non-fatal stroke, and urgent coronary revascularization.

Citi analysts said the Lp(a) hypothesis has been weakened, with additional data needed to establish whether the shortfall came from the drug’s mechanism, the trial’s design, or the underlying idea that lowering Lp(a) reduces cardiovascular risk. Amgen and Eli Lilly are both developing Lp(a)-lowering therapies using different technical approaches, so a class-defining failure at a rival forces investors to reweight the odds on every remaining program.

Amgen’s Own Trial Delivered a Win

Here’s the wrinkle the market is missing. Amgen also announced this morning that its Phase 3 DeLLphi-305 study met its primary endpoint, showing a statistically significant improvement in overall survival for IMDELLTRA. AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN) partly funded the study and supplied Imfinzi, the comparator in the trial.

Amgen’s IMDELLTRA-plus-Imfinzi regimen is being studied as a first-line maintenance treatment in extensive stage small cell lung cancer, one of the toughest settings in oncology. The readout arrived with hard survival data, an endpoint that carries commercial weight immediately, while a mechanistic Lp(a) result needs another round of confirmation.

Amgen’s cholesterol franchise still matters here. Repatha, its PCSK9 inhibitor, generated Q1 2026 revenue of $876 million on 34% year over year (YoY) growth and 35% volume growth, making it one of Amgen’s fastest-growing brands. Its longer-dated Lp(a) bet, Olpasiran, sits in the Phase 3 OCEAN(a)-Outcomes cardiovascular outcomes trial, and it’s now the pipeline asset most exposed to today’s class re-rating, according to Amgen.

The Health Care Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSEARCA:XLV) carries Amgen and Eli Lilly as major holdings. A same-day selloff in both names weighs on the fund, even though Novartis isn’t a listed component of the ETF.

Scorecard on the Session

The gap between the size of Amgen stock’s decline and the modest moves elsewhere shows the market is treating today as a program-level revaluation for the Lp(a) class. Amgen’s YTD anchor is included because the interrupted rally frames the setback in the context of what had been a strong year.

What to Watch Next

Amgen stock is being punished for a competitor’s failed trial on the same morning its own trial succeeded, and holding both facts at once is the whole exercise. A pipeline is priced on expected approvals, and the pelacarsen miss lowers the odds on the Olpasiran program Amgen has invested years in. The DeLLphi-305 readout, however, sits closer to commercialization and delivered concrete survival data.

Eli Lilly stock’s shallower decline is a reminder that these are different molecules at different stages, and a class-wide selloff prices them as if they were the same bet. Lilly’s VERVE-102 base editor showed a single dose reduced PCSK9 by up to 88% and LDL-C by up to 62% with durable effects, a mechanism distinct from pelacarsen’s antisense approach. Whether that mechanistic distance ultimately shields Lilly’s cardiovascular program depends on how the Lp(a) hypothesis holds up in the next set of trial readouts across the industry.

Investors sizing their exposure to large-cap pharma may want to keep their positions moderate until follow-up commentary lands from cardiology leaders, since the distinction between a failed drug and a failed idea can’t be settled from a single topline result. Moreover, traders can watch for Amgen’s presentation at the 2026 Wells Fargo Healthcare Conference as the next scheduled catalyst that could reframe the Lp(a) narrative.

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Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) just posted one of the most dominant quarters in Big Pharma history. Revenue grew 48% year over year to $22.974 billion in Q2 2026, Mounjaro alone brought in $9.943 billion, and management raised full-year EPS guidance to $35.50 to $36.50.

Shares closed at $1,156.73, up 8.16% year to date. Modest, given the numbers. So here is the question I want to answer: can Lilly reach $1,500 per share by late 2027?

Why Lilly Shares Have Stalled Despite Record Results

The chart does not match the business. LLY is down 7.23% over the last week and up only 0.83% over the past month, even after a blowout quarter. The stock sits below its 52-week high of $1,292.65, and with a beta of just 0.506, this is not a name that swings on sentiment alone.

Two things are weighing on the stock. First, U.S. realized prices fell 13% in Q2, and investors are nervous about payer pressure.

Second, Q2 included $2.78 billion in acquired IPR&D charges from a wave of deals. Reported EPS looks noisier than underlying earnings power, and the market is pausing to digest it.

Wall Street Sees Modest Upside. Our Model Sees More

The Street consensus target is $1,315.04, split across 5 strong buys, 17 buys, 4 holds, 1 sell, and 1 strong sell. That is a bullish tilt, but the target implies only mid-teens upside from here. My valuation model lands at a base case of $1,398.96, with a bull case of $1,456.80 and a bear case of $1,170.32.

Confidence is 0.9, backed by a bullish analyst sentiment score of 79 and quarterly earnings growth of 26.2%. I think analysts are anchoring to today’s price disappointment rather than 2027 EPS power. That is the gap I want to exploit.

Path To $1,500 Per Share

Reaching $1,500 from today’s price of $1,156.73 would require a gain of 29.7%. With forward EPS of $38.38, a price of $1,500 implies a forward P/E of 39x. My base case of $1,398.96 already implies 36x, so the bold target needs roughly 2 to 3 turns of additional multiple expansion.

That is achievable if the pipeline delivers. Fresh catalysts sharpen the case: FDA approval of Mounjaro for cardiovascular risk reduction, positive Phase 3b data on Zepbound plus Taltz, and the Merida Biosciences acquisition. Retatrutide is the biggest lever.

CEO David Ricks put it plainly: “Lilly’s momentum continues, as we delivered 48% revenue growth and raised our full-year guidance.” The risk: any retatrutide setback or an accelerated payer pushback on GLP-1 pricing could stall the re-rating.

Where Lilly Trades Today Versus Its Earnings Power

At $1,156.73 against forward EPS of $38.38, Lilly trades near 30x forward earnings. That is a reasonable multiple for a company growing revenue 48% with gross margins of 85.8%.

Shares sit between a 52-week low of $707.59 and a high of $1,292.65, and the stock has returned 1,660.11% over 10 years. If 2027 EPS reaches the Street average of $47.23, the current multiple looks like a bargain.

Is $1,500 Realistic? My Verdict

Reaching $1,500 requires a 29.7% gain and roughly 39x forward earnings. Realistic, in my view, but not automatic.

Three things need to go right: retatrutide’s Q1 2027 BLA submission stays on schedule, Foundayo scales from its early inflection (36,000 prescribers already), and international incretin growth compounds on 2026’s 74% pace. A regulatory delay or a serious GLP-1 pricing shock would derail it. Returns at this level shouldn’t be expected every year, but we’ve outlined the blueprint for how Eli Lilly could reach $1,500 in 2027.

The post Lilly’s Record Stock Price Is Hiding an Even Bigger Opportunity appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Employer coverage of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs fell from 72% in 2025 to 60% in 2026, and roughly 14% of surveyed employers have already dropped the medicines or plan to do so in 2027. That is the pressure squeezing the entire category.

Against that retreat, Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) just received something it can actually use in a payer meeting. On August 28, 2026, the FDA expanded Mounjaro’s label to reduce the risk of cardiovascular death, heart attack, and stroke in adults with type 2 diabetes at high cardiovascular risk. This is a diabetes label rather than a Zepbound obesity label, and the distinction matters for how much of the coverage rollback it can actually blunt.

What the Label Really Says

The underlying trial enrolled more than 13,000 patients and found 8% fewer major cardiovascular events with Mounjaro than with Lilly’s older Trulicity. An 8% relative reduction is real, but it is measured against another active GLP-1 rather than placebo, so the comparison tells payers that Mounjaro edges out an established therapy instead of proving that GLP-1s save lives from a standing start.

That nuance is why the label helps most where cardiovascular risk is already priced into premiums: diabetes case management, not general obesity coverage. Employers dropping GLP-1s are mostly cutting Zepbound-style weight-loss benefits, which this approval does not touch.

Still, the cardiovascular data gives Lilly a durable argument that treating comorbid diabetes prevents downstream hospital spending, and that argument travels.

Numbers Behind the Argument

Mounjaro revenue rose 91% in the second quarter to $9.94 billion, with U.S. growth of 45% and international growth of 172% following China’s addition of it to the national reimbursement list.

Total revenue reached $22.97 billion, and Lilly raised full-year guidance to $85.0 billion to $87.0 billion. CEO David Ricks said, “Lilly’s momentum continues, as we delivered 48% revenue growth and raised our full-year guidance.”

Volume is driving the growth while pricing declines. U.S. price declined 9% excluding rebate adjustments, and CFO Lucas Montarce told investors, “expect that price will actually go down for sure … we are going to more than offset that with volume growth.”

Position on the Central Question

The label likely protects diabetes reimbursement more than it reopens obesity coverage. Approval does not compel a single insurer or employer to pay for anything, and pretending otherwise misreads how formularies work.

But it does give Lilly medical-necessity language for the diabetes patients most likely to be cut in a cost review, and, combined with the Medicare Bridge Program covering 20 million eligible Americans at $50 per month, it meaningfully narrows the exposure.

Shares trade at $1,174.61 and 32x forward earnings, with an analyst target of $1,315.04. The stock is down 6.44% in the past week, so the market has not yet priced the cardiovascular claim as a coverage shield. If Lilly can turn the label into contract language rather than press releases, that gap closes.

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Jim Cramer used his August 31 CNBC Stop Trading segment to argue that Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) has rallied in 2026 due to a catalyst Wall Street had overlooked:

“People are talking about the incredible movement in Amgen, which is up about 31% this year. And a lot of it has to do with a particular drug that people aren’t talking about, which is Repatha.“

Amgen recently pushed to a new 52-week high of $447.03, and the company has a market cap of roughly $233 billion.

Cramer Says Repatha Is the Catalyst Investors Are Missing

Jim Cramer described Repatha as “A shot that you take every other week, and what it does is reduce the risk of death by 20% in people who have high risk for a heart attack or stroke.” Cramer also said the drug “works against diabetes and high cholesterol.”

Cramer noted how cardiologists are increasingly pushing LDL cholesterol as low as possible, an evolving practice pattern that, in his view, expands the pool of patients who could be candidates for intensified lipid-lowering therapy over time. He paired that with a commercial caveat: “This Repatha is so revolutionary, but it was hard. You had to fight the insurance companies.” Efficacy and reimbursement are separate issues, and payer resistance can gate the revenue ramp-up.

Repatha Sales Jumped 37% to $953 Million

On Amgen’s Q2 2026 earnings call held August 4, CEO Robert A. Bradway said, “Starting with general medicine, Repatha delivered $953 million in second-quarter sales, growing 37% year over year.” Management flagged that U.S. new-to-brand prescriptions are growing more than 50% year over year, split roughly evenly between expanded cardiologist use and adoption by primary-care physicians treating high-risk primary-prevention patients.

Repatha is one of six growth drivers that grew 26% in aggregate and represented nearly 70% of second-quarter product sales. Amgen raised full-year guidance to $38.2-$39.4 billion in revenue and non-GAAP EPS of $22.30 to $23.50. On August 31, Amgen published fresh cardiovascular data from the ESC Congress 2026 tied to Repatha’s primary-prevention profile, the same day Cramer’s segment aired.

Why Cramer Is Comparing the Opportunity to Eli Lilly

Cramer said Repatha could be the biggest opportunity behind what Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) is targeting with its GLP-1: “That’s going to be the biggest market of all time, with the exception of what Eli Lilly has tapped into.” On August 27, in the Am I Diversified segment, Cramer called Lilly “the trillion dollar drug company that I like so much.”

Lilly carries a market cap around $1.05 trillion and trades at a forward P/E of 32, versus Amgen’s forward P/E of 19. Lilly shares are up 9.83% year to date after a 6.44% pullback in the past week.

Key Takeaways

Repatha is becoming a big piece of Amgen’s story. With quarterly sales approaching $1 billion and growing 37% annually, the drug is becoming a meaningful growth engine for the company. Cramer argues that investors may still be underestimating how large that cardiovascular opportunity can become.

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Two days after the biggest quarter in semiconductor history, macro investor Jordi Visser told listeners on The Pomp Podcast that the scarcity holding up NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) has an expiration date. His argument separates near-term results from terminal value, laid out in a single line: OpenAI’s new Jalapeno silicon “a chip designed by OpenAI, by AI” and “is not going to disrupt their numbers this year, it’s not going to disrupt them next year.” Then the pivot: “Nvidia right now has scarcity, but at some point, five years from now, six years from now, it won’t have scarcity.” NVIDIA’s market cap of $5.31 trillion reflects future discounted cash flows. If the market decides GPUs are optional in a decade, that value contracts.

Record Quarter Priced Into Every Model

NVIDIA’s Q2 FY2027 report delivered. Revenue landed at $96.22 billion, up 105.8% year over year, with Data Center revenue of $89.02 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $2.22. Supply commitments jumped to $279 billion, largely memory tied to Vera Rubin. See the Q2 FY2027 8-K exhibit for the full breakout.

Jensen Huang told analysts fiscal 2028 revenue should grow approximately 70% year over year, and that “at this moment, we have supply for 70%. We have more supply than 70%, but about 70%. Our demand is much higher than that.” The stock dropped 4.57% on Aug 28, 2026, from $227.98 to $217.55, though shares are up 16.79% year to date and trade at a forward P/E of 26.

Jalapeno Already Tests Better on TCO

Chip analyst and 247 Wall Street contributor Eric Bleeker cited a SemiAnalysis headline reading “OpenAI Jalapeno better than Nvidia Blackwell,” noting initial tests point to superior total cost of ownership compared to Blackwell. Jim Cramer on CNBC added: “Nvidia invested 30 billion in OpenAI” and OpenAI is “downright gleeful about inventing this new chip, Jalapeno, that can compete with Nvidia’s.”

Chamath Palihapitiya made the structural case on All-In: “You’re going to look at these big companies in five years, they’re all going to have their own cloud, they’re all going to have their own models, they’re all going to have their own silicon, they’re all going to have their own data centers.”

Two Timelines Investors Must Reconcile

Huang counters that OpenAI’s existing and planned commitments represent approximately 12 gigawatts of NVIDIA compute through 2030, and AI-lab demand should contribute roughly a quarter of NVIDIA’s business next year. Visser agrees on the near term, calling the current setup “the sweet spot of the infrastructure build out” with “another three to five years of needing a lot.”

The terminal value debate is where the fight lives. If custom silicon peels off even a quarter of hyperscaler workloads by 2031, the DCF supporting today’s price gets rewritten downward. If Vera Rubin’s economics of $40 billion per gigawatt keep expanding, the moat holds.

Where the AI Compute Dollars Are Landing

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) cited a co-innovation AI lab with NVIDIA for drug discovery and posted $22.97 billion in Q2 revenue with EPS of $8.38, raising FY26 revenue guidance to $85.0 billion to $87.0 billion. LLY shares are up 61.49% over one year.

Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) shows the flip side: Q2 revenue fell 18.51% to $1.22 billion, and the stock is down 21% year to date even with prediction-markets revenue past $100 million annualized.

For NVIDIA investors, the forward question is direct. If Jalapeno and successors take even a slice of inference workloads by 2030, does the current multiple compress before fiscal 2028 growth arrives? Watch memory pricing, hyperscaler capex mix, and how quickly OpenAI’s chips move from tests to deployment.

The post Nvidia’s Scarcity Runs Out in Five Years: ‘A Chip Designed by OpenAI, by AI’ appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Employer coverage of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs reportedly declined from 72% in 2025 to 60% in 2026. That drop lands while Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) is still growing at scale.

Second-quarter revenue reached $22.97 billion, up 47.67% year over year. Zepbound produced $4.93 billion, and Mounjaro produced $9.94 billion.

Is the weight-loss boom stalling, or is it shifting shape as payers step back?

My reading is that volumes keep rising while realized prices compress. Those two outcomes read alike in headlines and behave very differently for shareholders.

What the Coverage Decline Actually Shows

GLP-1 medicines mimic a gut hormone that regulates appetite and blood sugar. Zepbound is Lilly’s obesity brand and Mounjaro treats type 2 diabetes.

In the US, employers finance most prescription coverage through their health plans. When they drop a category, patient out-of-pocket costs rise sharply, and prescriptions can shift toward cash-pay channels.

A survey number like 60%- 72% captures stated intent. It captures what benefits managers plan to offer at renewal, while patient consumption depends on the alternatives available.

Roughly 14% of surveyed employers have dropped the medicines or plan to do so in 2027. That is a signal worth taking seriously.

Treat it as an early warning about affordability. Stated plans shift before renewal season closes, and reversals happen when employees complain loudly.

Why Employers Are Pulling Back

Pharmacy benefits already consume about one-quarter of employer healthcare spending. GLP-1s at retail prices land on top of that base.

Many employers say they have not yet seen enough savings from lower rates of diabetes, sleep apnea, and other obesity complications to justify the cost.

The counterargument is straightforward. Those savings accrue over time, and annual benefit budgets do not naturally accommodate multi-year clinical payoffs.

The pullback, therefore, reflects a mismatch in time horizons rather than a verdict on efficacy. It reflects how HR departments budget on annual cycles while the health payoff arrives across many years.

That framing matters because it predicts what comes next. Coverage narrows where budgets are tight, and Lilly reroutes patients through cheaper direct channels.

Volumes, Pricing, and Cash-Pay Verdict

Lilly’s Q2 already showed the pattern. A 60% increase in volume more than offset a 13% decrease in realized prices.

Self-pay is already substantial. Approximately 45% of total Zepbound prescriptions and 55% of new Zepbound prescriptions were self-pay in the quarter.

Lilly Employer Connect offers Zepbound across all doses for $449 per month through participating programs. That undercuts the sticker price employers were resisting.

Add the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge Program at $50 per month out-of-pocket and state Medicaid pathways coming online. Access is broadening even where commercial coverage narrows.

In essence, insurance resistance compresses price and pushes the mix toward cash and direct-to-consumer channels. It slows margin expansion without stopping volume growth, which is why LLY trades near $1,182 at a forward multiple of 34x.

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Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) and Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) both reported Q2 2026 results in early August, and the split screen was jarring.

Lilly delivered 48% revenue growth and raised guidance. Novo defended a shrinking U.S. business with price cuts, layoffs, and a fresh round of pipeline impairments. Same week, same category, opposite momentum.

Tirzepatide Runs Hot While Wegovy Fights for Air

Lilly’s incretin engine did the heavy lifting. Mounjaro and Zepbound combined for $14.9 billion in Q2 sales, and international was where the story got loud: China grew 93% at constant currency and rest of world grew 136%. In the U.S. obesity market, roughly 6 out of 10 total prescriptions were for a Lilly medicine. That signals category dominance rather than a contested share war.

Novo’s quarter was more complicated. Adjusted sales rose 7% at constant exchange rates to 78.5 billion Danish kroner, but adjusted gross margin fell to 78.2% from 82.7% a year earlier. The one bright spot is the Wegovy pill, which CEO Mike Doustdar called “the strongest ever GLP-1 launch by volume”, reaching over 5 million total prescriptions and around 90% of the oral obesity market.

Offense in Indianapolis, Defense in Bagsvaerd

Lilly is playing offense. Retatrutide, its triple acting GLP-1, hit primary endpoints across three Phase 3 trials, with CEO Dave Ricks noting “weight loss approaching bariatric surgery levels at the highest doses” and a U.S. BLA submission slated for Q1 2027.

Orforglipron, sold as Foundayo, expanded from about 8,000 prescribers to 36,000 prescribers. Full-year revenue guidance moved to $85 to $87 billion.

Novo is playing defense. It took a DKK 6.3B non-cash impairment, retired monlunabant, and watched siltivecumab post a MACE hazard ratio of 0.99. Headcount fell by almost 12,000 employees, roughly a 15% decline.

On CNBC affiliate Mad Money, Doustdar acknowledged that “Lilly’s pill reduces your weight by 12%” versus Wegovy pill’s 17%, but conceded Lilly is “more diversified than Novo Nordisk”.

Retatrutide, Pricing, and the Bridge Program

The next 12 months hinge on three things. First, retatrutide’s regulatory path and whether Lilly’s manufacturing build in Indiana and Ireland keeps pace.

Second, whether Novo’s announced 50% list price cut for Wegovy effective January 2027 stabilizes U.S. volume.

Third, the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge Program, which Lilly says gives “20 million eligible Americans” a $50 per month option. I will keep an eye on whether that access lift accrues mostly to Zepbound and Foundayo or opens a lane for Wegovy pill.

Why I Lean Lilly, but Would Not Write Off Novo

Lilly looks like the cleaner story. Shares are up 77.98% over one year, and a 42 trailing PE is rich but arguably earned by 54.2% operating margins and retatrutide optionality.

Novo is the harder trade. At a 11 PE and a 3.84% dividend yield, the setup fits a turnaround investor who believes the Wegovy pill can carry international growth while U.S. price cuts wash through. If retatrutide gets its BLA and Novo’s amylin combos slip again, the gap widens.

If Wegovy pill scales in Germany the way it did in the UK, the underdog gets a second act. The setup argues against chasing Lilly on strength or bottom-fishing Novo on weakness without evidence the U.S. base is stabilizing.

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Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) is trading at $1,255.40, and management has guided fiscal 2026 revenue between $85 billion and $87 billion. That puts the $100 billion revenue mark within reach.

Our 24/7 Wall St. price target for Lilly is $1,480.01, implying 17.89% upside over the next 12 months. Our recommendation is buy, with confidence level 90%.

Why Lilly’s Stock Looks Different in August 2026

Lilly is up 6.38% over the past week, 8.1% over the past month, and 77.98% over the past year, trading just under its 52-week high of $1,292.65.

Q2 2026 drove the rerating: revenue of $22.97 billion grew 47.67% year over year and beat consensus by 11.06%. EPS of $8.38 beat by 27.27%. Mounjaro delivered $9.94 billion (+91%) and Zepbound another $4.93 billion. In May, Lilly became the first drugmaker to hit a $1 trillion market value, and it now sits above that at $1.12 trillion.

Why Bulls See a Breakout Ahead

The bull case rests on three engines. First, the incretin franchise generated nearly $14.87 billion in a single quarter, with Mounjaro international sales growing 172%.

Second, orforglipron (Foundeo), the approved oral GLP-1, is rolling out globally in 2027, with prescriber adoption jumping from approximately 8,000 to 36,000.

Third, retatrutide, whose TRIUMPH-1 trial showed weight loss approaching bariatric surgery levels, is on track for a Q1 2027 BLA.

CEO David Ricks called “Lilly’s future, after 150 years, has never been brighter.” Our bull-case scenario points to $1,704.19, a 35.75% total return, consistent with 5 strong-buy and 17 buy consensus ratings.

What Could Go Wrong

Realized U.S. prices fell roughly 9% ex-rebate, and Lilly took $2.78 billion in IPR&D charges from heavy M&A activity. Bulls counter that these charges reflect deliberate pipeline investment in Verve, Ataibeckley, and Kelonia, and that non-GAAP performance margin expanded to 54.8%.

Concentration is another risk: Mounjaro and Zepbound represent more than half of revenue, and Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill launch will contest the oral category. Our bear case implies $1,222.27, a -2.64% return.

How Lilly Compares to Novo Nordisk and Merck

Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) is the only true incretin peer, with Q1 2026 adjusted sales falling 4% at constant exchange rates as U.S. pricing eroded. Novo trades at a market cap of $156.4 billion, roughly one-seventh of Lilly’s, despite a comparable GLP-1 franchise. That valuation gap reflects the market’s premium for Lilly’s growth trajectory.

Merck (NYSE:MRK) provides the large-cap pharma valuation floor. Merck guides FY2026 non-GAAP EPS of $5.04 to $5.16 on revenue of $65.8 billion to $67 billion, roughly comparable to Lilly with a fraction of the growth.

Merck’s market cap of $376.4 billion versus Lilly’s $1.12 trillion reflects the growth premium. Against that field, Lilly’s forward P/E of 35 looks rich but defensible, and our 24/7 Wall St. price target of $1,480.01 reads as reasonable.

Eli Lilly Price Prediction 2026-2030

I’m sticking with the buy call and the 24/7 Wall St. price target of $1,480.01 at 90% confidence. The tipping factor is retatrutide readouts stacked against a raised revenue guide and margin expansion of nine percentage points.

I’d be a buyer if the Q1 2027 retatrutide BLA lands on schedule and Foundayo international launches track UAE uptake. I would stay on the sidelines if U.S. price erosion accelerates past management’s guided offset.

Here is where our model projects Lilly could trade, assuming current trajectories hold.

These projections assume Lilly continues executing on its incretin franchise and pipeline. Meaningful upside or downside could result from retatrutide’s regulatory outcome, orforglipron’s international ramp, and U.S. GLP-1 pricing policy.

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Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) just posted one of the most impressive quarters in Big Pharma history. Revenue jumped 47.67% to $22.974 billion, Mounjaro alone did $9.943 billion, and management raised full-year guidance again.

Shares are up 77.52% over the past year and 16.36% YTD. Trading near $1,263.92, the question is simple: can Lilly hit $1,750 by the end of 2027?

Why Lilly Is Trading Like a Steady Compounder Right Now

Despite the blowout earnings report, the stock is oddly digestible in the short run. LLY is up just 3.08% over the past week and 6.02% over the past month.

The reason is straightforward: realized prices are shrinking even as volume explodes. Q2 realized prices fell 13%, and Mounjaro’s addition to China’s National Reimbursement Drug List will lift volumes while pressuring price.

Add $2.78 billion in acquired IPR&D charges and a jump in the effective tax rate to 23.3%, and reported earnings are noisier than the underlying business. With a beta of 0.506, LLY tends to move in measured steps rather than sharp single-day gaps. The compounding here is grinding.

Wall Street Sees 4% Upside. Our Model Says 16%

The Street consensus target sits at $1,310.90, barely above where LLY trades today. The ratings breakdown: 5 strong buys, 17 buys, 4 holds, 1 sell, and 1 strong sell. Bullish sentiment is 79%.

Our base-case model prints a one-year target of $1,463.40, an upside of 15.5%, with a bull case of $1,689.64 and a bear case of $1,210.65. Confidence is high (0.9). YoY earnings growth is 26.2%, and analysts have been chasing every quarter higher for a year straight.

Path to $1,750 Per Share

Reaching $1,750 from today’s price of $1,263.92 would require a gain of 38.4%. With forward EPS of $38.39, a price of $1,750 implies a forward P/E of 46x. Our base case of $1,463.40 already implies 40x, meaning the bold target requires roughly 6x of additional multiple expansion on top of continued EPS growth.

Is that achievable? Three catalysts matter. First, retatrutide’s BLA is set for Q1 2027, with Phase 3 data showing weight loss “approaching bariatric surgery levels.”

Second, Foundayo, the oral GLP-1, is under review in more than 40 additional countries with a global rollout in 2027.

Third, CEO David Ricks said “Lilly’s future, after 150 years, has never been brighter.” The risk: any retatrutide safety hiccup would compress the multiple fast.

Where LLY Trades Today vs Its Earnings Power

Today’s forward P/E works out to roughly 33x on forward EPS of $38.39. That is not cheap in absolute terms, but with FY2026 guidance now at $85 to $87 billion in revenue and non-GAAP EPS of $35.50 to $36.50, the growth rate justifies a premium.

Shares sit close to their 52-week high of $1,292.65 and well above the 52-week low of $689.88. Over ten years, LLY has returned 1,735.24%.

Is $1,750 Realistic?

Reaching $1,750 requires a 38.4% gain and a forward P/E of 46x. That is a stretch.

Three things need to go right: retatrutide’s Q1 2027 filing has to land clean, Foundayo’s international launches need to accelerate meaningfully, and price erosion in the US incretin market has to stay controlled by volume growth.

What derails it is a Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) data readout that closes Lilly’s efficacy lead. We’ve outlined the blueprint for how Eli Lilly could reach $1,750 in 2027.

The post Prediction: Eli Lilly Could Be One of the Biggest Winners of the Next Decade. Here’s Why. appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Among the pharma names investors debate most, Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) at $1,216.46 screens most constructively, Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) at $45.92 looks range-bound, and Merck (NYSE:MRK) at $135.97 screens as fairly valued. All three trade in a market obsessed with GLP-1 economics and Merck’s KEYTRUDA patent cliff, and each has priced in a very different version of the future.

The scoreboard already tells a story. Lilly is up 10.63% year to date, Merck has ripped 31.09%, and Novo has slipped 7.57%, versus an S&P 500 gain in the high single digits. Who is winning the incretin war and who is stuck defending share is largely settled at these prices.

Eli Lilly: Why the GLP-1 Leader Still Has the Strongest Setup

Lilly’s Q2 delivered $14.9 billion in combined Mounjaro and Zepbound revenue, non-GAAP EPS of $8.38, and total revenue growth of 48%. Management raised 2026 guidance to $85 to $87 billion in revenue and $35.50 to $36.50 in EPS.

Foundeo, the oral GLP-1, has scaled from 8,000 to 36,000 prescribers, and Retratrutide’s TRIUMPH readouts set up a Q1 2027 BLA that CEO Dave Ricks says gives Lilly “a pretty large lead over any competitors with a triple acting medicine.”

The mean analyst target sits at $1,310.90 across 28 analysts, with 22 Buy or Strong Buy ratings. A forward P/E of 32x is not cheap, yet quarterly revenue growth of 47.7% and gross margin of 86.3% give the multiple room.

Targets are a data point, not a promise, but at $1,216 manufacturing capacity and price realization are the main things to watch while demand keeps compounding.

Novo Nordisk: Priced for Bad News While Recovery Remains Distant

Novo’s Q2 landed adjusted sales of DKK 78.5 billion with CER operating profit growth of 11%, and Wegovy pill has cleared 5 million prescriptions with roughly 90% of the oral obesity market. Valuation looks arresting at a forward P/E of 14x with a 4% dividend yield.

The bear case is loud. Full-year 2026 guidance still calls for 0% to -6% sales growth at CER, the SUSE cardiovascular trial for siltivecumab failed with a MACE hazard ratio of 0.99, monlunabant absorbed a $4 billion impairment, and list price cuts of roughly 50% on Wegovy and 35% on Ozempic take effect January 1, 2027.

A mean target of $47.03 across 14 analysts, of which 10 rate Hold, implies almost no upside from here. Patience wins until pricing bottoms and Cagrisema’s Redefine 11 data clears.

Merck: KEYTRUDA Cliff Priced In, Pipeline Still Ahead

Merck’s YTD rally reflects renewed confidence in CEO Rob Davis’s pitch that the KEYTRUDA loss of exclusivity is “more of a hill than a cliff.” Q2 KEYTRUDA franchise sales of $8.4 billion grew 4%, WINREVAIR hit $588 million up 75%, and Davis’s $70 billion new-product framework is de-risking faster than expected on positive SAC-TMT and Tulasocobar readouts.

Shares now sit right at the $137.73 mean target across 28 analysts. Forward P/E of 50x reflects a depressed EPS base from a $2.31 per share Terns charge inside 2026 guidance of $2.66 to $2.76.

With Lipvendra, the first oral PCSK9, launching and IDXD approval expected in the second half, the setup is constructive, but the easy money after a 31.09% YTD move has been made.

The Bottom Line at Today’s Prices

At $1,216.46, Lilly screens most attractively on incretin dominance and a Retratrutide catalyst Wall Street has not fully valued. Novo looks range-bound at $45.92 until pricing stabilizes and pipeline setbacks stop compounding. At $135.97, Merck trades near fair value after a strong run, with the 2027 catalyst calendar deciding the next leg.

The post Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Merck: Buy, Sell or Hold? appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) has quietly transformed itself into the first pharmaceutical company ever valued above $1 trillion, and yet the market may still be underpricing what comes next. Retatrutide, orforglipron, and a stacked oncology and neuroscience bench point to a growth runway that our proprietary model believes justifies a materially higher stock price over the next twelve months.

Our 24/7 Wall St. price target for Eli Lilly is $1,415.89, implying 19.67% upside from the current $1,183.16 quote. The recommendation is buy at 90% confidence. The model combines accelerating earnings, defensive beta, and pipeline blockbuster optionality.

24/7 Wall St. Price Target Summary

A Trillion-Dollar Milestone, Then a Cool-Off

Lilly became the first pharmaceutical firm worth $1 trillion in late May, and shares are up 69.79% over the past year and 10.63% year to date. The stock is down 3.82% over the past week and sitting about 5% below the 52-week high of $1,247.66.

That pullback follows a Q2 report that was one of the cleanest earnings reports in large-cap pharma this cycle: revenue of $22.974 billion (up 47.67%), EPS of $8.38 beating expectations, and management raising FY26 revenue guidance to $85 to $87 billion.

The Case for $1,600+

The bull scenario points to $1,627.17, or 37.53% upside. Retatrutide, the triple GLP-1/GIP/glucagon agonist, produced weight loss approaching bariatric surgery levels across three positive Phase 3 trials, with a BLA submission planned for Q1 2027. AJMC called it a “trillion-dollar drug”, defensible given Lilly already owns roughly 6 out of 10 U.S. obesity prescriptions.

Foundayo, the only oral GLP-1 approved for anytime dosing, jumped from 8,000 to 36,000 prescribers in a single quarter. Add in the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge Program covering 20 million eligible Americans at $50 per month, and the analyst consensus target of $1,310.90 looks conservative.

What Could Go Wrong

The bear case pins fair value at $1,174.96, essentially flat. Risks include U.S. realized prices falling roughly 9% excluding rebate adjustments, Novo Nordisk competing for share, and manufacturing capacity constraints.

The Q2 tax rate spiked to 23.3% because of $2.78 billion in IPR&D charges from four acquisitions. Insider activity has skewed to net selling across 14 recent transactions. The IPR&D drag reflects aggressive pipeline building (Orna, Ajax, Centessa, Kelonia), and gross margin expanded to 85.8%.

How Lilly Compares to Novo Nordisk and Merck

Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) trades at a forward P/E of just 14 with quarterly revenue growth of only 2.1% and earnings contracting 20.6% year over year. Lilly’s premium multiple is earned.

Merck (NYSE:MRK) offers a useful big-pharma contrast. Merck’s forward P/E is 50, with revenue growth of only 5.1% and EPS growth of negative 19.3%. Lilly’s 32x forward earnings paired with 47.67% revenue growth compares favorably on a growth-adjusted basis.

Eli Lilly Price Prediction 2026-2030

The 24/7 Wall St. model output is a buy rating at 90% confidence, with a price target of $1,415.89. Retatrutide is the tipping factor. If the BLA lands on time and the label spans obesity, sleep apnea, and osteoarthritis, the bull scenario at $1,627 becomes the base case. The thesis weakens if U.S. pricing erosion accelerates past 15% or Novo delivers a surprise oral formulation win.

These projections assume Lilly executes on retatrutide’s launch and continues expanding Foundayo internationally. Significant upside or downside could result from GLP-1 competitive dynamics and U.S. drug-pricing policy.

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Aktis Oncology (NASDAQ:AKTS) closed at $25.00 on August 18, 2026, giving the clinical-stage radiopharmaceutical company a market cap of $1.4 billion. The stock has traded between $14.72 and $34.19 since its January 2026 initial public offering. Aktis holds $517.3 million in cash, with management guiding runway into 2029. It is pre-revenue except for a single collaboration agreement.

Why a Strategic Buyer Would Want It

Aktis operates an isotope-agnostic miniprotein radioconjugate platform designed to deliver 225Ac, a highly potent alpha-emitting radioisotope. Lead candidate [225Ac]Ac-AKY-1189 targets Nectin-4, the same target as Padcev, with an IND cleared in May 2025 and preliminary Part-1 dose escalation data expected in the first quarter of 2027. Second program [225Ac]Ac-AKY-2519 targets B7-H3, expressed in approximately 90% of mCRPC, 80% of NSCLC, and 70% of small cell lung cancers.

What an Acquirer Would Actually Be Buying

The rights structure is the differentiator. Aktis retains exclusive, worldwide development and commercialization rights to all current product candidates and discovery programs. The Lilly collaboration covers only targets beyond the scope of the unpartnered pipeline. There are no territorial carve-outs on core assets.

The Lilly Collaboration Agreement includes an upfront license fee of $60.0 million, up to $525.0 million in research, development, regulatory and commercial launch milestones, and up to $630.0 million in sales milestones. The filing inconsistently describes the royalty as “tiered royalties of up to 10%” in one section and “a tiered royalty of up to low-double digits” in another, creating ambiguity about the actual rate. Aktis runs research through initial human imaging studies; Lilly then owns regulatory, clinical development and commercialization. Lilly may terminate on a target-by-target or region-by-region basis upon 60 days’ prior written notice. Its license is limited to products that contain a radioactive isotope. Lilly also indicated interest in purchasing approximately $100.0 million in shares at IPO, making it both partner and shareholder. The S-1 does not spell out change-of-control mechanics, which a third-party bidder would need to diligence.

Ranking the Plausible Acquirers

1. Novartis (NYSE:NVS) has a $294 billion market cap. It saw its radioligand therapy Pluvicto grow 43% in constant currencies during Q2 2026, as management explicitly stated its intention to progress “beyond Pluvicto and Lutathera, hopefully into additional cancer types.” AKY-2519 in mCRPC is directly adjacent.
2. Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) trades at $1,225.73. Ricks said, “We expect to remain active in business development while maintaining discipline.” The existing partnership offers information advantage.
3. Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) has a $132.0 billion market cap. Its Boerner stating BD remains “a top allocation priority.” No comparable radiopharmaceutical franchise exists in the portfolio.

What About Private Equity or Alternative Capital?

With no product revenue to lever, a traditional leveraged buyout (LBO) does not fit. Realistic non-strategic paths are royalty monetization on the Lilly stream, private investment in public equity (PIPE) structures, or crossover funds ahead of 2027 readouts.

What to Watch

Analyst consensus is 100% bullish with a target of $34.42; the 24/7 Wall St. model base case is $42.16 at 0.5 confidence. Catalysts include Q1 2027 AKY-1189 data, 2027 AKY-2519 mCRPC readouts, and the H2 2026 GMP facility. Trial risk is binary; a failed readout removes the takeout premium entirely.

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Kailera Therapeutics (NASDAQ:KLRA) closed most recently at $18.51, between a post-IPO high of $28.23 and low of $16.39, with a $2.40 billion market cap. Shares are down 2.5% on the week and 28.8% since shares began trading in April. Kailera holds $1.17 billion in cash and marketable securities, posted a Q2 net loss of $111.31 million, and has runway into mid-2028. It is clinical-stage and pre-commercial with no product revenue. Kailera shares a strategic, multi-billion-dollar licensing and co-development partnership with Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals.

Why a Strategic Buyer Would Want It

Ribupatide injection (KAI-9531), a GLP-1/GIP dual agonist, anchors the global Phase 3 KaiNETIC program of 4,700+ participants, with data in 2028. The U.S. Phase 2b high-dose trial (264 participants) is fully enrolled, with data expected mid-2027. Ribupatide oral enters global Phase 3 in H1 2027; KAI-7535 posts Phase 2 data in 2027; tri-agonist KAI-4729 begins Phase 1 by end-2026. CEO Ron Renaud calls Kailera “well positioned to deliver differentiated treatment options to people living with obesity.”

What an Acquirer Would Actually Be Buying

Per the Kailera S-1, the Territory excludes China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan: a buyer takes U.S., Europe and Japan while greater China stays with Hengrui. Kailera has paid $100 million upfront, issued 5,677,603 preferred shares valued at approximately $96.4 million at issuance, and made a $10.0 million technology transfer payment. What remains is up to $200.0 million in clinical and regulatory milestones, up to $5.725 billion in commercial milestones, and tiered royalties ranging from low-single-digit to low-tens percentages of net sales, subject to customary reductions, on a Licensed Product-by-Licensed Product and country-by-country basis. New-form and combination options carry mid-seven or low-eight figure exercise payments; Hengrui manufactures clinical materials on request while Kailera bears Territory costs. Ex-greater-China rights are the draw; the commercial milestone stack and royalty range are the drag against acquirer margin math.

Kailera would have owed Hengrui specified percentages of any consideration received had it partnered before November 15, 2025; it did not, so a buyer today faces cleaner economics on that provision. The agreement contemplates acquisition: the GLP-1 competitive restriction to May 15, 2026, carried express change-of-control exceptions. Whether Hengrui’s consent is required for a change of control remains the key diligence question. Hengrui held 19.9% of outstanding capital at issuance, so a buyer negotiates opposite a partner that is also a shareholder.

Ranking the Plausible Acquirers

1. Pfizer (NYSE:PFE), $153.2 billion market cap. Albert Bourla has flagged obesity leadership; the Sciwind ecnoglutide launch shows China-in-licensing comfort.
2. AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN), $242.6 billion market cap. The CSPC obesity/T2D collaboration signals appetite.
3. Merck (NYSE:MRK), $335.1 billion market cap. Keytruda patent cliff. Merck could quickly establish a competitive foothold in the lucrative GLP-1 weight-loss market after facing earlier internal clinical trial setbacks.
4. Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO), $201.1 billion market cap. Acquiring next-generation oral and multi-target obesity treatments that threaten Wegovy and Ozempic would protect its market dominance.
5. AbbVie (NYSE:ABBV), $440.8 billion market cap. Can afford to aggressively expand its pipeline into metabolic health and diversify its revenue.
6. Amgen (NASDAQ:AZN), $224.6 billion market cap, the wildcard. MariTide progressing in Phase 3 may render Kailera redundant.

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) plainly does not need an external asset.

What About Private Equity or Alternative Capital?

This option would rank last. Kailera is funded into mid-2028, pre-commercial with no revenue to lever, and no sponsor underwrites Phase 3 obesity readouts arriving in 2028. Realistic non-strategic paths are an ex-U.S. regional partnership, a royalty or milestone monetization against ribupatide, or Hengrui adding to its stake.

What to Watch

Seven analysts rate Kailera Buy or Strong Buy with a mean target of $42.40. Catalysts include Phase 2b ribupatide data mid-2027, KAI-7535 Phase 2 and KAI-4729 Phase 1 in 2027, and KaiNETIC Phase 3 in 2028. A 13D or 13G filing, or unusual options activity, would sharpen any takeout signal.

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CNBC’s Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money, posted on X on Monday, “Hard to believe the drug stocks are so out of sync with food stocks. Food so hated”. The comment captures a mood building for months as packaged food shares have trailed pharmaceuticals by a wide margin.

The question for investors is whether that sentiment gap is an opportunity or a trap. A real dislocation opened over the past year between the two groups, much tied to fears around GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, but the 2026 picture is more mixed than a blanket “food so hated” label suggests.

Where Cramer Is Right

The one-year gap between drugs and food is stark. Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) stock is up 74% over the past year, while several food names sit well in the red. Campbell’s (NASDAQ:CPB) stock is down 24% over the past year, General Mills (NYSE:GIS) stock is down 16% over the past year, and Conagra Brands (NYSE:CAG) stock is down 13% over the past year.

Meanwhile, Ingredion (NYSE:INGR) stock is down 14% over the past year. That divergence between a mega-cap drug winner and beaten packaged food shares is exactly what Cramer is flagging.

Where the Blanket Label Breaks Down

Moving on to some familiar names, Kraft Heinz (NASDAQ:KHC) stock is down 2% over the past year but up 9% year to date, making one of the most-criticized names a year-to-date gainer. Hershey (NYSE:HSY) stock is up 6% over the past year and up 4% year to date, never fitting the hated framing. The company posted five consecutive quarters of EPS beats and management raised full-year guidance.

Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) stock is down 6% over the past year and down 7% year to date, even as it sells Ozempic and Wegovy. Only Eli Lilly carries the drug side. “Drug stocks up, food stocks down” is too broad in both directions.

The Dislocation Is Already Closing

Ingredion stock is down 2% year to date, a much smaller decline than its one-year figure. Conagra Brands stock is down 5% year to date, also smaller than its trailing twelve-month move. The pattern suggests most damage happened earlier and buyers have stepped in ahead of Cramer’s post; for anyone reading his comment as a fresh entry signal, the easiest repricing may already be behind the group.

Looking through the lens of a couple of benchmark funds, the iShares U.S. Pharmaceuticals ETF (NYSEARCA:IHE) is up 51% over the past year and up 22% year to date. The Invesco Food & Beverage ETF (NYSEARCA:PBJ) is up 3% over the past year and up 8% year to date. Positive returns over both windows sit oddly against the “so hated” label, since a diversified food and beverage basket has held up better than the worst individual names.

The GLP-1 Overhang

The dominant headwind for packaged food is GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, including Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound and Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy. Lilly reported combined Mounjaro and Zepbound revenue of $14.9 billion in Q2 2026, with obesity utilization still in single to mid-single digits globally.

The market is pricing a long-duration demand risk on processed food, not a demonstrated sales collapse. On Mad Money on June 17, an executive discussing the pending Ingredion and Tate & Lyle merger stated: “Look, the whole food sector I think has had a little bit of a cloud hanging over at GLP1, drugs, etc. We’ve had a couple of tough quarters related to one issue at one of our manufacturing facilities.”

Ingredion has a pending all-cash acquisition of Tate & Lyle at 595 pence per share, approved by Tate & Lyle shareholders on July 28. Private-label pressure, weak volume growth, and heavy debt at some names also predate the drug narrative. Conagra cut its quarterly dividend from $0.35 to $0.175, a reminder that some of these stocks are cheap for reasons the chart alone won’t reveal.

Is It Time to Buy?

Cramer identified a real sentiment extreme, and sentiment extremes in defensive sectors have historically been where contrarian value appears. Yet the data argues against treating “food is hated” as a green light in 2026, because the group is no longer uniformly beaten down, recovery in several names has begun, and the GLP-1 risk is a genuine long-term unknown.

Investors should consider keeping their position sizes modest in any name where the bull case rests mainly on sentiment reversing. Kraft Heinz and Hershey are challenging cases for anyone shopping the theme, since the two names that have already worked are the ones a contrarian screen would most likely skip.

Moreover, traders can watch for whether volume trends at packaged food companies show a measurable GLP-1 effect rather than a narrative one, and whether the year-to-date recovery in the weakest names extends or stalls. They can also check for whether Novo Nordisk begins participating on the drug side, and whether the Ingredion and Tate & Lyle combination closes as expected.

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On July 29, 2026, Vanguard swapped the benchmark behind the Vanguard Growth ETF (NYSEARCA:VUG) from the CRSP US Large Cap Growth Index to the Morningstar US Large Cap Growth Index. Most VUG holders never noticed. The switch occurred because Morningstar completed its acquisition of CRSP and rebranded the CRSP Market Indexes as Morningstar Indexes, and Vanguard explicitly stated that VUG’s investment objectives, strategies, and day-to-day management are unchanged. If you own VUG in a retirement account, no action is required today. All that said, there are still things to keep in mind.

The fund gives you concentrated exposure to the largest US growth companies at essentially no cost. The expense ratio sits at 0.03%, and the portfolio remains dominated by the same names that have carried large-cap growth for years, with NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) at about 13%, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) at about 12%, and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL) near 10% anchoring the top of the fund as of the June fact sheet.

Performance through the transition has been uneventful: VUG is up about 10% year to date and roughly 16% over the past year, with a 5% gain in the window bracketing the July 29 change. That is normal market noise rather than a benchmark-driven event.

What Actually Happened, and What Did Not

Reddit conversation reflects the reality. Activity in r/investing spiked around August 11, roughly two weeks after the announcement, as retail holders slowly figured out what had changed. Sentiment moved from bullish (score of 70) before the announcement to neutral (score of 50) afterward, suggesting confusion rather than concern.

Vanguard has not published a rebalance driven by the new provider, and NPORT holdings snapshots covering the transition window returned no material shifts. For now, this is just a name change on the book’s cover.

Where the Change Could Eventually Matter

Index providers do not draw the growth line the same way. CRSP historically used a multi-factor screen with buffer zones that reduced turnover. Morningstar’s US Large Cap Growth methodology uses its own style score and reconstitution schedule. Over time, three things can shift without VUG’s stated strategy changing at all:

1. Which companies qualify as growth. A different definition can push a name like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO), or Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) across the growth/value boundary, changing weightings without any decision by Vanguard.
2. Reconstitution and rebalance timing. New schedules can create tracking friction and small tax events inside the fund, particularly during volatile quarters.
3. Buffer rules at the edges. Providers differ on how aggressively they migrate borderline names between style boxes, which affects turnover and, indirectly, capital gains distributions.

The scale is what makes this worth watching. The benchmark family behind this transition underpins trillions in assets, so even modest tweaks to the methodology eventually move enormous amounts of capital.

A retiree’s practical checklist is short: watch the next semi-annual holdings report for meaningful weight changes at the boundary of the growth definition, along with year-end capital gains distributions in taxable accounts, and track the difference against the new index once Vanguard publishes a full quarter under it.

The Practical Assessment for a VUG Holder

If VUG fit your plan on July 28, it still fits on August 14. The fund remains a low-cost, tech-heavy growth sleeve with the top five holdings dominated by NVIDIA, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), and its five-year return of roughly 85% reflects the strategy working as intended.

Selling because the benchmark got a new name would be an expensive reaction to a cosmetic event, particularly in a taxable account. The right posture is patient attention: no trade now, and a careful read of the first full annual report under the Morningstar benchmark when it lands. If the definition of growth quietly changes what you own, the evidence will show up there first.

The post Vanguard Quietly Changed the Index Behind Your VUG ETF. Here’s What Happens to Your Portfolio appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Wave Life Sciences (NASDAQ:WVE) trades at $5.24, a step above its 52-week low of $5.01 and far beneath the 52-week high of $21.73. Its market cap is near $1.0 billion. Shares are down 69.2% year to date, 38.0% over one year, and 16.3% over five years. This clinical-stage, pre-commercial RNA-medicines company is burning cash: it holds $490.6 million in cash, providing runway into Q3 2028, against a Q2 2026 net loss of $69.36 million. No deal talks have been confirmed.

Why a Strategic Buyer Would Want It

The prize is Wave’s PRISM stereopure oligonucleotide platform spanning RNAi and RNA editing. Lead assets include:

• WVE-007, an INHBE GalNAc-siRNA for obesity that showed 14.3% visceral fat reduction, 5.3% total body fat reduction, and 2.4% muscle preservation, with potential once- or twice-yearly dosing
• WVE-006, an RNA-editing candidate for AATD with Z-AAT reduction up to 71% and an FDA accelerated-approval meeting set for end of summer 2026
• WVE-008 for PNPLA3 liver disease
• WVE-N531 for DMD and WVE-003 for Huntington’s disease

CEO Paul Bolno says WVE-007 has “the potential to transform the current obesity treatment landscape.”

Ranking the Plausible Acquirers

1. GSK (NYSE:GSK). The obvious anchor. GSK has partnered on WVE-006 and drove Wave’s $38.25 million Q1 2026 revenue. Its market cap is near $101.9 billion. It might not act because management is digesting multiple 2026 bolt-ons.
2. Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY). A $1.1 trillion-caliber obesity leader that could bolt WVE-007 onto Zepbound/retatrutide as maintenance therapy. It might not act because Lilly rarely needs external assets.
3. Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO). Down 9.4% year to date with a stalled pipeline, Novo needs a differentiated, muscle-sparing obesity asset. Balance-sheet caution amid 2027 price cuts might prevent it from acting.
4. Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN). MariTide plus WVE-007 offers combination optionality; Amgen has oligonucleotide experience. It has a $225.2 billion market cap. It might not act because it is focused on defending against Prolia and Enbrel erosion.
5. A wildcard genetic-medicine buyer eyeing the AIMer editing platform.

What About Private Equity or Alternative Capital?

For a pre-commercial biotech, realistic alternative-capital paths include an expanded GSK collaboration, royalty financing against WVE-006, or a PIPE anchor. This path ranks clearly below a strategic pharma acquisition in likelihood.

What to Watch

Catalysts to watch include the WVE-006 FDA accelerated-approval meeting, 2H 2026 INLIGHT and RestorAATion-2 readouts, and the WVE-008 CTA filing. Analysts on average recommend buying shares, and they have a huge $19.06 mean target price. Any 13D/13G filing or unusual call activity beyond the 0.59 put/call ratio would sharpen the takeout signal.

The post Wave Life Sciences: A $1 Billion RNA-Medicine Bargain Ripe for Pharma Takeover appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) delivered a monster quarter with revenue growth, a fourth consecutive EPS beat, and a fresh guidance raise. The stock has climbed 9.86% in the past week alone. Our proprietary model sees room to run.

Eli Lilly trades at $1,231.94 as of August 10, 2026. Our 24/7 Wall St. price target is $1,427, implying 15.83% upside over the next twelve months. Our model rates Lilly Bullish, with high confidence at 90%.

24/7 Wall St. Price Target Summary

A Blowout Quarter Reset the Narrative

Lilly is up 15.02% year to date and 98.29% over the past year, sitting just 4% below its 52-week high of $1,249.45.

Q2 revenue landed at $22.97 billion, beating expectations, and EPS of $8.38 came in 27.27% above the $6.5845 consensus. Mounjaro alone did $9.94 billion (+91%), boosted by international growth after China added the drug to its National Reimbursement Drug List. Management raised full-year revenue guidance to $85 to $87 billion and lifted the performance margin range to 49% to 50.5%.

The Case for $1,647 and Higher

Our bull scenario points to $1,646.99, a 33.69% total return. Retatrutide, the next-generation triple-agonist obesity drug with a complete Phase 3 data package and Q1 2027 BLA, drives the thesis.

Layer in Foundayo, the oral GLP-1 pill approved for obesity and submitted for type 2 diabetes, plus VERVE-102’s 62% LDL-C reduction. Wall Street is aligned with 22 buy ratings against just 2 sells, and CEO David Ricks calls Lilly’s future “never been brighter.”

The Risks Worth Watching

Our bear case suggests $1,167.64, a 5.22% decline. U.S. realized prices fell roughly 9% excluding rebates, and Q2 absorbed $2.78 billion in IPR&D charges from four acquisitions.

Concentration in Mounjaro and Zepbound remains a real risk if a competitor breaks through. Bulls argue the IPR&D hit is non-recurring and pricing pressure is swamped by 60% volume growth. At an implied forward P/E of 39, Lilly needs to keep executing.

How Lilly Compares to Merck and AbbVie

Merck (NYSE:MRK) trades at $130.92 and is up 26.22% YTD, outpacing Lilly. It offers Keytruda-driven oncology exposure at a fraction of Lilly’s multiple, making Lilly’s forward P/E of 39 look demanding. But Merck lacks a GLP-1 franchise growing 91%.

AbbVie (NYSE:ABBV) at $247.97 is up 11.09% YTD, roughly tracking Lilly on a one-month basis but lagging over one year at 29.1% versus Lilly’s 98.29%. AbbVie navigates Humira erosion while Lilly rides a franchise still accelerating. The peer group makes our 24/7 Wall St. price target reasonable: Lilly deserves a premium, but not an unlimited one.

Eli Lilly Price Prediction 2026-2030

The 24/7 Wall St. price target of $1,427 reflects a constructive setup at 90% confidence. The volume-driven growth engine is real, and retatrutide is a near-term catalyst the market has yet to fully price.

The bull thesis strengthens if retatrutide’s BLA stays on track for Q1 2027 and Foundayo scripts ramp cleanly. The thesis weakens if U.S. pricing declines accelerate past the current 9% pace or if payer pushback broadens. For now, momentum plus pipeline wins.

These projections extend our base case annualized return of 9.94% and assume Lilly executes on retatrutide, Foundayo, and manufacturing scale-up. Meaningful deviation could come from GLP-1 competition or a broader pricing reset from U.S. payers.

The post Eli Lilly Beat Big and Raised Guidance. Wall Street Sees More Room to Run appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Year to date, the healthcare sector finds itself in the middle of the S&P 500’s pack. But over the past three months, that corner of the market has led all 11 sectors with a 13.10% gain. It’s still lagging YTD, but that lag is exactly what makes the group interesting right now.

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) is up 13.02% year to date, while two of the three largest pharmaceutical names by market cap are trailing it. With healthcare flagged by analysts as an undervalued entry point heading into the second half, here are three mega-cap drug makers offering a rare mix of innovation exposure and income. Note that all three have rallied off spring lows, so the “beaten-down” label applies more to relative-to-market performance and prior 52-week highs than to outright drawdowns.

Eli Lilly (LLY)

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) is the cleanest example of a relative laggard. Shares trade at $1,189.34, up just around 10% year to date, below the SPY’s gain and notably off about 4% from the 52-week high of $1,182.73.

The fundamentals are accelerating. Q2 2026 revenue hit $22.97 billion, up 47.7% YoY, after reaching $19.80 billion in Q1. EPS of $8.38 beating the $6.40 estimate. Eli Lilly raised its full-year 2026 revenue outlook to between $85 billion and $87 billion, after raising it in the wake of Q1 earnings to a range of $82 billion to $85 billion.

Risk: Realized prices fell 13% due to rebates and NRDL inclusion in China, and the franchise still leans heavily on a small group of products vulnerable to future biosimilar competition.

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) is the exception to the beaten-down framing: The stock is up 24.11% year to date around $257.34 and approaching its 52-week high of $274.90. The reason it still belongs on a value list is the forward valuation, which sits at 20x earnings.

Q1 2026 revenue was $24.06 billion, up 10% year over year, with adjusted EPS of $2.70 versus the $2.68 estimate. The oncology engine is doing the heavy lifting: DARZALEX grew 23% to $3.96 billion, TREMFYA jumped 68%, and CARVYKTI climbed 62%. CEO Joaquin Duato called it “a strong start to 2026” with the company “delivering on its promise for a year of accelerated growth and impact.”

Income investors get the headline draw. JNJ pays $1.34 per share quarterly, a 3% raise that marks 64 consecutive years of dividend increases. The current yield sits at roughly 2%, and management raised full-year revenue guidance to $100.3 billion to $101.3 billion.

Risk: STELARA revenue collapsed 60% to $656 million on biosimilar competition, creating roughly a 920 basis point drag on Innovative Medicine. Ongoing litigation charges ($330 million in Q1) remain an overhang.

AbbVie (ABBV)

AbbVie (NYSE:ABBV) traded around $244.86 on Friday, Aug. 7, up just 6.78% year to date, lagging the SPY despite a strong recent bounce. Shares have slid 3.84% in the past month, and the YTD shortfall is what keeps the valuation reasonable at 16x forward earnings.

Q1 2026 revenue grew 12% to $15 billion. Skyrizi posted $4.48 billion (up 31%) and Rinvoq added $2.12 billion (up 23%), more than absorbing the Humira decline of 39%. Neuroscience grew 26%. CEO Robert Michael said “AbbVie’s key growth drivers continue to deliver strong performance and support our enhanced full-year outlook.” Management raised 2026 adjusted EPS guidance to $14.08 to $14.28.

The income story is comparable to JNJ’s. AbbVie pays $1.73 per quarter, a step up from $1.64 in 2025, with a yield near 3% and a 53-year consecutive increase streak.

Risk: Humira biosimilar erosion is still accelerating, Imbruvica fell 25%, and acquired IPR&D charges of $744 million created a 41-cent per share drag in Q1. The CRL on trenibotulinumtoxinE pushes one near-term aesthetics catalyst out further.

What to Watch

The second-half setup hinges on H2 earnings momentum, FDA progress on key pipeline programs (Foundayo uptake for Lilly, Skyrizi label expansions for AbbVie, CARVYKTI scaling for J&J), and whether sector rotation continues to favor defensives. With Lilly and AbbVie still trailing the broader market and J&J adding a 64-year dividend streak to the mix, the group offers a reasonable risk profile for income-and-innovation investors heading into Q3.

The post 3 Beaten-Down Healthcare Stocks to Buy in August appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) just delivered one of the cleanest beat-and-raise quarters I have seen from a mega-cap pharma in years. Revenue jumped 47.67% to $22.97 billion, EPS came in at $8.38 versus the $6.5845 consensus, and management raised full-year revenue guidance to $85 to $87 billion.

Shares are up 9.23% year to date, well behind the fundamentals. So can Lilly reach $1,750 by August 2027? Let’s run the math.

Why Lilly Shares Are Stuck Despite a Blowout Quarter

The disconnect is real. Revenue growth is running near 50%, but the stock is down 3.32% over the past week and 2.52% over the past month.

Two things are weighing on sentiment. First, $2.78 billion in Q2 IPR&D charges from four acquisitions muddied the reported earnings picture and pushed the effective tax rate to 23.3%.

Second, realized prices fell roughly 13%, with U.S. prices down about 9% excluding rebates. Add a beta of just 0.506, and you get a stock that grinds rather than sprints. Insiders have also been net sellers across 13 recent transactions. The fundamentals are intact. Just noise smothering a great earnings report.

Wall Street Is Bullish, But Its Targets Look Late

The consensus analyst target sits at $1,276.96, with 5 Strong Buy, 17 Buy, 4 Hold, 1 Sell, and 1 Strong Sell ratings. That is 79% bullish. Post-quarter, Morgan Stanley raised its target to $1,419 from $1,347 with an Overweight rating, BMO’s Evan Seigerman went to $1,400 from $1,300, and Wells Fargo’s Mohit Bansal moved to $1,330 from $1,280.

Our own base case model targets $1,430.26 for 22.26% upside, with a bull case at $1,639.16 and confidence at 90%. My view: analysts are anchored to pricing pressure and missing volume. Q2 volume grew 60%. That is the story.

The Path to $1,750 Per Share

Reaching $1,750 from today’s price of $1,169.86 would require a gain of 49.6%. With forward EPS of $38.14, a price of $1,750 implies a forward P/E of 46x. Our base case of $1,430.26 already implies 37x, meaning the bold target requires roughly 8.7x of additional multiple expansion. Achievable? Earnings are compounding fast enough to compress that multiple naturally.

Quarterly earnings growth is running at 169.9% year over year, and our 247Factor adjustment came in at 1.132, boosted by 79% bullish analyst sentiment and a healthcare sector momentum multiplier of 1.1.

Catalysts stack up: retatrutide’s BLA submission is planned for Q1 2027, Mounjaro international revenue grew 172% on the China NRDL addition, and CEO David Ricks said “Lilly’s future, after 150 years, has never been brighter.”

The risk: any retatrutide clinical setback or an aggressive Medicare pricing action could reset the multiple lower fast.

Where Lilly Trades Today vs Its Earnings Power

At $1,169.86, Lilly trades at roughly 31x forward EPS of $38.14. That is below its trailing P/E of 40x and cheap for a franchise growing revenue near 50% with 85.8% gross margins.

Shares sit 2% off the 52-week high of $1,249.45 and well above the 52-week low of $619.40. Over ten years, the stock has returned 1,585.44%. Nothing about the current setup screams overvalued.

Is $1,750 Realistic? My Verdict

Reaching $1,750 by August 2027 requires a 49.6% gain from here. Realistic? A stretch, but plausible.

Three things need to go right: retatrutide’s Q1 2027 BLA must clear on schedule, Zepbound and Mounjaro need to sustain $14.87 billion-plus combined quarterly runs, and Foundayo’s oral GLP-1 launch has to broaden the obesity market rather than cannibalize the injectables. A single retatrutide safety signal would derail the entire thesis. Returns at this level shouldn’t be expected every year, but we’ve outlined the blueprint for how Eli Lilly could reach $1,750 in 2027.

The post This Will be Eli Lilly’s Price in 2027 And Morgan Stanley Agrees appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) opened Wednesday’s session with a blowout second-quarter earnings report, sending shares sharply higher and cementing the drugmaker’s status as the only pharmaceutical company trading above a $1 trillion market cap. On a CNBC segment breaking down the release, anchor Joe Kernen walked viewers through the headline figures that pushed the stock up 4.4% on Wednesday.

“Earnings well above estimates of $3.28 a share. And revenue jumped 48% from a year ago to 22.97 billion. The estimate was 20.7 billion, driven primarily by Mounjaro and Zepbound volume,” Kernen said.

Weight-Loss Drug Demand Is Exploding, Affordability Remains a Constraint

The company’s Type 2 diabetes treatment, Mounjaro, continues to drive impressive results. “U.S. Mounjaro sales themselves surged 91% from a year ago to $9.9 billion in a quarter. Zepbound sales increased 46% to $4.9 billion,” Kernen noted on the broadcast. Mounjaro international revenue climbed 172%, aided by the drug’s addition to China’s National Reimbursement Drug List. Combined, Mounjaro and Zepbound generated $14.871 billion in the quarter.

Worldwide volume increased 60%, more than offsetting a 13% decline in realized prices. That volume-over-price dynamic drew a pointed comment from Kernen’s cohost about the ceiling on the category: “You run out of patients who can potentially afford to pay. But man, there is demand for this.“ Affordability is a bottleneck on sales in this category. As lower-cost oral GLP-1 options roll out, that constraint could loosen.

Eli Lilly Is Spending Billions to Prepare for What Comes Next

“Lilly is also raising its full-year revenue and earnings guidance,” Kernen added. Management now sees full-year revenue of $85.0-$87.0 billion, up from the prior $82.0-$85.0 billion range, with performance margin (gross margin minus R&D, marketing, selling, and admin. expenses) now guided to 49.0%-50.5%. Non-GAAP EPS is guided to $35.50 to $36.50, with a $2.78 midpoint benefit from business strength offset by $3.03 in IPR&D charges tied to a wave of Q2 acquisitions.

CEO David Ricks framed the setup on the release: “Lilly’s momentum continues, as we delivered 48% revenue growth and raised our full-year guidance. At the same time, Lilly is building for the future. With our next-generation weight-loss medicine retatrutide and its complete clinical data package in hand, new manufacturing capacity coming online, and exciting new assets entering our pipeline through business development, Lilly’s future, after 150 years, has never been brighter.” Details in the Q2 2026 earnings release flag a planned Q1 2027 BLA for retatrutide and an additional $4.5 billion commitment to Indiana manufacturing.

What to Watch Next

Lilly’s status as the only pharmaceutical company with a $1 trillion market cap reflects both the depth of the GLP-1 franchise and rival Novo Nordisk’s stumbles in the same category. Analyst sentiment mirrors this, with 17 buys, 5 strong buys, 4 holds, and an average price target of $1,276.96, compared with a current share price of about $1,163. Shares are up 46.1% over the past year and 342.61% over five years.

The biggest question today for Lilly is how quickly the company can expand access, increase production, and convert its loaded pipeline into additional blockbusters. As long as volume growth continues to outpace pricing pressure, Lilly’s $1 trillion valuation has a credible path to keep growing well beyond Mounjaro and Zepbound.

The post Eli Lilly’s Weight-Loss Drug Demand Is Nearly Limitless. Here’s What Comes Next for the $1 Trillion Drugmaker appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

The market has spent the past two years treating pharmaceutical stocks like a referendum on GLP-1 drugs. That has been justified. Weight-loss and diabetes therapies have reshaped the industry’s growth outlook and created a handful of blockbuster winners. 

Yet markets have a habit of looking backward. The companies that generate today’s profits are not always the ones creating tomorrow’s competitive advantage. Eli Lilly‘s (NYSE:LLY) latest earnings report shows why investors should celebrate its GLP-1 dominance today while paying even closer attention to the artificial intelligence investments that could fuel the next decade of growth.

GLP-1 Dominance Powered Another Blowout Quarter

Eli Lilly’s second-quarter results left little room for criticism. Revenue climbed 48% year over year to $23 billion, topping Wall Street’s $20.7 billion estimate. Just two years ago, Lilly generated $11.3 billion in second-quarter revenue. The business has now more than doubled in size over that period.

The earnings story was just as convincing. Net income reached $7.1 billion versus analyst expectations of $5.4 billion, while adjusted earnings per share came in at $8.38, easily surpassing the $6.01 consensus. Management also lifted full-year revenue guidance to $85 billion to $87 billion from its previous $82 billion to $85 billion range, helping push the stock nearly 6% higher in premarket trading.

The real driver remains Lilly’s GLP-1 franchise.

Mounjaro is now the world’s best-selling drug at $9.9 billion in quarterly sales. For perspective, rival Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) reported Wegovy revenue of roughly $500 million and Ozempic sales of $4.8 billion during the same period, underscoring just how quickly Lilly has taken command of the market.

AI Could Become Lilly’s Next Blockbuster

But it is important to look beyond today’s blockbuster medicines. Lilly isn’t treating artificial intelligence as another productivity tool. It is rebuilding drug discovery, manufacturing, and clinical development around AI.

Last year, Lilly unveiled what it calls the pharmaceutical industry’s most powerful AI supercomputer, built with Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) technology. Earlier this year, the companies expanded that relationship into a joint AI innovation lab with plans to invest up to $1 billion over five years. The goal is to train biomedical foundation models capable of identifying promising drug candidates faster while also deploying robotics, digital twins, and AI agents throughout manufacturing operations.

The opportunity extends well beyond research. Lilly has already said AI helped increase production of Mounjaro and Zepbound during periods of overwhelming demand. It is also using digital twins to simulate manufacturing lines before making physical changes, reducing bottlenecks and improving supply chain efficiency. Those gains matter because every additional dose Lilly can produce translates into revenue that might otherwise be left on the table.

Meanwhile, the company continues expanding AI-powered drug discovery through partnerships, including an agreement with Insilico Medicine and its TuneLab platform, which allows collaborators to build AI models using decades of Lilly research data. If AI shortens development timelines or improves clinical success rates even modestly, the payoff could stretch across every therapeutic area Lilly pursues — not just obesity.

Key Takeaway

In short, GLP-1 drugs are producing the cash that is transforming Eli Lilly today. Mounjaro and Zepbound continue widening the gap with competitors, and management’s higher revenue outlook suggests demand remains far from saturated.

That said, savvy investors should avoid viewing Lilly as merely a weight-loss stock. Those blockbuster medicines are generating billions of dollars that can be reinvested into AI infrastructure, drug discovery, manufacturing, and future therapies. Granted, AI will take years to prove its full value, and there is no guarantee every investment succeeds. But if Lilly can use AI to discover medicines faster, manufacture them more efficiently, and expand beyond obesity, today’s GLP-1 franchise could become the foundation — not the ceiling — of its long-term growth story.

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Mizuho Securities healthcare sector specialist Jared Holz laid out the case for a potential blockbuster pharmaceutical tie-up on CNBC Monday morning, arguing that reported talks for AstraZeneca to acquire Bristol Myers Squibb could make financial sense if the buyer aggressively cuts the combined company’s cost base.

The Billions in Cost Cuts a Deal Could Unlock

Holz framed the logic bluntly. “If you take these two companies and you slash expenses, that would be the main thing here. You cut costs in a big way, and you basically aggregate these assets. It’s not totally unreasonable,” he said. He extended the point to the target’s R&D value: “If AstraZeneca thinks that Bristol’s assets, their R&D pipeline, is at all decent and there’s a lot of costs they can cut, it’s not unreasonable.”

AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN) traded around $157.23 on Monday, August 3, carrying a market cap of roughly $263 billion. Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) traded around $64.79 on Monday, with a market cap of about $132 billion. Bristol-Myers has already been executing its own belt-tightening, targeting the remaining $2 billion in cost savings by the end of 2027, driving a head start on potential synergies.

Bristol-Myers has ridden a rebound this year, gaining 25.14% year-to-date and 57.98% over the past year, though it still trades at a discounted forward P/E of roughly 10.

Eli Lilly’s $1 Trillion Valuation Is Forcing Rivals to Think Bigger

AstraZeneca’s CEO, Pascal Soriot, said a week ago that the company does not need M&A to thrive and survive. That stance carries weight given AstraZeneca’s Q1 2026 revenue of $15.29 billion, up 13% year over year, and a pipeline that includes 16 blockbuster medicines with 20+ Phase 3 readouts expected in 2026.

Still, Holz argued that scale pressure is reshaping the industry. “Eli Lilly has emerged as by far the largest company in pharmaceuticals, a $1 trillion-plus market cap. Everyone else is 600 billion or below, including J&J and Merck and Pfizer and AbbVie,” he said. Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) saw a 56.32% one-year gain, and GLP-1 franchise revenue, with Mounjaro posting $8.66 billion in Q1 2026, up 125% year over year.

Why Antitrust Regulators May Let This Blockbuster Deal Through

On regulatory risk, Holz pointed to structural depth in the sector: “The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most fragmented, large cap industries we have. There are over 15 large cap companies between the US and Europe that compete here.” That fragmentation, combined with an administration Holz described as open to large corporate deals, softens the antitrust overhang that has scuttled megadeals in other sectors.

Merck (NYSE:MRK) has already been active on the deal front, working through its $9 billion charge related to Cidara, its pending acquisition of Terns Pharmaceuticals, and its Verona Pharma transactions as it braces for the KEYTRUDA patent cliff. Merck shares have climbed 25.53% year to date, echoing the broader repricing across pharma names investors expect to consolidate.

The Holz call also connects to Jim Cramer’s earlier framing of a coming biotech and pharma M&A wave, in which “the banks making these acquisitions can make fortunes from cost cutting.” The large-cap pharmaceutical industry would likely benefit from large-scale cost savings if there were consolidation.

The post Top Healthcare Analyst: A $400 Billion AstraZeneca-Bristol Myers Deal Could “Cut Costs in a Big Way” appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Novo Nordisk (NYSE: NVO) and Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) both posted Q1 FY2026 results this spring, and the gap between them keeps widening.

Lilly delivered 55.55% revenue growth and raised guidance. Novo, meanwhile, is quietly restructuring after guiding to an adjusted sales decline of -4% to -12% at constant currency. Same drug class, very different quarters.

Foundayo Sprints. Wegovy Pill Defends.

Lilly’s Q1 was a blowout. Mounjaro rang up $8.66 billion (+125% YoY), and Zepbound added $4.16 billion (+80%). Volume climbed 65%, more than absorbing a 13% price drop. The centerpiece was Foundayo (orforglipron), the first approved GLP-1 pill with no food or water restrictions. That is a real manufacturing edge over injectable peptides.

Novo’s headline looked massive, $96.82 billion in revenue, but that number carried a $4.20 billion non-cash reversal of a US 340B provision. Strip that out and adjusted sales slipped 4% at constant exchange rates.

Ozempic fell to $27.83 billion (-8%). The bright spot: the Wegovy pill hit $2.26 billion in its first full quarter and reached over 1 million patients since its January launch. CEO Mike Doustdar called it “the most efficacious GLP-1 tablet” on the market. Impressive, but not enough to offset Ozempic and Rybelsus fatigue.

Expansion Mode vs. Damage Control

Ricks used Q1 to announce four acquisitions (Orna, Centessa, Kelonia, Ajax). Doustdar, by contrast, is presiding over a company that already cut roughly 9,000 positions and pre-announced list price cuts of roughly 50% for Wegovy and 35% for Ozempic effective January 1, 2027.

That protects volume. It also caps 2027 cash flow. And CagriSema, once the marquee follow-on, missed its REDEFINE 4 primary endpoint and was terminated as a co-formulation.

The Next Test Is Lilly’s Q2 Earnings Report

Lilly reports Q2 on August 5. Prediction markets currently put a 70% probability on another earnings beat, with 96.4% odds Mounjaro clears $7.5 billion and 87% odds Zepbound tops $4 billion. I want to see whether Foundayo scripts scale fast enough to justify Lilly’s 53.02% one-year gain.

For Novo, keep an eye on the stock as Wegovy pill launches outside the US in H2 2026 and the Medicare Part D obesity pilot begins July 1, 2026.

Why Lilly Leads, While Novo Stays in the Mix

On momentum, Lilly is still the cleaner story. Volume is growing 65%, guidance keeps moving up, and Foundayo directly beat oral semaglutide in a head-to-head Phase 3 trial. The company setting the pricing floor arguably has a stronger position than the one reacting to it.

That said, Novo trades at a P/E near 12 with a 12.78% post-earnings recovery and a 3% dividend. For a turnaround investor patient enough to wait through the 2027 price reset, that setup is defensible. Avoiding both would only make sense if one doubted GLP-1 demand itself, which the numbers make hard to argue.

The post Novo Nordisk vs Eli Lilly: The Better Buy Before Earnings appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) has accelerated despite its $1 trillion scale. Revenue grew 55.5% in Q1 2026, management raised full-year guidance by $2 billion, and the FDA cleared Foundayo, the first any-time-of-day oral GLP-1.

Our 24/7 Wall St. price target for Eli Lilly is $1,365.51, implying roughly 15% upside from the current $1,186.85. We rate LLY a buy with high (90%) confidence.

24/7 Wall St. Price Target Summary

Foundayo Reset the Growth Story

LLY is up 8.59% year-to-date and 50.84% over the trailing year, recovering from an April low of $903.99.

Q1 2026 delivered $19.80 billion in revenue, beating the $17.80 billion consensus, with non-GAAP EPS of $8.55 versus the $6.79 estimate. Mounjaro revenue jumped 125% to $8.66 billion and Zepbound climbed 80% to $4.16 billion.

Recent headlines mixed bullish coverage of the $6.3 billion Centessa acquisition and a $6.5 billion Houston manufacturing plant against a fresh Novo Nordisk lawsuit alleging deceptive GLP-1 comparison ads.

The Case for $1,429 and Higher

Bulls argue Foundayo unlocks an oral obesity market that injectables never fully addressed. CEO Dave Ricks noted the drug can reach “over 1 billion people around the world with obesity and related conditions” with regulatory reviews underway in over 40 countries. Early launch data showed 80% of prescriptions were new-to-class.

Retatrutide, the next-gen triple agonist, delivered up to 37 pounds of weight loss in Phase 3. Morningstar flagged LLY as positioned for “industry-leading growth”. Our bull-case scenario carries the stock to $1,429.03, roughly 12.5% above current levels.

What Could Go Wrong

Pricing pressures loom. Q1 realized prices fell 13%, offsetting a 65% volume gain, and Mounjaro’s inclusion on China’s National Reimbursed Drug List will pressure international prices. Novo Nordisk’s false-advertising lawsuit and emerging generic semaglutide competition add legal and competitive headwinds.

Q1 carried $584 million in IPR&D charges plus $279 million in litigation and restructuring. Most charges reflect deliberate M&A spend (Centessa, Orna, Kelonia, Ajax) that expands the pipeline. Our bear scenario prices LLY at $1,123.10, an 11.6% drawdown.

How Eli Lilly Compares to Merck and Novo Nordisk

Merck (NYSE:MRK) is the value counterpoint. Merck guided FY2026 revenue of $65.8 billion to $67 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $5.04 to $5.16, with Q1 growth of just 4.87%. That is a fraction of Lilly’s 55.5% pace, explaining why Lilly commands a forward P/E of 33x while Merck trades at mid-teens multiples. Growth still wins.

Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) is the direct GLP-1 rival. Novo’s Q1 underlying adjusted sales fell 4% at constant currency, and management guided full-year growth to -4% to -12% CER after slashing Wegovy list prices by roughly 50% effective January 2027. Against that peer set, our LLY target looks reasonable.

Eli Lilly Price Prediction 2026-2030

Our 24/7 Wall St. price target of $1,365.51 reflects a buy rating with 90% confidence. Foundayo converts a large injectable-averse population into addressable demand.

The setup looks constructive if the Foundayo launch tracks to plan into Q3, and more cautious if realized prices deteriorate past mid-teens headwinds. Growth of this quality at this scale is rare.

These projections assume Lilly executes on Foundayo, retatrutide, and pipeline acquisitions. Significant upside or downside could result from GLP-1 pricing regulation, Novo Nordisk competition, or acceleration of oral obesity adoption globally.

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The polite duopoly running the modern weight-loss drug boom just filed for divorce, and the market voted before the ink dried. Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) sued Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) over what it calls misleading US advertising for Zepbound, and on the news, Novo’s ADRs slipped about half a percentage point while Lilly’s stock rose. A lawsuit is supposed to be a threat, but investors read it as an admission.

You already know which side Wall Street was on going in. Lilly’s market cap sits at roughly $1.1 trillion against Novo’s roughly $167 billion. Over the past year, LLY is up 50% while NVO is down 27%. That gap is the context for everything else here.

What The Lawsuit Is Actually About

The complaint, described by Bloomberg’s Madison Muller, is narrower than the headlines suggest. Lilly ran ads comparing Zepbound to an earlier, lower-dose version of Wegovy using older trial data. Novo recently secured FDA approval for a higher-dose Wegovy and argues those comparisons are now outdated. Novo did the polite corporate thing first. It sent Lilly a cease-and-desist months ago. Lilly did not change or pull the ads. So Novo went to court.

On the science, Novo has a point. The higher-dose Wegovy approval, plus Wegovy HD demonstrating nearly 21% weight loss in trials, materially changes the comparison. But litigation is a slow tool for solving a fast marketing problem, and by the time discovery starts, doctors will have written another quarter of prescriptions.

Why The Stock Reaction Tells The Real Story

Muller’s reporting hit the pressure point. There is a genuine consumer perception that Zepbound is better than Wegovy, with patients walking into doctors’ offices asking for Lilly’s drug by name. That demand signal shows up on the income statement. Lilly’s blowout Q1 2026 delivered $19.8 billion in revenue, up 55.5% year over year, with Mounjaro at $8.66 billion (+125%) and Zepbound at $4.16 billion (+80%). Non-GAAP EPS came in at $8.55, beating the $6.79 consensus.

Novo’s quarter looked different. Adjusted sales fell 4% at constant exchange rates, EPS of $6.63 missed the $6.96 consensus, and management guided full-year adjusted sales to -4% to -12% at CER. The company also telegraphed list-price cuts of roughly 50% on Wegovy and 35% on Ozempic effective January 1, 2027. When you are cutting price by half, a court filing about ad copy is not the lever that saves you.

How Novo Lost Its Lead And Whether A Lawsuit Can Win It Back

Novo essentially invented the modern GLP-1 category, and then Lilly out-executed it. Lilly launched a direct-to-consumer website and cut cash-pay prices before Novo did. Muller described Novo as having “rested on their laurels a bit” while Lilly moved aggressively to out-innovate. Novo’s response has been dramatic. A new CEO in Mike Doustdar, roughly 9,000 job cuts, and a culture overhaul.

The oral pill launch shows the franchise still fights in it. Wegovy pill did $2.26 billion in its first full quarter and captured 65% of new US prescriptions in the oral GLP-1 category, with over one million patients since the January launch. That is not a company being lapped. But Lilly countered with Foundayo, its own approved oral GLP-1 pill that can be taken any time of day without food or water restrictions, and raised its 2026 revenue guidance to $82.0 billion to $85.0 billion. The analyst consensus target on LLY sits at $1,270.37 versus $47.43 for NVO. The Street’s verdict is not subtle.

The Verdict For Investors

A lawsuit does not fix a perception problem, and perception is what Novo needs to change. Lilly enters this fight with a bigger, faster-growing franchise, superior head-to-head trial data on the injectable side, an approved oral pill of its own, and a stock that is up 377% over five years while Novo’s ADR is up just 7% over the same stretch. Novo is still enormously profitable, and its oral launch is real, but the burden of proof has flipped. Lilly has to keep executing. Novo has to convince patients and doctors that the newer, higher-dose Wegovy is worth switching to, and no court order will do that for them.

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Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money, used his Tuesday morning appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on July 21, 2026 to fire a warning shot at investors who have ridden the AI trade to fresh highs and never taken a chip off the table. His message was blunt: “Because if you own too much tech, you’re going to be slaughtered. And you won’t even know what hit you. For the moment, it’s time to go to other sectors that can make you money without the volatility.”

With futures pointing higher on renewed semiconductor strength, Cramer wants investors to lean against the crowd and rotate proceeds into groups that have lagged the AI melt-up. The playbook: financials and healthcare, where valuations are cleaner and earnings power is showing up in results from banks that just reported.

The Discipline: Take Off Half When a Group Goes Red Hot

Cramer’s rotation call is rooted in position sizing, not a top call on tech. “When you have a group that is red hot, you take off half. You have to be disciplined, and the reason why you have to be disciplined is because a lot of this last run, the parabolic move, is not cured by a 20% to 30% decline because the stock went up more than that.”

Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) is Exhibit A. Cramer suggested a few weeks ago that investors sell half of Micron, and the numbers explain why. Shares are up 240.36% year to date and 758.78% over the past year. Fiscal Q3 2026 revenue landed at $41.456 billion, a 17.60% beat, with non-GAAP EPS of $25.11 versus $20.28 expected and GAAP gross margin expanding to 84.6% from 37.7% a year earlier. The fundamentals are real; the move is parabolic. Polymarket contracts currently price a 0.74 probability that Micron closes lower on July 22.

Where Cramer Sees Value: Banks at 12 to 15 Times Earnings

The sector composition is already tilting. Among the top ten DOW names year to date, eight are either healthcare or financials. The July 14 bank earnings gave the rotation fresh fuel.

JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) posted Q2 EPS of $7.70 versus $5.80 expected on $57.35 billion in revenue, and authorized a fresh $50 billion buyback. Cramer’s take on Jamie Dimon: “You can buy his stock for 15 times earnings. It’s one of the brightest guys in the world. Jamie and his team is filled with brilliant people. 15 times. I’ll take it.” Shares are up 8.65% YTD.

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) trades at 14 times earnings, delivered a fifth consecutive EPS beat at $1.21, and is up 13.34% YTD. Wells Fargo trades at 12 times earnings and remains -4.84% YTD, the kind of laggard Cramer is willing to buy while others chase memory chips.

Healthcare: Lilly the GLP-1 Winner

Cramer’s second lane is pharma, and he wants the winner of the GLP-1 war. “I will say, you know what? Let me go and buy some Lilly into the Novo Nordisk weakness.”

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) reported Q1 EPS of $8.55 versus $6.79 expected and revenue of $19.80 billion, up 55.5% YoY, then raised 2026 guidance to $82.0-$85.0 billion. Mounjaro alone did $8.66 billion, up 125%. Novo Nordisk, by contrast, is down 20.46% over the past year and guided full-year adjusted sales to a decline of 4% to 12% at constant currency.

The Takeaway

Cramer’s message is about discipline. He wants investors to recognize when a move has run past what any normal pullback could fix, trim into strength, and redeploy where earnings are compounding at reasonable multiples. Banks reporting record quarters at 12 to 15 times earnings and a pharma leader raising guidance mid-year give him a place to put the profits. The discipline is the point.

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The three biggest US pharma names by market cap trade at very different setups right now: Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) at $247.02 screens as the most compelling on fundamentals, Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) at $1,156.63 looks fully valued, and AbbVie (NYSE:ABBV) at $244.11 appears stretched relative to its growth outlook. Each has run hard off 2025 lows, and the fundamentals no longer line up the same way.

Johnson & Johnson: The Rerating Has Legs

J&J has posted four straight EPS beats and accelerating revenue growth, from +5.8% in Q2 2025 to +9.9% in Q1 2026. Management raised 2026 guidance to $100.3B–$101.3B in sales and $11.45–$11.65 in adjusted EPS. DARZALEX at $3.96B (+22.5%) and TREMFYA at $1.61B (+68.3%) are more than absorbing the STELARA biosimilar cliff.

The setup: shares are up 20.69% year to date and 63.17% over one year, yet the stock trades at a forward P/E of 22, backed by a 2.02% dividend yield and 64 consecutive years of hikes.

Analysts carry a $262.27 consensus target against the current $247.02, with 15 Buy, 7 Hold, 1 Sell. Targets are not guarantees, but the Orthopaedics separation and Enterprise Business Review on December 8, 2026 are near-term catalysts. Litigation charges of $330M in Q1 remain the swing factor to watch.

Eli Lilly: Great Company, Priced for Perfection

Lilly’s Q1 2026 revenue jumped 55.5% to $19.80B with adjusted EPS of $8.55 beating $6.79 estimates by 25.88%. Mounjaro hit $8.66B (+125%) and Zepbound reached $4.16B (+80%). Guidance was lifted to $82B–$85B revenue and $35.5–$37 EPS, and the Foundayo oral GLP-1 approval opens a larger addressable pool.

The challenge is price. Shares have already climbed 50.92% over one year and 421.48% over five, and the stock trades at a trailing P/E of 42 and forward P/E of 33.

Realized prices fell 13% in Q1, Mounjaro and Zepbound together account for 64.7% of revenue, and prediction-market sentiment has slipped 21.4 points over 30 days. With 23 Buy, 5 Hold, 2 Sell and a $1,254.07 target implying modest upside, the risk/reward argues for patience until pricing and competition stabilize.

AbbVie: The Multiple Has Detached From the Math

Skyrizi at $4.48B (+30.9%) and Rinvoq at $2.12B (+23.3%) are outrunning Humira erosion (Humira at $688M, down 38.6%), and 2026 EPS guidance was nudged to $14.08–$14.28. That is a real business. The valuation is the sticking point.

ABBV trades at a trailing P/E of 122 and price-to-book of 50, on negative book value of -$3.77, after rising 35.04% over one year and 481.43% over ten.

Q1 adjusted EPS of $2.65 missed by 0.66%, weighed by $744M in IPR&D charges on top of $5B for full-year 2025. Analysts still model a $265.50 target with 24 Buy, 6 Hold, 1 Sell, but one predictive model implies -30.9% downside to $168.67. With growth concerns building beyond 2028 and Imbruvica down 24.7%, the risk/reward has narrowed.

The bottom line 

All three stocks have outrun the S&P 500’s mid-single-digit gain year to date. J&J’s rerating still has room on the fundamentals, Lilly’s setup argues for patience after a strong run, and AbbVie’s multiple looks demanding relative to the growth math. This is analysis, not investment advice — investors should weigh their own objectives and risk tolerance.

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CNBC pharma reporter Angelica Peebles broke down the biggest psychedelics deal in Big Pharma history on July 16, 2026. She framed Eli Lilly’s (NYSE: LLY) acquisition of Atai Beckley as a bet on rewiring the brain rather than merely dampening symptoms. “Lilly says that it is acquiring psychedelic drug developer Atai Beckley, and Lilly will pay $6.75 in cash, or $2.8 billion up front, and another $1 billion if certain development and regulatory milestones are met,” Peebles said on air.

The deal structure, $2.8 billion upfront with up to $1 billion in contingent value tied to development and regulatory milestones, keeps roughly a quarter of the headline value linked to clinical execution. That matters because Atai Beckley’s lead compound, a DMT-related nasal spray for treatment-resistant depression, only just entered Phase 3, with pivotal data expected in early 2029.

Why Lilly Is Paying Up for a 2029 Readout

Lilly is acquiring from a position of strength. The company reported Q1 2026 revenue of $19.80 billion, up 56% year over year, with non-GAAP EPS of $8.55. Mounjaro and Zepbound continued to drive growth, contributing $12.8 billion in combined quarterly revenue, and management raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $82 billion to $85 billion. CEO David Ricks highlighted four Q1 acquisitions — Orna Therapeutics, Centessa Pharmaceuticals, Kelonia Therapeutics, and Ajax Therapeutics — underscoring Lilly’s strategy of redeploying GLP-1 cash flows into pipeline expansion. The later AtaiBeckley deal extends that acquisition push into neuroscience.

Peebles zeroed in on the science. “Lilly talked about it in their press release, where they see the opportunity to make the drug more neuroplastic, potentially changing the brain and allowing for new neural pathways to develop.” That neuroplasticity thesis separates DMT-class compounds from SSRIs and gives Lilly a longer runway story while Phase 3 runs.

The Spravato Playbook at Johnson & Johnson

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) has already validated the clinic-administered depression-treatment model. Peebles noted that the Atai Beckley nasal spray is “a little bit like J&J’s drug SPRAVATO” because it is administered in a clinic with patients monitored afterward. J&J’s SPRAVATO franchise has become a commercial proof point for supervised psychedelic-adjacent depression therapies, with growth highlighted in the company’s Neuroscience portfolio. Its Innovative Medicine segment generated $15.43 billion in Q1 2026 revenue, up 11.2% year over year.

GH Research: The Small-Cap Read-Through

The clearest beneficiary is GH Research (NASDAQ: GHRS), which is developing GH001, an inhalable mebufotenin (5-MeO-DMT) product candidate for treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Shares jumped 13.04% on the announcement to $30.43, extending a year-to-date gain of 111.97%. The Phase 2b trial results, later published in JAMA Psychiatry, showed a placebo-adjusted MADRS reduction of 15.5 points at Day 8, with remission rates of 57.5% versus 0% for placebo. GH Research is targeting initiation of its global Phase 3/pivotal program in 2026.

For investors mapping the small-cap ripple effect of Big Pharma validation, our Small Stakes, Big Swings research walks through how to size positions in clinical-stage names carrying binary catalysts.

What to Watch

Peebles put a stake in the ground on timing: “Atai Beckley’s DMT-like drug just started Phase 3. And those results are expected in early 2029.” Between now and then, the milestones triggering Lilly’s $1 billion contingent payment will drive the narrative, alongside SPRAVATO’s growth at J&J and GH Research’s Phase 3 initiation. DEA scheduling, clinic infrastructure, and payer coverage remain shared hurdles for every psychedelic depression program.

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Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) has whipsawed shareholders in 2026, but the setup heading into the second half looks compelling. Our 24/7 Wall St. price target for Eli Lilly is $1,336.12, implying 12.41% upside from the current $1,188.58 quote. We rate the stock a buy with high confidence, driven by the incretin franchise, a raised 2026 outlook, and the Foundayo launch.

24/7 Wall St. Price Target Summary

The Q1 Blowout That Reset the Story

Lilly closed at $1,188.58 on July 10, off 2.09% for the week but up 10.97% year to date and 51.38% over the last year. Shares sit roughly 1% below the $1,249.45 52-week high and well above the $619.40 low.

Q1 2026 was the reset. Revenue landed at $19.80 billion, growing 55.5% year over year and beating consensus by 11.25%. Non-GAAP EPS of $8.55 cleared estimates by 25.88%. Mounjaro more than doubled to $8.66 billion, Zepbound grew 80%, and management raised full-year revenue guidance to $82.0 to $85.0 billion with EPS of $35.50 to $37.

Why Bulls See a Breakout Toward $1,395

The bull case rests on Foundayo. Orforglipron is the only approved GLP-1 pill that can be taken any time of day without food or water restrictions, and it delivered superior blood sugar and weight loss versus oral semaglutide in a head-to-head Phase 3 trial published in The Lancet.

Pair that with retatrutide’s Phase 3 win, Taltz plus Zepbound in psoriasis, and four bolt-on acquisitions announced in Q1, and the pipeline looks stacked. Our bull scenario models a $1,395.55 price a year out, a 17.41% return.

The Risks Worth Watching

Prices are the pressure point. Realized prices fell 13% in Q1 as rebates, cash-pay cuts on Zepbound, and China’s NRDL listing for Mounjaro reset the curve. Q1 also absorbed $584 million in acquired IPR&D charges and $279 million in litigation-related items. Insider activity has skewed toward selling, and composite prediction sentiment sits at 38.89, tilted bearish.

Lilly is investing aggressively behind those charges, with new manufacturing sites and four acquisitions targeting cell therapy, sleep-wake disorders, in vivo CAR-T, and myelofibrosis. Our bear scenario points to $1,102.52, a 7.24% drawdown.

How Lilly Compares to Novo Nordisk and Merck

Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) is the natural GLP-1 comp. Novo trades at a forward P/E of just 15, versus Lilly’s 33, but Novo’s revenue grew only 24% last quarter against Lilly’s 55.5%. That growth gap explains why the market underwrites Lilly’s premium.

Merck (NYSE:MRK) offers a large-cap pharma counterpoint. Merck trades at a forward P/E near 24 with quarterly revenue growth of just 4.9% and earnings that contracted year over year. Lilly’s growth rate is roughly ten times Merck’s, making the higher multiple defensible. Against this peer set, our $1,336.12 target looks reasonable.

Eli Lilly Price Prediction 2026-2030

The 24/7 Wall St. price target of $1,336.12 and buy rating carry 90% confidence. Growth acceleration tips the scale. The bull path hinges on Foundayo scripts ramping as expected and 2026 EPS landing at the high end of the raised $35.50 to $37 range. The setup weakens if realized price declines widen beyond the current 13% drag or a pharma tariff surprise reprices the sector.

Extending our model out, here is where our projects Lilly could trade, assuming Foundayo scales and incretin growth normalizes into the high teens.

These projections assume Lilly continues executing on the incretin buildout and pipeline diversification. Meaningful upside or downside could come from oral GLP-1 penetration, tariff outcomes, or biosimilar timing.

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Biotech is the story at midday Friday, and it’s not a pretty one for shareholders who chased the sector’s monster 2026 run. Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) stock is down 11% to $68.50, ImmunityBio (NASDAQ:IBRX) shares are off 8% to $8.16, and Sarepta Therapeutics (NASDAQ:SRPT) stock has slid 8% to $18.84.

The moves are steep, but they land on top of extraordinary year-to-date gains. Moderna stock had climbed 160% year to date through Thursday’s close, and ImmunityBio shares were up 348% year to date heading into today. There’s no company-specific bad news attached to any of the three names.

The SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (NYSEARCA:XBI) is off 4% midday, framing this as a sector-wide flush rather than a single-name blowup. The equal-weighted sector proxy holds all three of today’s decliners among its constituents.

Profit-Taking After a Parabolic Run

The cleanest read on today’s selloff in Moderna, ImmunityBio, and Sarepta and other biotechnology stocks is profit-taking and sector rotation after a parabolic run. Recent news flow on all three names was actually bullish, and no headline catalyst has surfaced to explain the move.

ImmunityBio has ridden Russell 1000 inclusion hopes and Anktiva optimism to its triple-digit gain, with Q1 2026 revenue of $44.21 million up 168% year over year and ANKTIVA unit sales up 168% year over year. Sarepta Therapeutics stock, meanwhile, was just upgraded by Wolfe Research to Outperform with a $27 target, implying 34% upside from Thursday’s close.

Moderna’s own Q1 2026 print was strong: revenue of $389 million beat the consensus estimate by 65%, and management reaffirmed up to 10% revenue growth for the year. The near-term catalyst is the mRNA-1010 seasonal flu vaccine PDUFA date of August 5.

Big Pharma Barely Flinches

The rotation angle sharpens when you look outside biotech. Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) stock is down 3% midday, while Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) shares are off by just 1%.

That gap tells the story. Money is coming out of high-beta, pre-profit biotech names and holding still in defensive large-cap pharma, where Eli Lilly stock is still up 10% year to date and Johnson & Johnson stock is up 24% year to date.

XBI Puts the Selloff in Perspective

The SPDR S&P Biotech ETF is the cleanest sector proxy since it holds Moderna, ImmunityBio, and Sarepta among its equal-weighted constituents. Even after today’s drop, XBI is still up 78% over the past 12 months.

Because the ETF is equal-weighted, its move reflects broad biotech weakness rather than one name driving the move. The fund isn’t leveraged, but it is a volatile sector vehicle, and today’s action is a reminder of how quickly biotech beta cuts both ways.

Moderna: Bull Case Meets Bear Case

The bull case for Moderna leans on the pipeline. The August PDUFA on the flu vaccine, brands including Spikevax, mRESVIA, mNEXSPIKE, and mCOMBRIAX, and a year-end cash target of $4.5 billion to $5 billion give management runway. Reddit retail sentiment sits at 72, classified as bullish, framing the run as a “savage comeback” comparable to post-dotcom recovery.

The bear case is the price action. Moderna stock is down 71% over five years, cash burn remains heavy after a $1.34 billion GAAP net loss, and consensus analyst targets sit well below the current price. Investors may want to size their positions modestly given the high-beta profile visible in today’s move.

What to Watch Next

The immediate tell is whether XBI stabilizes into the close or accelerates lower, which would signal the rotation has more room to run. Moderna’s August 5 PDUFA decision is the next hard-dated catalyst on the calendar for the primary name.

The takeaway: today’s slide in Moderna, ImmunityBio, and Sarepta looks like an unwind after a historic biotech rally rather than a fundamental rerating. Investors holding these names may want to reassess their position sizing given how quickly a sharp one-month gain in Moderna can compress into a double-digit down day.

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Roughly $400 billion. That is how much market value Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) has added over the past year, with shares climbing from $773.86 on July 2, 2025 to $1,213.91 on July 2, 2026, a 56.86% gain that has pushed the drugmaker’s market capitalization to $1.063 trillion.

No other Big Pharma name has expanded its footprint by that magnitude in that window. The surge is the market’s verdict on a business that is now selling GLP-1 medicines faster than it can make them, and adding oral formulations, oncology franchises, and immunology drugs on top.

What It Means

This $400 billion gain came on the back of extremely strong execution. In the most recent quarter, Lilly reported Q1 2026 revenue of $19.80 billion, a 55.5% year-over-year jump that beat consensus by 11.25%. Non-GAAP EPS of $8.55 topped the $6.79 estimate by 25.92%, driven by net income which rose 168.04% year-over-year to $7.40 billion, and operating income which climbed 64.84% to $8.92 billion.

Two products are doing the heavy lifting. Mounjaro generated $8.66 billion in the quarter, up 125% year-over-year. Zepbound delivered $4.16 billion, with U.S. revenue up 80%.

Beneath the incretin franchise, Jaypirca rose 79% to $165 million, Ebglyss climbed 141% to $145 million, and Omvoh grew 115% to $80 million. Volume across the business rose 65%, offsetting a 13% decline in realized prices.

On top of this, international revenue expanded 81% to $7.70 billion, showing Lilly is scaling globally rather than leaning on a single home market.

Market Reaction

Shares of LLY stock are up 14.07% over the past month and 7.65% over the past week, closing at $1,213.91 on July 2, 2026, a 1.86% daily gain. Year-to-date the stock is up 13.34%, and the five-year return sits at 443.8%. LLY is now trading roughly 1% below its 52-week high of $1,238.

Bull Case

The bull case for Eli Lilly rests on three pillars: earnings power, pipeline breadth, and management conviction. On earnings, Lilly has delivered four consecutive beats, with the 25.92% Q1 2026 surprise the largest in the streak. Reported EPS has climbed from $6.31 in Q2 2025 to $7.02, $7.54, and $8.55 across the following three quarters. Management raised full-year 2026 guidance to $82.0 billion to $85.0 billion in revenue and non-GAAP EPS of $35.50 to $37.00, with a performance margin of 47.0% to 48.5%.

In terms of the company’s pipeline, the FDA approved Foundayo (orforglipron), the only approved GLP-1 pill that can be taken any time of day without food and water restrictions. Orforglipron also beat oral semaglutide in a head-to-head type 2 diabetes trial published in The Lancet. Retatrutide delivered positive Phase 3 data in T2D, and Lilly added four acquisitions in the quarter: Orna Therapeutics, Centessa Pharmaceuticals, Kelonia Therapeutics, and Ajax Therapeutics.

On conviction, there’s plenty. Four of Eli Lilly’s directors bought stock together on June 15, 2026 at $1,129.35, following prior coordinated purchases at $988.09 in May and $919.90 in April. Buying at rising prices signals conviction. CEO David Ricks framed the quarter this way: “2026 is off to a strong start, we delivered 56% revenue growth in the first quarter and raised our full-year revenue guidance by $2 billion.”

Bottom Line

For long-term holders, the $400 billion in added market value reflects a business compounding at rare speed for a company already the size of Lilly. Risks exist, though. With $584 million in acquired IPR&D charges, $279 million in litigation charges, tariff exposure, and the 13% price give-back on incretins, there’s plenty for investors to consider. That’s on top of a forward P/E of 33 leaves little room for disappointment.

Thus, I think the next catalyst investors have on the calendar is Lilly’s Investment Community Meeting on December 7, 2026, with an ex-dividend date of August 14, 2026 in between. A trillion-dollar drugmaker growing revenue at 56% is a rare data point in pharma. That is what $400 billion buys you.

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The Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSEARCA:XLV) is the default healthcare allocation for millions of investors, and for good reason. XLV owns the entire S&P 500 healthcare complex in one ticker: insurers, device makers, biotech, and Big Pharma. It has returned 21.61% over the past year and 159.84% over ten years. If the reason for holding XLV is simply broad sector exposure, it does that job well. The reason to look past it is narrower: investors who bought XLV specifically to participate in the GLP-1 obesity boom are getting a heavily diluted version of that trade, and a small thematic fund, the LeaderShares Dr. Bill Grace Global Obesity ETF (NYSEARCA:OZEM) offers a more direct route.

Why XLV Waters Down the Obesity Trade

The GLP-1 franchise is concentrated in two companies: Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) and Novo Nordisk. Lilly’s Q1 2026 results underline the scale. Revenue reached $19.8 billion, up 55.5% year over year, with Mounjaro at $8.66 billion (+125%) and Zepbound at $4.16 billion (+80%). Non-GAAP EPS came in at $8.55. CEO David Ricks said, “2026 is off to a strong start, we delivered 56% revenue growth… raised full-year revenue guidance by $2 billion.” The FDA has since approved Foundayo (orforglipron), the first oral GLP-1 pill with no food or water restrictions.

Lilly’s stock reflects this: shares are up 54.8% over the past year and 433.36% over five years, with a market cap of roughly $1.07 trillion. Yet within XLV, Lilly is the largest single position, accounting for roughly 16% of the fund. While that provides significant exposure, the remaining 84% of the fund is spread across insurers, device makers, and legacy pharma. For investors whose core thesis is specifically the metabolic-disease franchise, the heavy allocation to non-obesity segments can dampen the impact of Lilly’s specific trajectory.”

What OZEM Actually Owns

If you’re looking at the obesity and GLP-1 supply chain, OZEM is the fund that comes up most often. According to its March 31, 2026, NPORT filing, Lilly is its largest holding at 16.10% of net assets, with Novo Nordisk right behind at 13.13%. Put those two together, and the two drugmakers that dominate the category represent 29.23% of the fund. For context, that is a materially higher single-theme weighting than either name individually delivers in XLV.

The remainder is a mix of GLP-1 developers and adjacencies: Viking Therapeutics at 5.29%, Zealand Pharma at 3.60%, Structure Therapeutics at 2.38%, plus Chinese biotech exposure through Innovent, Ascletis, and CSPC. Broader pharma names such as Pfizer (7.56%) and Amgen (3.94%) round out the book. The fund also carried a 12.89% cash position at the March filing, which can dampen performance during rapid market rallies, though it provides the manager with the liquidity needed to navigate the extreme volatility typical of small-cap biotech stocks.

The Tradeoffs Are Real

The swap involves real tradeoffs. OZEM returned 32.8% over the past year, better than XLV’s 21.61%, but well behind Lilly’s 54.8%. Novo Nordisk shares fell 25.53% over the same period, and that weighting, combined with the cash drag and small-cap biotech volatility, explains the gap. Year-to-date, OZEM is actually down 1.18% while XLV is up 5.51%.

Other considerations: OZEM’s total net assets sit at just $51.4 million, which means wider bid-ask spreads and closure risk if inflows stall. Thematic ETFs also carry higher expense ratios than sector SPDRs, and Lilly itself faces pricing pressure, with realized prices down and Mounjaro added to China’s national reimbursement list. A prospectus review is warranted before committing capital.

How to Think About the Swap

PineBridge’s 2026 equity outlook notes that “In 2026, we will see the expansion of obesity treatments to the broader population as lower-cost, easier-to-administer oral pill versions of the current injectable GLP-1s are introduced to the market.” That backdrop supports thematic exposure, but the vehicle matters.

For an investor whose XLV position is designed to capture the obesity story, three paths are available. Owning Lilly directly has delivered the cleanest exposure by a wide margin. A partial OZEM sleeve alongside XLV preserves diversification while raising the weighting to GLP-1 developers globally. Keeping XLV as-is remains defensible for anyone who wants the whole sector rather than one theme within it. In a taxable account, trimming XLV to fund the switch would realize gains that should be weighed against the incremental exposure, since XLV itself already owns Lilly. The decision hinges on how narrow the reader wants the bet to be.

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CNBC’s Jim Cramer pushed viewers away from the usual semiconductor and hyperscaler chatter. Instead, he highlighted a group he says has quietly become the market’s leader. “There is a move in biotech that we have not talked about at all that is really extraordinary, and particularly since the change at the head of the FDA,” Cramer said. He added that “if you look at that chart, this is the group that’s the hottest group in the market.”

The data backs him up. The iShares Biotechnology ETF (NYSEARCA: IBB) is up 16.06% year to date and 19.15% over the past month, versus 9.22% YTD for the S&P 500. Over the past year, IBB has returned 51.45%.

This is Why Deals are Coming

Cramer laid out the classic biotech playbook.

“You have many companies that get close to, if not having data that confirms a drug in a particular area. And more often than not, they don’t want to have to spend the money on a sales force… And they sell, right, usually at quite an inflated price.” He pinned the recent freeze on regulators, noting that under the prior administration takeovers were sparse after an Amgen deal “was almost blocked.” With the FDA leadership change, Cramer said his sources expect deals to “be flooding the market.” And that investors should be long biotech, a call he “has not said in ages.”

Lilly is the checkbook

The clearest evidence is Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY), the $1.16 trillion pharma giant that has already announced four acquisitions in Q1 2026. That includes Orna Therapeutics (cell therapies), Centessa Pharmaceuticals (sleep-wake disorders), Kelonia Therapeutics (in vivo CAR-T), and Ajax Therapeutics (myelofibrosis). That deal cadence is being funded by an obesity and diabetes franchise firing on all cylinders. Mounjaro revenue reached $8.66 billion (+125%). Zepbound hit $4.16 billion (+80%) in Q1, helping Lilly deliver EPS of $8.55 on $19.80 billion in revenue, up 55.5% year over year, per its SEC filing. Shares are up 13.34% YTD and 56.86% over the past year.

The other names in the picture

Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) sits at the center of Cramer’s regulatory reference. The $27.8 billion Horizon Therapeutics deal cleared only after antitrust scrutiny. In addition, Amgen is now pushing its own MariTide obesity Phase 3 program. Q1 2026 revenue rose 5.8% to $8.62 billion, with IMDELLTRA sales up 219%.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: VRTX) is the model Cramer describes: a company using tuck-in M&A (Alpine Immune Sciences, which was acquired for $4.9 billion) to build a fourth franchise in nephrology on top of cystic fibrosis.

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY) is a prime example of a biotech company with a powerful technology platform. Driven by the strong launch of AMVUTTRA for ATTR-CM, the company’s total TTR drug franchise revenue surged 153% year-over-year to $910 million. Because of this momentum, management expects full-year 2026 product revenue to hit between $4.90 billion and $5.30 billion. Despite these strong financial milestones, the stock has underperformed its peers. This gap between the company’s strong business performance and its lagging stock price creates a classic market dislocation. As a result, Alnylam is a highly attractive takeover target for major pharmaceutical companies.

What to watch

Jim Cramer’s market thesis relies on two key factors: the FDA continuing to approve major biotech mergers and cash-rich giants like Eli Lilly maintaining their aggressive acquisition pace. However, this positive outlook may already be baked into the market. For the sector to launch its next leg higher, the market will likely need to see more buyout announcements to re-energize investors.

The post Jim Cramer Says Biotech is The Hottest Group in The Market Right Now appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

The GLP-1 trade has matured from a single-stock story into a tiered opportunity set. Demand for obesity therapeutics keeps expanding as lower-cost, easier-to-administer oral pill versions of the current injectable GLP-1s are introduced to the market in 2026, and the field now spans an entrenched leader, a deep-value incumbent, and a clinical-stage challenger with multiple near-term catalysts. Heading into July, here are three US-listed GLP-1 names worth a closer look, each with a tool-verified data point, a bull case, and a clear risk.

Eli Lilly (LLY): The Category Killer

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) is the franchise stock of the GLP-1 era, and the price action reflects it. Shares are up nearly 15% year to date and more than 60% over the past year, with a market cap of roughly $1.16 trillion as of July 7.

Q1 2026 was a statement quarter. Lilly posted EPS of $8.55 versus the $6.79 consensus on revenue of $19.80 billion, up 56% year over year. Mounjaro generated $8.66 billion (+125% YoY) and Zepbound delivered $4.16 billion (+80% YoY). Management raised full-year guidance to $82.0 billion to $85.0 billion in revenue and $35.50 to $37.00 in non-GAAP EPS.

The bull case rests on a one-two punch: injectable dominance plus the only oral pill with no food/water restriction. CEO David Ricks said “A key milestone was the U.S. FDA approval of Foundayo, the only approved GLP-1 pill that can be taken any time of day, without food and water restrictions. Foundayo will meaningfully expand the number of people who can benefit from GLP-1s.”

Risk: Realized prices fell 13% in Q1 2026 due to rebate adjustments and market-access agreements, and Mounjaro’s NRDL addition in China is pressuring international pricing. Revenue concentration in two products remains the obvious vulnerability.

Novo Nordisk (NVO): The Beaten-Down Incumbent

Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) is the contrarian pick. The maker of Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus is down nearly 28% over the past year, with a market cap of around $169 billion. Per writer context, shares trade at roughly 10x earnings and sit near 45% below their 52-week high. Note that NVO is an ADR, so dividends are subject to Danish withholding tax at source.

Sentiment is beginning to shift. Reddit’s aggregate score on NVO flipped to 63 (Bullish) on June 30, up from readings of 22-29 (Bearish) in early June, and shares have rebounded more than 2% over the past month.

The bull case is valuation-driven. NVO posts elite margins (gross margin near 81%, operating margin around 41%) and remains one of only two players with a commercial oral GLP-1 already on the market. If the company stabilizes US share against Lilly, mean reversion alone offers material upside.

Risk: Novo has been steadily losing ground to Mounjaro and Zepbound, and Jim Cramer recently noted Lilly’s pipeline could deliver “the unassailable knockout punch against Novo Nordisk because it’s got fat busting without muscle crunch.” A value trap is the obvious failure mode.

Viking Therapeutics (VKTX): The High-Risk Wild Card

Viking Therapeutics (NASDAQ:VKTX) is explicitly the speculative slot. Market cap sits at about $4.7 billion, and shares have rallied nearly 38% over the past month, with a one-year gain of nearly 47%.

Lead asset VK2735 is a dual GLP-1/GIP receptor agonist in both subcutaneous and oral formulations. The Phase 2 oral readout showed up to 12% mean body weight reduction after 13 weeks. VANQUISH-1 is fully enrolled with approximately 4,500 patients, and the Phase 3 oral program is expected to begin in Q3 2026, with maintenance dosing results also due that quarter. Cash and investments stood at roughly $706 million at year-end 2025.

CEO Brian Lian framed the differentiation as “the only dual agonist molecule with the potential to dose monthly or to allow transition from subcutaneous to oral administration for weight maintenance.”

Risk: Viking is pre-revenue, with a 2025 net loss of $359.64 million and a cash position that fell from $903 million at the start of 2025 to $706 million at year-end. Phase 3 readouts could land either way, and a single negative trial would reset the equity story.

What to Watch Next

July’s setup is event-rich: Lilly’s Foundayo launch metrics, Novo’s competitive response, and Viking’s Q3 catalyst calendar. Position sizing matters across the three, because the risk profiles are not interchangeable. The GLP-1 trade is broadening, and the opportunity set looks wider than at any point in the last twelve months.

The post 3 High Growth GLP-1 Biotech Winners to Buy in July appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

The pharmaceutical industry is entering a new era where biology and artificial intelligence are converging. Drug discovery, once a slow process measured in years and billions of dollars, is increasingly becoming a data-driven competition. Companies that combine proprietary medical data with AI tools may gain an advantage similar to what technology companies achieved during the cloud computing shift. 

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) has already become the dominant name in metabolic medicine, but the market may still be valuing only the business it has today rather than the platform it is building for tomorrow.

Wall Street’s Lilly Targets Are All About GLP-1 Drugs

Wall Street continues to raise its expectations for Eli Lilly, but nearly every bullish argument revolves around its GLP-1 portfolio.

JPMorgan Chase recently raised its price target on Lilly to $1,400, pointing to continued growth from Mounjaro, Zepbound, orforglipron, and retatrutide, as well as international expansion. RBC Capital Markets went further, lifting its Lilly price target to $1,500 from $1,250 based largely on the company’s GLP-1 opportunity.

The argument makes sense. Lilly’s current growth engine is enormous.

Retatrutide is particularly interesting because it goes beyond traditional GLP-1 medicines. The drug is a triple agonist that activates receptors for GLP-1, GIP, and glucagon. The goal is to combine appetite regulation with improved energy metabolism, potentially producing greater weight loss than existing treatments.

That is the story investors know. It is also the story already reflected in many Wall Street models.

Lilly’s AI Opportunity Is Flying Under The Radar

Artificial intelligence is what’s missing from that valuation conversation. Lilly is not just selling medicines; it is building a vertically integrated AI-powered biology platform.

The company has something many AI-focused drug discovery startups do not: massive proprietary clinical data generated from decades of research and millions of patient interactions. That data becomes increasingly valuable when paired with machine learning systems that can identify drug targets, predict outcomes, and accelerate development.

Lilly has also partnered with Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) through its AI co-innovation lab to develop computational drug discovery capabilities. The company has worked with AI biotech firm Insilico Medicine as part of the broader effort to combine AI and biology.

AI is transforming drug discovery by helping companies analyze biological systems at a scale that was previously impossible. The irony is that Lilly’s GLP-1 success may actually provide the financial foundation for this AI buildout. The company is generating enormous cash flows from Mounjaro and Zepbound, giving it resources to invest in the next generation of medicine.

The Market Is Pricing Lilly’s Past — Not Its Future

Lilly already trades at a premium valuation because investors recognize the strength of its GLP-1 franchise. However, the market appears to be assigning little value to the AI-biology opportunity underneath it. That creates an unusual setup.

Many AI investments today are expensive because investors are paying for future potential without significant current revenue. Lilly offers the opposite profile: a profitable pharmaceutical company with billions in existing demand that is quietly adding an AI platform on top.

Granted, AI-driven drug discovery is still developing. Not every AI partnership will produce a blockbuster medicine, and pharmaceutical research remains filled with uncertainty. Drug failures are common, even for companies with deep resources.

That said, Lilly has a unique combination:

• A leading GLP-1 franchise generating current revenue
• Proprietary clinical data accumulated over decades
• Partnerships with leading AI technology companies
• A growing pipeline of next-generation medicines

Few companies sit at the intersection of healthcare, artificial intelligence, and large-scale commercialization the way Lilly does.

Key Takeaway

In short, investors buying Lilly solely for Mounjaro and Zepbound are focusing on the opportunity everyone already sees. The GLP-1 business alone may justify higher valuations, especially as international expansion and next-generation drugs develop. But the bigger opportunity may be the AI-powered drug discovery platform being built underneath the business.

Wall Street’s $1,400 to $1,500 price targets tell the GLP-1 story. The market has not yet fully priced in the AI-biology story. For long-term investors, that overlooked piece could become Lilly’s next major growth catalyst.

The post Wall Street Is Betting on Eli Lilly’s GLP-1 Portfolio — It’s Missing the $1 Trillion Opportunity appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

The Number

$8.662 billion. That is what Mounjaro alone generated for Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) in the first quarter of 2026, a single product, a single quarter, up 125% year over year. The figure was disclosed in Lilly’s Q1 2026 earnings release on April 30, 2026, an actual reported figure.

This key growth driver is what I’d argue is the central investing thesis behind investors who have continued to buy LLY stock at more than $1,200 per share, positioning this stock for a potential stock split (at least in my view).

What It Means

Mounjaro is now doing roughly the annual revenue of a mid-cap pharma company every 90 days.

When investors add Zepbound at $4.160 billion in the same quarter (up 80%), and the incretin franchise pushed group revenue to $19.799 billion (55.55% higher than a year earlier), it’s clear to see that there’s no shortage of growth with this biotech giant. Impressively, the company’s volume climbed 65% year over year this past quarter, while realized prices fell 13%. That is a mix Eli Lilly can live with.

Overall, I think the company’s volume growth is its operating leverage, and by all measures, these numbers are surging. With operating income recently hitting $8.915 billion (up 64.84%), and net income landing at $7.396 billion, higher by 168.04%. Non-GAAP EPS of $8.55 beat consensus of $6.7921 by a 25.88% margin, the biggest surprise in the four-quarter streak of beats.

Market Reaction

Shares closed at $934.60 on the day of the Q1 earnings report, up 3.07% from the prior close of $851.21. The move has continued since, with LLY stock now trading right around $1,200 per share. That’s good for a gain of around 14% since its earnings report (outpacing the overall NASDAQ), and good for a gain of nearly 450% over the past five years alone.

In other words, forget semiconductor stocks, Eli Lilly is the high-growth large-cap stock many investors are watching perhaps more closely right now.

Bull Case

Every claim behind Lilly’s four-digit share price is measurable. The company’s management team recently raised its full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $82.0 billion to $85.0 billion from the prior $80.0 billion to $83.0 billion, lifted non-GAAP EPS guidance to $35.50 to $37.00 from $33.50 to $35.00, and pushed performance margin guidance to 47.0% to 48.5%. These are guidance figures for the full year.

I think the important thing to note is that this is a biotech giant with a pipeline that’s broadening its base. CEO David A. Ricks framed the quarter this way: “2026 is off to a strong start, we delivered 56% revenue growth in the first quarter and raised our full-year revenue guidance by $2 billion. A key milestone was the U.S. FDA approval of Foundayo, the only approved GLP-1 pill that can be taken any time of day, without food and water restrictions.”

Beyond incretins, key products in immunology, oncology and neuroscience grew 160% year over year, with Ebglyss up 141%, Omvoh up 115%, and Jaypirca up 79%. Four acquisitions were announced in the quarter (Orna Therapeutics, Centessa Pharmaceuticals, Kelonia Therapeutics, and Ajax Therapeutics), extending the pipeline into cell therapies, sleep-wake disorders, in vivo CAR-T, and myelofibrosis.

Importantly, insiders are also voting with their own wallets. Four of the company’s top directors bought shares on the same dates in April, May, and June 2026, at prices climbing from $919.90 to $988.09 to $1,129.35. That is board-level buying at progressively higher prices, month after month. The sell-side is aligned: an average analyst price target of $1,220.39, with 6 strong buys and 17 buys against 5 holds. On forward earnings of roughly 33x, this is priced as a growth compounder.

Bottom Line

A four-digit share price and a $1.06 trillion market cap make Lilly a natural candidate for a split conversation, and the fundamentals give management room to push for such a move.

For long-term holders, the number to remember is the one that drove the run: -Mounjaro at $8.662 billion in a single quarter, growing at triple digits. The next scheduled read on that trajectory is Lilly’s Investment Community Meeting on December 7, 2026. Until then, an ex-dividend date of August 14, 2026 is the next mile marker.

To sum it up, Eli Lilly’s share price growth is loud. The revenue growth supporting this move could be even louder.

The post This $1,200 Stock Could Be the Next Massive Stock Split Opportunity appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Drug stocks got hit hard on Monday in what Jim Cramer called a “vicious rotation,” and the selloff looked like the usual crowded-trade unwind. Investors decided the Mounjaro story was played out. On Tuesday morning’s Mad Dash, Cramer walked through why he thinks that reading is wrong, and he had a fresh JPMorgan note flagging “potential upside from Mounjaro international” and U.S. obesity-market growth “much higher than people think” to lean on.

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) closed Monday at $1,200.06 and was rallying 2.63% on Tuesday as Cramer defended it.

Why the Crowd Thinks It’s Over

The played-out thesis has surface merit. Lilly is a $1.16 trillion market cap trading at 44x trailing earnings and 33x forward, the stock has run 59% in the past year, and realized prices on Mounjaro and Zepbound went down 13% last quarter as rebates and market-access deals bit into gross margin.

Reddit sentiment turned bearish from late June onward, with retail chatter dominated by presidential-stock-promotion drama and a “weight loss race” framing that has Novo Nordisk asking suppliers for discounts to try to regain share. So the story going into August is that the easy money has been made, generic GLP-1 competition is coming, and pricing goes only one way from here.

Cramer’s Three-Part Bull Case

Cramer’s rebuttal is a runway argument in three parts. First, most of the world isn’t on these drugs yet. The numbers back it. Mounjaro did $8.66 billion in Q1 2026, up 125% year over year, with international revenue growing 81% as China added it to the National Reimbursed Drug List. When you pair a doubling in volume with fresh reimbursement in the world’s second-largest economy, you get a curve that looks nothing like a mature product.

Second, the pill. Cramer called an oral formulation “radical.” The FDA already approved Foundayo (orforglipron), the only GLP-1 pill that can be taken any time of day without food or water restrictions, and it beat oral semaglutide head to head in The Lancet. Every needle-averse patient, every emerging-market pharmacy without cold-chain distribution, every employer benefits manager choking on injectable pricing suddenly becomes addressable. The GLP-1 total addressable market expands the moment the pill hits shelves.

Third, muscle-sparing. Cramer called losing fat without losing muscle the “holy grail” of the category, and he is right that it is the differentiator that matters for the second wave. Retatrutide, Lilly’s next-gen triple agonist, delivered weight loss up to 71.2 lbs with osteoarthritis pain relief in prior trials. If you are the doctor writing scripts three years from now, you write the one that keeps the patient strong.

The August Earnings Catalyst and the Setup Risk

Lilly reports again in the first week of August. The setup is straightforward. Management already raised 2026 guidance to $82.0 to $85.0 billion in revenue and $35.50 to $37.00 in non-GAAP EPS, and the company has beaten estimates four straight quarters, including a 25.88% EPS beat last quarter (see the Q1 2026 8-K). Cramer’s read of the JPMorgan note is that it is the first analyst signal of a positive surprise coming.

The risk is exactly what makes the bull case attractive. A stock trading at a full multiple, up double digits into the earnings report, needs the international ramp and the Foundayo launch numbers to actually land. If oral scripts start slower than the Street models, or if Novo’s rebate war compresses net pricing again, the reaction is asymmetric to the downside. Cramer is likely right that “played out” is the wrong frame for a company still adding countries, formulations, and mechanisms. Whether he is right about the next four weeks is a separate question, and the answer arrives in early August.

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On CNBC’s Mad Dash segment on Monday, July 6, 2026, Jim Cramer made one of his most bullish biotech calls in years, arguing that the sector could be entering a new wave of mergers and acquisitions as the regulatory environment becomes more favorable for dealmaking.

“There is a move in biotech that we have not talked about at all that is really extraordinary, and particularly since the change at the head of the FDA,” Cramer said. “If you look at that chart, this is the group that’s the hottest group in the market.”

Cramer argued that takeover activity, which slowed under the previous administration after an Amgen acquisition nearly faced regulatory opposition, is poised to accelerate. Cramer noted that “we have now waited for so many companies because there have been so few takeovers under the previous administration because of an Amgen deal that was almost blocked,” and predicted that “these deals are going to be flooding the market according to my sources. And you want to be long biotech. I have not said that in ages.”

Why Eli Lilly Could Lead the Next Biotech Buying Spree

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) is one of the primary acquirers driving biotech M&A activity, thanks to its strong cash flow. The numbers back that up. Lilly reported Q1 2026 revenue of $19.80 billion, up 55.5% year over year, with Mounjaro sales of $8.66 billion and Zepbound U.S. sales of $4.16 billion. Lilly also raised full-year revenue guidance to $82.0 billion to $85.0 billion.

CEO David Ricks told investors the company “continued investing in Lilly’s future growth through four acquisitions” in the quarter, snapping up Orna Therapeutics, Centessa Pharmaceuticals, Kelonia Therapeutics and Ajax Therapeutics.

Gilead Is Already Executing the Strategy Cramer Described

Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ:GILD) is running the playbook Cramer described. It closed the $7.8 billion Arcellx acquisition for Anito-cel in multiple myeloma and signed deals for Ouro Medicines ($1.675 billion upfront plus up to $500 million in milestones) and Tubulis.

CEO Daniel O’Day said Gilead is “adding potentially best-in-disease assets and platforms in oncology and inflammation.” The company expects roughly $11.5 billion in acquired IPR&D charges, which pushed non-GAAP EPS guidance to a loss of $(1.05) to $(0.65).

Amgen: The Deal That Changed the Biotech M&A Landscape

Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) posted Q1 2026 revenue of $8.62 billion, with 16 brands growing double digits, including IMDELLTRA at +219%. Its obesity candidate MariTide is advancing in multiple Phase 3 studies, keeping Amgen relevant in the category Lilly currently dominates.

Vertex and Regeneron: Confirmed-Data Franchises

Cramer’s M&A logic focuses on companies close to or already holding confirmed drug data that command inflated acquisition prices. Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VRTX) fits that mold. CASGEVY and JOURNAVX drove more than 25% of quarterly growth, and Vertex completed its rolling BLA submission for povetacicept in IgA nephropathy, opening a fourth franchise.

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:REGN) is playing offense with capital returns, authorizing a new $3.0 billion share repurchase after buying back $803 million in Q1 2026. Dupixent global sales hit $4.88 billion, up 33%, even as EYLEA faces biosimilar pressure.

The Biotech Catalysts That Could Spark More Takeovers

Cramer’s thesis on biotech is that a friendlier regulatory backdrop could reopen the biotech acquisition market after years of subdued dealmaking. Companies with strong balance sheets, such as Eli Lilly and Gilead, are already actively acquiring promising drug developers, while mid-cap biotech firms with attractive late-stage assets could become the next takeover targets. If that trend continues, investors may begin valuing biotech companies for both their growth prospects and potential acquisition capabilities.

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Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) just reported Q1 2026 results that read like two different playbooks for winning in healthcare. Lilly is riding a GLP-1 wave. JNJ is proving that a wide, refreshed portfolio can still compound. Both raised guidance and both are worth putting side by side right now.

GLP-1 Fireworks vs. a Deep Bench

Lilly posted $19.80 billion in revenue, up 55.5% year over year, with Mounjaro alone contributing $8.66 billion and Zepbound adding $4.16 billion. That is a staggering concentration in metabolic drugs, and it delivered non-GAAP EPS of $8.55.

CEO David Ricks said “2026 is off to a strong start”, spotlighting the FDA approval of Foundayo, the first oral GLP-1 pill without food or water restrictions.

JNJ told a very different story. Revenue of $24.062 billion grew 9.9%, split between Innovative Medicine at $15.426 billion and MedTech at $8.636 billion. DARZALEX cleared $3.964 billion, TREMFYA jumped 68.3%, and cardiovascular MedTech rose 13% on Abiomed and Shockwave strength.

CEO Duato called the portfolio “unrivaled”, pointing to ICOTYDE, the first targeted oral peptide for plaque psoriasis.

One Company Concentrates, the Other Diversifies

Lilly is doubling down on metabolic dominance. Ricks highlighted acquisitions of Orna, Centessa, Kelonia, and Ajax, plus a $6 billion Alabama plant and an NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) drug-discovery lab. Guidance now sits at $82 to $85 billion in revenue and $35.50 to $37 EPS. The trailing P/E of 42 reflects that ambition, and the stock is up 56.86% over the past year.

JNJ is sharpening focus by spinning off DePuy Synthes orthopaedics within 18 to 24 months. Full-year guidance climbed to $100.3 to $101.3 billion with adjusted EPS of $11.45 to $11.65. The dividend rose 3.1% to $1.34, marking 64 consecutive years of increases. Forward P/E of 22 and beta of 0.256 flag it as the calmer name.

What Could Break the Thesis Next

For Lilly, watch how Foundayo ramps against injectable Zepbound and whether the 13% price decline keeps widening as Mounjaro enters China’s NRDL. PineBridge’s 2026 outlook flags lower-cost oral GLP-1 pills as the next expansion catalyst, which fits Lilly’s hand well. Reddit sentiment on LLY swung from a bullish score of 88 in early June to 22 by late June, so retail conviction is jumpy.

For JNJ, the STELARA cliff is real, but TREMFYA’s $1.608 billion quarter shows the handoff is working. Polymarket traders currently give a JNJ Q2 earnings beat only a 49% chance, so the July 15 report is a live wire.

Why I Would Own Both, for Different Reasons

On growth exposure, Lilly screens as the more aggressive name. The GLP-1 category looks like a decade-long story, and Foundayo could pull in patients who never wanted an injection. That said, I do not love paying 33 times forward earnings for a business where two drugs drive the whole engine.

JNJ fits a different job in a portfolio: steadier compounding, a Dividend King record, and a MedTech kicker from VARIPULSE Pro and Shockwave. For readers focused on income and lower volatility, JNJ is the cleaner fit. For those willing to stomach GLP-1 headline risk, Lilly offers the more exciting slope. Owning a slice of each is arguably the easiest way to sleep at night.

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Our 24/7 Wall St. price target for Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) is $1,349.37, pointing to 12.5% upside from a recent price of $1,199.43. We rate LLY a buy with a 90% confidence score. The GLP-1 franchise is compounding faster than the market appreciated last spring, and Foundayo just opened a scalable oral channel to more than 1 billion people globally.

A Recovery Rally Built on Foundayo and a Q1 Blowout

Lilly has been one of 2026’s cleanest turnaround stories. Shares are up 8.34% in the past week, 8.55% over the past month, and 11.99% year-to-date, after climbing off an August 2025 low near $701. The stock now sits about 1% from its 52-week high of $1,238.

Q1 2026 lit the fuse. Revenue of $19.799 billion grew 55.5% year over year, and non-GAAP EPS of $8.55 beat consensus by 25.88%. Mounjaro delivered $8.662 billion (125% growth), Zepbound added $4.160 billion, and management raised full-year revenue guidance to $82 billion to $85 billion with EPS of $35.50 to $37.

The Case for $1,400+: Why Bulls See a Breakout Ahead

Our bull case target is $1,409.34, a 17.5% return. The engine is the incretin franchise. Combined Mounjaro and Zepbound revenue hit $12.8 billion in Q1, and international volume grew 81%.

Foundayo, the first oral GLP-1 with no food or water restrictions, is already tracking with 80% of prescriptions going to new-to-class patients, expanding the market rather than cannibalizing injectables.

Retatrutide’s Phase III diabetes readout showed 11.1 to 16.6 kilograms of weight loss, and the pipeline runs 42 active Phase III programs. Wall Street’s consensus target sits at $1,222.62, with 24 Buy ratings.

The Risks Worth Watching

Our bear case is $1,111.80, a 7.31% pullback. Realized prices fell 13% in Q1 as rebates, Zepbound cash-pay cuts, and China’s NRDL inclusion took bites out of net revenue.

Bulls will counter that volume grew 65% and gross margin still landed at 82.6%, so unit economics remain excellent. Insider activity leaned toward selling with 15 recent transactions, though heavy investment in four acquisitions and $584 million in IPR&D charges are cash going into future growth, not fundamental deterioration. Novo Nordisk competition and potential pharmaceutical tariffs remain overhangs.

The Bottom Line: A BUY Rating on Lilly

My 24/7 Wall St. price target is $1,349.37, a buy with 90% confidence. The tipping factor is the guidance raise: management moved both revenue and EPS ranges higher after just one quarter, and Foundayo contribution is barely in the numbers yet.

The setup strengthens if Foundayo’s Q3 DTC launch drives another guidance hike. The thesis weakens if pharmaceutical tariffs materialize or Q2 price erosion accelerates beyond the low-to-mid teens management has guided.

Looking further ahead, here is where our model projects Lilly could trade if current growth and margin trajectories hold.

These projections assume Lilly sustains GLP-1 leadership, executes the Foundayo global rollout, and its 42 Phase III programs deliver meaningful pipeline conversion. Significant upside could come from retatrutide approval; downside risk stems from patent-cliff exposure and accelerating biosimilar competition later in the decade.

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If you sort all the top politicians with a portfolio of above $1 million using their annual gains, who do you expect at the top? Likely Nancy Pelosi, but that’s not the case. A Republican Senator named Ashley Moody has gained 310% in the past year using her portfolio.

Her portfolio and her (lack of) trades make everything stand out from everyone else’s.

Is this a new Nancy Pelosi on the other side of the aisle, or are her gains an artifact of a few lucky trades? Let’s take a look.

How Ashley Moody outperformed

Moody’s last batch of trades was in April of last year as the market was recovering from the tariff crisis. She reported buying Ares Capital (NASDAQ:ARCC), Howmet Aerospace (NYSE:HWM), Energy Transfer (NYSE:ET), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), and Super Micro Computer (NASDAQ:SMCI).

Out of all these stocks, HWM is up the most, and it is only up 54% in the past year. Some have even collapsed, with SMCI stock down 41% in the past year.

A month earlier in March, she bought both Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY). NVDA stock is up 28% in the past year, with LLY up 53%. The biggest gains came from AMD, which Moody bought in late February. AMD stock is up 306% in the past year.

Is Moody the next Pelosi?

Moody’s trades and gains are quite different from those of Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi herself does not make the trades attributed to her, and it’s instead her husband who makes these moves. Ashley Moody’s trades are “never approved or initiated” by her and are attributed to her because she was part of an extended family investment partnership managed by an adviser.

Moreover, Moody has been far less successful compared to the Pelosis. One year of outperformance is not enough compared to the sustained outperformance of the Pelosis’ portfolio over decades. These trades are even more hit-or-miss, since she owns several stocks (like SMCI) that are down 40-70% in the past year.

She’s no longer trading

Ashley Moody’s portfolio became awkwardly high-performing right as she presented herself as a reformer on congressional stock trading. She ended up exiting the family investment arrangement last year and wants a trading ban so members cannot even appear to profit from office.

Stock market trades with a politician’s name attached to it will always draw eyeballs, but she’s not going to build a reputation like Nancy Pelosi with one outlier year.

All that said, the public record does not show that she or the investment firm sold all the trades. If you like the moves made by whichever investment firm this is, you can still track her stocks, though this is unlikely to yield you an advantage. When people track Pelosi’s trades, they are following trades handpicked by her husband, who is a seasoned venture capitalist. Malice involved or not, following the Pelosi portfolio has historically put you in good hands.

When it comes to Moody’s portfolio, this is now a stale roster of stocks I wouldn’t mirror.

The three stocks I’d still buy from the portfolio

Moody held solid names like AMD, NVDA, and HWM. I expect these three to continue outperforming in the coming years. AMD and Nvidia are making good use of the AI tailwinds, with AMD in particular still being rather undervalued if you take future AI CPU demand into account. Some analysts say AI CPUs will be needed just as much as AI GPUs are today. AMD could be a multibagger if the buildout reaches this stage without a hiccup.

As for Howmet Aerospace, this company is already seeing significant tailwinds from high military spending. The U.S. is expected to spend well above a trillion on its military, with other NATO members collectively bumping up their spending towards a new target of 5% of their GDPs. A plurality of military spending goes into aerospace.

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Artificial intelligence is reshaping nearly every industry, but some of its biggest opportunities are emerging far from Silicon Valley. Biotechnology has spent decades producing breakthrough medicines, yet drug development has remained painfully slow, often taking 10 to 15 years while roughly 90% of candidates never reach approval.

AI is beginning to change that equation. By treating drug discovery as a massive optimization problem, AI can analyze millions of molecular combinations in weeks instead of years, dramatically shortening the path from concept to clinical testing. Few areas stand to benefit more than peptide-based medicines.

These short chains of amino acids occupy a sweet spot between traditional small-molecule drugs and complex biologics. Better yet, their modular design makes them exceptionally well suited for AI-driven discovery. For investors, that combination could create one of biotech’s most compelling long-term growth opportunities.

Why Peptides Are a Natural Fit for AI

Developing conventional small-molecule drugs is often a balancing act. Improving one characteristic — such as potency, stability, or solubility — can easily compromise another.

Peptides are far more flexible. Because they’re built from amino acid building blocks, researchers can modify them with remarkable precision, almost like editing lines of computer code. That makes them an ideal playground for machine learning algorithms.

AI models can rapidly search enormous chemical libraries, predict how peptides will fold, estimate their stability, identify promising drug targets, and forecast how they’ll behave inside the human body. Work that once demanded years of laboratory trial and error can now be completed computationally in a fraction of the time.

Manufacturing and delivery have historically limited broader adoption of peptide drugs, but AI is helping overcome many of those challenges by designing molecules that are easier to produce and more effective.

The commercial results are already becoming apparent. Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) has increasingly integrated AI into candidate selection across its metabolic disease pipeline, where peptide therapies play a central role. The company’s tirzepatide franchise — Mounjaro and Zepbound — generated $36.5 billion in revenue during 2025, a 215% increase from the prior year. By comparison, Novo Nordisk‘s (NYSE:NVO) comparable GLP-1 peptide portfolio — Ozempic and Wegovy — grew 39% to $34.6 billion over the same period.

AI Is Accelerating the Next Generation of Medicines

Peptide drugs have already transformed the treatment of diabetes, obesity, and several forms of cancer. AI is now expanding what’s possible.

Researchers are designing entirely new classes of peptides containing non-natural amino acids that resist degradation, remain active for weeks instead of hours, and target diseased tissue with far greater precision.

For investors, established pharmaceutical leaders like Lilly remain the safest way to capitalize on this trend. It trades at a forward P/E of roughly 33, while Novo Nordisk traded around 16. Both companies generate billions in annual cash flow that can fund continued research, commercialization, and pipeline expansion. Lilly alone produced $16.8 billion in operating cash flow during 2025, a 91% increase from the previous year.

Beyond the pharmaceutical giants, investors can also gain exposure through companies building the AI infrastructure behind drug discovery.

Schrodinger (NASDAQ:SDGR) develops physics-based molecular simulation software used by 18 of the world’s 20 largest pharmaceutical companies. The company reported 12% revenue growth during the first quarter of 2026.

Meanwhile, Recursion Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:RXRX) generated $66.4 million in trailing-12-month revenue, supported by multiple AI-powered research partnerships spanning peptides and other therapeutic platforms.

While AI is also improving cell-based therapies such as CAR-T, peptide medicines may reach patients more quickly thanks to simpler manufacturing processes and easier administration.

Key Takeaway

Artificial intelligence won’t eliminate the risks of drug development, but it is steadily improving the odds.

For peptide medicines, AI is enabling faster discovery, more accurate molecular design, and therapies that were previously impossible to create. That combination could significantly accelerate innovation across some of medicine’s largest markets.

For most investors, the best starting point remains established leaders like Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, whose proven peptide franchises and robust cash generation provide a measure of stability while AI expands future opportunities. Investors seeking greater upside can complement those holdings with AI-focused platforms such as Schrodinger or Recursion Pharmaceuticals.

Clinical setbacks and premium valuations remain important risks, so diversification is essential. But as AI continues to compress years of research into months of computation, peptide drugs may become one of the clearest examples of how artificial intelligence creates value far beyond the technology sector itself. 

For patient investors, this convergence could represent one of biotech’s most exciting growth stories over the coming decade.

The post AI Is Transforming Drug Discovery. Here Is the Next Trillion-Dollar Biotech Opportunity appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) just delivered Q1 2026 results that read like two different chapters of the same drug industry.

Lilly is sprinting through an obesity gold rush. Pfizer is rebuilding after COVID and buying its way into the same race. Both beat estimates, but the businesses underneath could not feel more different.

GLP-1 Volume Carries Lilly. Eliquis and Oncology Carry Pfizer.

Lilly posted $19.80B in revenue, up 55.5%, with Mounjaro alone contributing $8.66B on a 125% jump. Zepbound added another $4.16B. Volume rose 65% while realized prices fell 13%, a trade Lilly is clearly willing to make to grab share before rivals arrive.

Pfizer pulled $14.45B in revenue, up 5.4%, with Eliquis at $2.17B (+13%) and Padcev surging 39%. The COVID drag is real: Comirnaty fell 59% and Paxlovid dropped 62%. CEO Albert Bourla called it a “defining period for Pfizer,” which is a polite way of saying every launch matters.

One Owns Obesity Today. The Other Just Paid To Enter.

Lilly extended its lead with FDA approval of Foundayo, the first oral GLP-1 pill with no food or water restrictions. CEO David Ricks framed it bluntly: “2026 is off to a strong start…A key milestone was the U.S. FDA approval of Foundayo.”

Pfizer’s answer was a checkbook. The roughly $7B Metsera deal brings ultra-long-acting obesity assets into a 2026 pipeline featuring around 20 pivotal study starts. The Vyndamax patent settlement pushing US exclusivity to June 2031 matters more than the headlines suggest, since it softens the loss-of-exclusivity cliff Pfizer has been bracing investors for.

Valuation tells the same story. Lilly trades at a forward PE near 31, with analysts targeting $1,215.79. Pfizer sits at a forward PE around 9, with a 6.61% dividend yield doing most of the heavy lifting for shareholders.

What I Want To See Next From Both

For Lilly, the watch item is whether oral Foundayo can hold pricing as supply scales and Medicare negotiations close in. Shares already cooled 5.37% in the past week despite a 40.92% one-year gain, hinting that expectations are stretched.

For Pfizer, I want proof Metsera can deliver Phase 3 data that justifies the spend, plus confirmation that Padcev’s August 17, 2026 MIBC decision goes through cleanly.

Why I Lean Lilly For Growth and Pfizer For Income

If I had to pick one for the next three years on business momentum alone, I lean Lilly. The product cadence, the $2 billion guidance raise, and the oral GLP-1 first-mover position are hard to argue with. The valuation remains a key risk factor for new entrants at current levels.

Pfizer fits a different investor entirely. The 6.61% yield, the Vyndamax extension, and CEO Bourla’s steady personal buying of phantom stock units through the spring suggest a credible turnaround setup. The two stocks serve distinct portfolio roles, and the next pricing update will be a key signal for assessing how durable that 55% growth really is.

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The Health Care Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSEARCA:XLV) is having a frustrating year. The fund sits at $149, down about 3% year-to-date while the broader market grinds higher. The good news for XLV holders: the fund has clawed back roughly 14% over the past year, and the 2026 setup looks meaningfully different from the policy fog that smothered healthcare in 2025. The two things that will decide whether XLV finally rejoins the S&P 500 over the next 12 months are very specific, and both deserve close attention.

The fund and where it stands now

XLV is a market-cap-weighted slice of S&P 500 healthcare, and that weighting matters more than usual right now. The top five names, Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:UNH), AbbVie (NYSE:ABBV), and Merck, dominate the basket. Lilly alone carries a nearly $1 trillion market cap, making it the gravitational center of the fund. That single name is up roughly 41% over the past year, while UnitedHealth has rebounded about 23% year-to-date after a brutal 2025 marked by a cyberattack and DOJ scrutiny.

Sector demand is structurally sturdy. Personal consumption on healthcare services reached $3.70 trillion in April 2026, up roughly $206 billion year-over-year. The question is who captures that spend, and at what margin.

The macro factor that matters most: drug pricing policy

Watch the pricing agreements between Washington and large pharma. PineBridge’s 2026 outlook flags that a 15% cap on pharmaceutical imports was agreed to in recent bilateral trade deals between the US and key trading partners, alongside more workable Medicare and Medicaid pricing negotiations. AbbVie and Merck have already cut deals trading U.S. manufacturing investment for tariff and pricing exemptions. If the framework holds, the policy overhang that compressed XLV multiples in 2025 keeps lifting.

What to monitor: CMS announcements on Inflation Reduction Act Part D negotiation rounds, and any USTR press releases on pharma tariff carve-outs. Check monthly, and event-driven around any executive order. The transmission to XLV is direct: four of the top five holdings derive over half of revenue from prescription drugs, so every basis point of net price preserved flows to operating income. A reversal, meaning new most-favored-nation pricing or removal of carve-outs, would hit Merck and AbbVie hardest given KEYTRUDA’s roughly $8 billion quarterly run rate and AbbVie’s reliance on Skyrizi and Rinvoq pricing.

The fund-specific factor: Lilly’s GLP-1 franchise is XLV

Concentration risk in XLV is really GLP-1 risk. Lilly’s Mounjaro generated $8.7 billion in Q1 2026, up 125% year-over-year, and Zepbound added $4.2 billion, up 80%. Together, the franchise drove 65% of Lilly’s Q1 revenue. With Lilly as the fund’s largest weight, XLV’s NAV is unusually sensitive to one product family.

The variable to watch is realized price. Lilly posted 65% volume growth against a 13% realized price decline in Q1, primarily from China’s NRDL listing and rebate pressure. Volume has masked the price slide so far. The newly approved oral GLP-1 Foundayo (orforglipron) is the swing factor: if launch pricing holds in the U.S. and Europe, Lilly’s $82 billion to $85 billion 2026 revenue guide looks conservative. If insurer formularies force aggressive rebates, the price decline accelerates and the largest XLV constituent re-rates lower. Lilly reports Q2 in early August, and the orforglipron net price commentary on that call is the single most important data point for XLV holders this summer.

What to act on

The macro signal: if U.S. trade deals preserve the 15% pharma import cap and Medicare negotiations stay on the current track, XLV’s policy discount keeps narrowing. The fund-specific signal: Lilly’s Q2 earnings disclosure on orforglipron pricing will set the trajectory for roughly the largest weight in the fund, and by extension, for XLV itself.

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Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) just reported a quarter that should have sent bulls into a frenzy. Revenue grew 55.5% year over year to $19.80 billion, Mounjaro alone delivered $8.66 billion, and management raised full-year guidance to $82 to $85 billion.

Yet shares are up just 2.57% year to date at $1,098.57. That disconnect is the entire setup for my question: can LLY trade at $1,200 by year-end 2026? I think it can, and the math is closer than most realize.

What’s Holding Eli Lilly Back Right Now

The near-term price action has been ugly. LLY is down 5.37% over the past week after touching $1,160.95 on June 11. The one-month picture is better at +7.55%, but the year-to-date number tells the story of a stock stuck in neutral despite booming fundamentals.

The market worries about pricing. Realized prices fell 13% in Q1 as Mounjaro’s addition to China’s NRDL formulary compressed international margins. Lilly also absorbed $584 million in acquired IPR&D charges from its M&A spree.

Add in 11 recent insider transactions skewed toward selling, and you understand the hesitation. With a beta of 0.517, this should be a steady compounder. Right now it is waiting for a catalyst.

Wall Street Sees Roughly 11% Upside. Our Model Sees More

The consensus target sits at $1,215.79, supported by 6 Strong Buy, 18 Buy, 5 Hold, 1 Sell and 1 Strong Sell ratings. That works out to 77% bullish. Our internal model is more aggressive. The base case lands at $1,279.62, implying 16.48% upside, with a bull scenario of $1,334.55 and a bear case of $1,062.97. Confidence on the base case is 90%.

Analysts underweight two things: the speed of the Foundayo (oral GLP-1) ramp and retatrutide’s optionality. Barclays already telegraphed where this could go, maintaining a Buy rating with a $1,400 price target. With earnings growth contributing positively to our 247Factor and bullish consensus at 77%, the $1,200 line looks like a floor.

The Path to $1,200 Per Share

Reaching $1,200 from today’s price of $1,098.57 requires a gain of 9.2%. With forward EPS of $35.47, a price of $1,200 implies a forward P/E of 34x. Our base case of $1,279.62 already implies 37x, meaning $1,200 sits below our base case multiple and demands no incremental rerating. The stock simply needs to grow into the earnings.

CEO David Ricks framed it on the Q1 call: “2026 is off to a strong start, we delivered 56% revenue growth in the first quarter and raised our full-year revenue guidance by $2 billion. A key milestone was the U.S. FDA approval of Foundayo.”

Early launch metrics are striking: 8,000+ prescribers and 20,000+ patients in weeks, with 80% of scripts new-to-class. Retatrutide’s Phase 3 readout showing weight loss of 25 to 37 pounds and the retatrutide late-stage trial results comparable to or exceeding Zepbound fuel the model. The primary risk remains continued price erosion outpacing volume gains.

Where Eli Lilly Trades Today vs Its Earnings Power

At $1,098.57, LLY trades at roughly 31x forward EPS of $35.47. For a business compounding revenue at 28% at the 2026 guidance midpoint with a forward PE of 31x, that looks reasonable. Shares sit 3% below the 52-week high of $1,182.73 and 77.4% above the $619.40 low. The 10-year return of 1,661.56% shows what happens when this company gets a platform right. Today it has two.

Is $1,200 Realistic? Here’s My Take

The $1,200 target requires a 9.2% gain from here, and my model’s base case already overshoots it. I view $1,200 by year-end 2026 as realistic.

Three things need to keep going right: Foundayo’s prescriber base must expand, retatrutide’s June obesity readout must confirm the diabetes data, and Q2 must validate the raised guidance. What derails it is sharper-than-expected pricing reset on Mounjaro and Zepbound in the back half. We’ve outlined the blueprint for how Eli Lilly could reach $1,200 in 2026.

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Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) is the stock everyone wants to own right now, a $1.02 trillion obesity juggernaut that has ripped 20.9% higher in a single month on the back of the GLP-1 mania.

But here’s what you should actually be watching.

The Hot Ticker Is a Two-Drug Bet at a Trillion-Dollar Price

Strip away the narrative and Lilly is a concentration trade dressed up as a growth story. Mounjaro and Zepbound drive the entire P&L, with Mounjaro revenue of $8.66 billion (+125%) and Zepbound at $4.16 billion U.S. (+80%) doing the heavy lifting in Q1. Management itself flags “dependence on relatively few products for significant revenue” as a top risk, and realized prices already declined 13% in Q1 2026 as Mounjaro got folded into China’s national reimbursement list.

You are paying 41x trailing earnings and 31x forward for that risk, on a stock that sits at $1,144.68 after a 48.98% one-year rip. Retail is loaded in: Reddit sentiment hit a peak score of 88 on June 7, with a single “Triple Action GLP’s” post pulling 183 upvotes and 82 comments. When the crowd is this loud, the asymmetric trade is no longer there. The token 0.55% dividend won’t save a retirement portfolio when the multiple compresses.

The Redirect: A Restructured Monopoly Paying You to Wait

Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) is the asset-heavy powerhouse the GLP-1 crowd is ignoring, sitting at $25.70, 19x trailing earnings and just 9x forward. Three reasons it belongs on a retirement-focused radar.

1) The patent cliff just got defused. The bear case on Pfizer was always Vyndamax exclusivity. That bear case is dead: the Vyndamax patent settlement extends effective U.S. exclusivity to June 2031, stabilizing the ATTR-CM franchise through mid-decade. Meanwhile Eliquis grew 13%, Padcev 39%, Nurtec 41%, and Abrysvo 37% last quarter. That is a diversified franchise book.

2) The restructuring is real and the insiders are buying. Management is targeting roughly $7.2 billion in net cost savings by the end of 2027, and Q1 delivered revenue of $14.45 billion and adjusted EPS of $0.75 against a $0.72 estimate. CEO Albert Bourla has acquired phantom stock seven times in three months, and on April 23, 2026, eleven directors simultaneously acquired shares at $26.67. Zero insider selling. That is alignment.

3) You get an obesity option for free, plus a 6.6% yield. The dividend yield is 6.61%, paid from real free cash flow at a 6.20% FCF yield. On top of that income, Pfizer bought its way into GLP-1 with the ~$7 billion Metsera acquisition (ten ultra-long-acting obesity assets), in-licensed a PD-1xVEGF bispecific from 3SBio, and launched ecnoglutide in China on April 27, 2026. The Lyme vaccine posted 73.2% efficacy in Phase 3. You are not paying for any of this optionality at 9x forward earnings.

The Action

Bourla put it plainly on the Q1 call: “I’m particularly encouraged by what we’re seeing in oncology and obesity, two areas where I believe Pfizer is positioned to lead.” The crowd is buying the trillion-dollar GLP-1 story at the top of its hype cycle. Put Pfizer on the watchlist and let the headline chasers tell you how this ends.

The post Forget Eli Lilly and Company: As June Volatility Rocks High-Flyers, This Stock Is a No-Brainer Buy appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) and Novo Nordisk (NYSE: NVO) reported Q1 2026 results that pulled the GLP-1 duopoly apart. Lilly grew revenue 55.5% and raised guidance.

Novo posted a 4% adjusted sales decline at constant currency and is cutting 9,000 jobs. Both call obesity the prize, but their quarters tell very different stories about who is winning it.

Mounjaro Roars. Wegovy Holds The Line.

Lilly’s quarter was carried by tirzepatide. Mounjaro brought in $8.66 billion, up 125% year over year, helped by international launches and China’s NRDL inclusion. Zepbound added $4.16 billion, up 80%.

Volume jumped 65% while realized prices fell 13%, a deliberate trade per CEO David Ricks. The FDA approved Foundayo (orforglipron), the only GLP-1 pill with no food or water restrictions.

Novo’s franchise is splitting. Wegovy injectable grew 12% to $18.24 billion, and the new Wegovy pill, launched January 5, 2026, booked $2.26 billion with over 1 million patients. Ozempic slid 8%, Rybelsus dropped 15%, and US sales fell 11%. CEO Mike Doustdar leaned on the pill story because the rest of the portfolio is shrinking.

Broadening Out vs. Battening Down

Lilly is buying growth in four directions, announcing acquisitions of Orna, Centessa, Kelonia, and Ajax across cell therapy, sleep-wake biology, in vivo CAR-T, and myelofibrosis. Ebglyss jumped 141% and Jaypirka rose 79%. International revenue climbed 81%, suggesting the global ramp is only starting.

Novo is consolidating around semaglutide and cagrilintide, restructuring costs, and absorbing the Most Favoured Nations pricing deal. The CagriSema REDEFINE 4 trial missed its primary endpoint, even with 23% weight loss, dents the next-generation thesis. A planned 50% Wegovy list price cut in January 2027 will pressure margins.

What I Want To See Next

I will watch how quickly Foundayo scales relative to Novo’s oral semaglutide, since the pill war is now the obesity story. Lilly’s retatrutide Phase 3 readouts and the Taltz plus Zepbound psoriasis combo could open new categories.

For Novo, the question is whether Medicare Part D coverage starting July 1, 2026 can offset price cuts coming six months later. Retail mood reflects the split: LLY sentiment turned very bullish on Reddit in early June, while NVO drifted to bearish.

Why I Lean Toward Lilly, But Won’t Write Off Novo

Lilly is the cleaner business. Revenue growth of 55.5%, a guidance raise to $35.5-$37 in non-GAAP EPS, and a stock up 48.98% over the past year reflect offense-mode execution. The valuation prices in a lot, so any Foundayo stumble would sting.

Novo interests me as a turnaround. Shares are down 41.53% over a year and 14.22% year to date, the Wegovy pill is working, and gross margin sits at 81%. Investors weighing the name will need to weigh 2027 price cuts and patent expirations against the turnaround setup. For now, the accelerating franchise looks like the cleaner story, with Novo worth revisiting once the MFN pricing math is digested.

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Scott Galloway and Ed Elson laid out the math on Prof G Markets and it should make every fast food shareholder uneasy: roughly 30 million Americans, about 1 in 8 US adults, are now on GLP-1s, and the drugs are reducing fast food’s addressable market by an estimated 27-30%. This is structural, not cyclical: appetite, the literal raw material of the drive-thru economy, is being chemically suppressed at scale. Below are five US-listed stocks positioned on the winning side of that trade, ranked so the most surprising name leads and the punchline lands at #5.

1. Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN): The Pharmacy Nobody Is Pricing In

The GLP-1 trade is as much about who puts the pen in the patient’s hand on a Tuesday afternoon as it is about who makes the molecule. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) quietly turned itself into the most frictionless GLP-1 fulfillment channel in the country while everyone was busy debating AWS multiples. Amazon Pharmacy is expanding Same-Day delivery to nearly 4,500 US cities and towns by year-end, and the company just launched a 24/7 AI-powered personal health agent inside its main app. Whole Foods is in the same portfolio. So is Prime. The flywheel is already built; GLP-1 just gives it another lane.

The Q1 numbers say the underlying engine is accelerating, not slowing. Revenue hit $181.52B, AWS grew 28%, its fastest in 15 quarters, and CEO Andy Jassy said “unit growth in our Stores reached 15% (the highest since the tail end of covid lockdowns)”. Shares are up only 3% year to date and just 9% over the past year, which means the pharmacy optionality is essentially free.

Amazon is the surprise leadoff. The obvious heavyweight comes next, and its quarterly print is genuinely difficult to argue with.

2. Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY): The Category King, Now With a Pill

If GLP-1s are the new cigarettes (only in reverse, shrinking demand for everything calorically adjacent), then Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) is Philip Morris circa 1955. Mounjaro and Zepbound are the dominant injectables, and the FDA just approved Foundayo (orforglipron), the only approved GLP-1 pill that can be taken any time of day, without food and water restrictions. Pills travel better than pens. Pills scale internationally. Pills crush stigma. This is the catalyst that opens the back half of the decade.

Q1 FY26 was a statement quarter. Revenue came in at $19.80 billion, up 55.5% YoY, with EPS of $8.55 beating the $6.79 consensus. Inside the headline number, Mounjaro printed $8.66 billion (+125% YoY) and Zepbound printed $4.16 billion (+80% YoY). CEO David Ricks said “Foundayo will meaningfully expand the number of people who can benefit from GLP-1s.”

Reddit caught on late. LLY sentiment surged from neutral (52) in mid-May to very bullish (82-88) by early June. Shares are up 42% over the past year. Next earnings: August 3, 2026. There is one other GLP-1 incumbent, and its stock chart looks like the opposite of Lilly’s.

3. Novo Nordisk (NYSE: NVO): The Bombed-Out Pioneer

The original GLP-1 pioneer has been left for dead by the market. Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) is down 44% over the past year while Lilly ripped higher. That dislocation is the trade. Novo just launched its own oral GLP-1, Wegovy pill, on January 5, 2026, and the company says it is already used by more than one million patients with over 200,000 weekly US prescriptions. Wegovy HD, approved in March 2026, delivers ~20.7% weight loss. The franchise keeps compounding; only the multiple has cracked.

The Wegovy pill alone generated $2.26 billion in its debut quarter, while Wegovy injectable did $18.24 billion (+12%). Management raised FY26 adjusted sales growth guidance to -4% to -12% CER from -5% to -13%, and authorized a new DKK 15B share buyback. CEO Mike Doustdar said “Wegovy is driving a strong start to 2026… rapid adoption of Wegovy pill, the most efficacious GLP-1 tablet now used by more than one million patients since its January launch.”

Retail is still hostile. NVO Reddit sentiment collapsed from neutral (48-53) in May to bearish (22-29) in early June. That is exactly the kind of crowd-positioning gap I look for. You buy Novo IF you believe the duopoly holds and the multiple re-rates as the pill ramps; you avoid it if you think Lilly’s superiority data ends the story. The next stock on the list does not need you to pick a winner between them at all.

4. Sprouts Farmers Market (NASDAQ: SFM): The Plate Replacement Trade

GLP-1 patients keep eating, just differently. Smaller portions, more protein, more produce, less processed garbage. That is the entire merchandising thesis of Sprouts Farmers Market (NASDAQ:SFM). The company sits inside a $290 billion health and wellness food-at-home market, has 483 stores in 25 states, and a long-term target of 1,000+ stores. While drive-thrus lose foot traffic, Sprouts is building the food rails for the post-Ozempic shopping cart.

Q1 FY26 had soft comps but the structural story kept compounding. Revenue was $2.329 billion (+4.15% YoY) with EPS of $1.71 beating the $1.67 estimate. Two numbers I keep coming back to: Sprouts Brand penetration climbed to 26% of sales from 23%, and ROIC hit 17.4%. CEO Jack Sinclair said “We continue to focus on accelerating customer engagement, foraging and discovery, building an advantaged supply chain, and expanding access to healthy food.”

Shares are still down 46% over the past year on the comp slowdown, but up 9% year to date and 10% in the past week. Next earnings: August 3, 2026. The reset has likely already happened. Which leaves one final stock, and it is the most directly leveraged name on this list to the consumer side of GLP-1 distribution.

5. Hims & Hers Health (NYSE: HIMS): The Punchline Trade

Hims & Hers Health (NYSE:HIMS) is the messiest name on the list and possibly the most asymmetric. The company just absorbed a brutal strategic pivot: out of compounded GLP-1s, into branded GLP-1 distribution. That cost real money in Q1, but it converts Hims from a regulatory bullseye into a long-duration consumer health platform riding the same wave as Lilly and Novo.

Q1 FY26 showed the cost of the surgery and the pulse underneath it. Revenue was $608.10 million (+3.8% YoY), the net loss was -$92.11 million with EPS of -$0.40, dragged by $33.49 million in restructuring charges. But subscribers grew to nearly 2.6 million (+9% YoY), international revenue exploded 969% YoY to $78.19 million, and management raised full-year guidance to $2.80B-$3.00B in revenue and $275M-$350M in Adjusted EBITDA, with a 2030 target of at least $6.5 billion in revenue and $1.3 billion in Adjusted EBITDA.

CEO Andrew Dudum said “2026 is a defining year for Hims & Hers. We’re not just growing, we’re pulling away from the field on our path to becoming the world’s largest consumer health platform.” Shares are down 50% over the past year, the analyst target sits at $26.61, and a former Netflix CFO just bought $1.2M of stock, which flipped r/wallstreetbets sentiment to 72 (bullish) on June 1. The next earnings report lands August 10, 2026.

The Bottom Line

The Prof G thesis is not subtle: GLP-1s are chemically resetting the addressable market of every business that sells calories on impulse. Lilly and Novo make the molecule, Hims puts it in the consumer’s mailbox, Amazon owns the delivery rail and the next-gen pharmacy, and Sprouts feeds the patients who now plan every plate around protein and produce. The fast food incumbents have three earnings cycles to figure out a response. The capital is already moving. Position before the August prints, or read about it after.

The post The GLP-1 stock nobody is pricing in isn’t a drugmaker appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

I keep buying NVIDIA, Eli Lilly, and Johnson & Johnson, and if a fire took my brokerage statement to zero tomorrow, those are the three tickers I would start typing in again on day one. They each do something I cannot replicate by being clever.

Why the buy button stays active on NVIDIA

NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) is the one position where I have stopped pretending I can time it. Q1 FY27 revenue came in at $81.61 billion, up 85.23% year over year, with non-GAAP EPS of $1.87 against a $1.7738 estimate. Free cash flow alone was $48.55 billion in a single quarter. Full year FY26 free cash flow reached $96.58 billion. That is the cash machine I am buying.

The capital return shift sealed it for me. The quarterly dividend went from $0.01 to $0.25, a fresh $80 billion buyback authorization landed on top of $38.5 billion remaining, and roughly $20 billion came back to shareholders in Q1.

Jensen Huang framed the cycle plainly: “The buildout of AI factories, the largest infrastructure expansion in human history, is accelerating at extraordinary speed.” Supply commitments of $119 billion tell me management sees the demand the same way I do.

The honest risk is China. The Q2 guide assumes zero Data Center compute revenue from China, and no H20 shipped last quarter. I respect it. I also note that the company is guiding $91 billion for Q2 anyway. The shares are up 12.01% year to date and 47.42% over one year, and the earnings power is growing faster than the multiple.

Eli Lilly is the franchise I keep underestimating

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) keeps proving me too cautious. Q1 2026 revenue was $19.80 billion, up 55.5% YoY, with EPS of $8.55 against a $6.79 estimate. Mounjaro alone delivered $8.66 billion (125% YoY growth) and Zepbound added $4.16 billion (80% YoY). Full year guidance was raised to $82 to $85 billion in revenue and $35.5 to $37 in non-GAAP EPS.

Foundayo, the first oral GLP-1 that can be taken any time of day without food or water restrictions, is the catalyst I keep coming back to. CEO David Ricks said “Foundayo will meaningfully expand the number of people who can benefit from GLP-1s.”

The honest risk is pricing: realized prices fell 13% in the quarter, with China’s NRDL inclusion adding pressure. Volume grew 65%, which is the answer to that risk.

Johnson & Johnson is the ballast

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) is the one I would buy first, because it is the position that lets me sleep. The quarterly dividend was raised 3.1% to $1.34 per share, the 64th consecutive year of increases.

Q1 2026 revenue rose 9.9% YoY to $24.062 billion, adjusted EPS was $2.70, and full year 2026 guidance was lifted to $100.3 to $101.3 billion in revenue and $11.45 to $11.65 in adjusted EPS. DARZALEX grew 22.5%, TREMFYA grew 68.3%, and 2025 free cash flow was $19.7 billion.

The honest risk is STELARA, which fell 59.7% to $656 million on biosimilar erosion. TREMFYA and the oncology stack are absorbing that hit in real time, and the dividend record speaks louder to me than the biosimilar headline.

The forward conviction

Compounding cash flow at NVIDIA, a generational franchise at Lilly, and 64 years of paid dividends at Johnson & Johnson: that is how I would rebuild a portfolio, and that is why my buy button is still warm.

The post I Would Rebuild My Portfolio With Just These 3 Stocks If I Lost Everything Tomorrow appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) trades at $25.62, pays a 6.7% dividend yield, and just posted five straight quarterly EPS beats before stumbling in Q1. Yet the stock is up only 6.37% YTD this year. Can Pfizer shares double to $50 by 2031?

What’s Holding Pfizer Back

Pfizer is down 0.23% over the past month and essentially flat over the past week. Over five years, holders face a 16.77% loss.

The COVID cliff is the culprit. Comirnaty revenue fell 59% in Q1 2026 and Paxlovid dropped 63%, masking strong growth elsewhere. Add the $1.5 billion generic and biosimilar headwind expected this year, plus Barclays maintaining a Sell rating with a $25 price target, and the market refuses to re-rate the stock. With a beta of just 0.295, Pfizer needs proof, not hope.

Wall Street Sees 14% Upside. The Real Number Is Bigger

The consensus target sits at $29.19, with 2 Strong Buys, 9 Buys, 15 Holds, 1 Sell, and 2 Strong Sells. That works out to a 38% bullish camp, missing the obesity and oncology pipeline.

My model points to $32.01 in 12 months, roughly 24.95% upside, with a bull case at $35.54 and a bear case at $28.30. Confidence on that base case is high. The Street has not priced in the pipeline’s potential and will play catch-up by 2027.

The Path to $50

Reaching $50 from today’s price of $25.62 requires a gain of 95.2%. With forward EPS of $3.21, a price of $50 implies a forward P/E of roughly 16x. My base case of $32.01 already embeds 8x, meaning the target needs about 7x of multiple expansion.

That sounds aggressive until you examine what is brewing. Berobenatide, Pfizer’s monthly GLP-1, posted 15.9% weight loss at 32 weeks with no plateau, with 10 Phase 3 studies planned this year.

HYMPAVZI won expanded FDA approval for pediatric hemophilia patients. The Lyme disease vaccine showed 73.2% efficacy in Phase 3. Jefferies reaffirmed a Buy rating with a $35 target.

CEO Albert Bourla said on the Q1 call: “I’m particularly encouraged by what we’re seeing in oncology and obesity, two areas where I believe Pfizer is positioned to lead.” A successful obesity launch could re-rate this stock toward Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) territory. The biggest risk is patent cliff erosion outpacing new launch revenue.

Valuation vs. Earnings Power

At $25.62, Pfizer trades at roughly 8x forward earnings against guidance of $2.80 to $3 in adjusted EPS for 2026. Shares sit between a 52-week high of $28.28 and a low of $21.97. Ten-year total return is just 19.62%, brutal for a Dow component. That low multiple is the entire bull case. Re-rating a single-digit P/E stock paying a near 7% yield just takes the pipeline working.

Is $50 Realistic?

$50 by 2031 requires a 95.2% gain. My five-year base case lands at $49.39, with a bull case of $55.47.

Three things must go right: Berobenatide must deliver in Phase 3 and commercialize cleanly. The oncology franchise (Padcev, Lorbrena, Talzenna) must keep compounding. Management must defend Vyndamax through the 2031 patent extension without margin damage. A Most-Favored-Nation pricing regime that caps US drug economics would derail it. We’ve outlined the blueprint for how Pfizer could reach $50 in 2031.

The post Prediction: Pfizer Stock Will Double on This Date appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) is finally acting like a trillion-dollar drugmaker again. After a brutal stretch in late 2025 and a wobbly start to this year, the stock punched through fresh 52-week highs on retatrutide Phase 3 data that analysts call potentially first-line for obesity. The stock trades at $1,149.15 with a one-year gain of 50.31%, yet YTD is only 7.29%. Can LLY hit $1,500 within 12 months?

What’s Holding Eli Lilly Back in 2026

Shares rose 21.37% in the last month and 6.19% in the last week, but YTD trails the one-year number because investors spent Q1 worrying about China NRDL pricing pressure, $584M in IPR&D charges from four acquisitions, and 340B restrictions.

AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN)’s elecoglipron entering Phase 3 added competitive pressure, though it showed only 11.8% weight loss versus retatrutide’s roughly 19%. Beta is a placid 0.517, so earlier volatility reflected earnings noise rather than broad market moves. That explains why patient capital is pushing the stock back toward $1,500.

Wall Street Sees 6% Upside. That’s Too Cautious

Consensus target is $1,215.10, with 6 Strong Buys, 18 Buys, 5 Holds, 1 Sell and 1 Strong Sell. That works out to 77% bullish, yet implied upside is only single digits. Our base case sits at $1,295.73 (12.76% upside) with 90% confidence, optimistic case $1,499.61, conservative $1,074.25. Analysts have chased this stock for four straight quarters of earnings beats.

Q1 2026 EPS of $8.55 versus $6.79 estimated was a 25.9% surprise. Earnings growth drove meaningful tailwind in our 247Factor, and bullishness keeps building. Targets are stale.

The Path to $1,500 Per Share

Reaching $1,500 from $1,149.15 requires a 30.5% gain. With forward EPS of $35.46, $1,500 implies a forward P/E of 42x. Our base case embeds an implied multiple of 39x, so the target needs only about 3 turns of additional multiple expansion. That is achievable.

Catalysts already in play: Reuters reported “Eli Lilly’s shares rose 4% after presenting compelling new data for its next-generation obesity drug, retatrutide”; TD Cowen projects LLY captures roughly 62% of the $150 billion 2030 GLP-1 market; and CEO David Ricks said “2026 is off to a strong start, we delivered 56% revenue growth in the first quarter and raised our full-year revenue guidance by $2 billion”.

Four directors also bought stock in March, April, and May 2026 at prices between $919.90 and $989.12. The primary risk is a Supreme Court ruling or aggressive Medicare pricing action that compresses GLP-1 margins.

Where Lilly Trades Today vs Its Earnings Power

At $1,149.15 against forward EPS of $35.46, LLY trades at a forward P/E of 32x. For a company growing revenue 55.5% YoY with raised FY2026 guidance of $82B to $85B in revenue and $35.5 to $37 in non-GAAP EPS, that is reasonable.

Shares sit at the 52-week high of $1,166.29, well above the 52-week low of $619.40. The 10-year return of 1,725.98% shows what compounding earnings power looks like when the pipeline works.

Is $1,500 Realistic?

A 30.5% gain in a year is a stretch for a mega-cap with a 0.52 beta, but not a long shot.

Three things need to happen: retatrutide must keep impressing through regulatory filings; Foundayo, the new oral GLP-1, needs real script momentum after the CVS Caremark coverage expansion; and Lilly needs another guidance raise into Q3 2026. A reset of GLP-1 reimbursement would derail it. We’ve outlined the blueprint for how Eli Lilly could reach $1,500 in 2027.

The post Prediction: Eli Lilly Will Trade at This Price in a Year appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

For most investors, the race to become the world’s most valuable company feels like a contest between Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and a handful of AI-first businesses. Yet a growing number of investors are starting to think the biggest AI winner may be a company emerging from industries already possessing something harder to build than a large language model — proprietary data accumulated over decades.

That is the argument investor Jordi Visser recently laid out on The Pomp Podcast. His view is that the biggest AI winner will be a company in Indiana that has been around since the 19th century: Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY). The pharmaceutical giant won’t outcompete Nvidia selling chips. Rather, Lilly has a credible path to becoming the world’s largest company within five years because it sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, proprietary healthcare data, and blockbuster obesity and diabetes treatments.

The AI Infrastructure Story Investors Are Missing

Most investors think of Lilly as a pharma riding the success of GLP-1 drugs such as Mounjaro and Zepbound. Those products have already transformed the company’s financial profile, helping push its market capitalization to $1.08 trillion.

Visser’s thesis goes further. He points to several AI initiatives that make Lilly look less like a traditional drugmaker and more like a large-scale AI application company:

• A private AI infrastructure reportedly built around roughly 1,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs.
• A co-innovation relationship with Nvidia and CEO Jensen Huang.
• Partnerships connected to Google’s AlphaFold through Isomorphic Labs.
• A Silicon Valley research presence through its TuneLab initiative.

In isolation, any one of those investments might not be remarkable. Taken together, they suggest Lilly is building a substantial AI capability inside the pharmaceutical business.

Why Data Matters More Than GPUs

Hardware can be purchased and partnerships can be signed, but data is harder.

Visser argues Lilly’s strongest asset is its 150 years of proprietary metabolic disease data, including information related to diabetes, obesity, and other metabolic conditions. That dataset was accumulated through decades of clinical research, patient outcomes, and drug development.

Here’s why that matters: general AI models can be trained on publicly available information, but they cannot simply recreate decades of real-world biological data. In healthcare, the quality and uniqueness of the underlying data often determine how useful an AI system becomes.

For investors, this is the same principle that has historically benefited companies with proprietary customer data, search data, or transaction data. The difference is that Lilly’s data relates to human biology, one of the largest economic markets in the world.

The Category Mismatch

Another part of the thesis is that the market may still be valuing Lilly primarily as a pharmaceutical stock.

Investors generally associate the company with obesity drugs, diabetes treatments, and healthcare spending. Its AI investments are often viewed as supporting tools rather than as a central driver of future value.

Visser believes that framing could change. If investors begin to see Lilly as an AI-powered drug discovery platform with one of the world’s richest metabolic datasets, the valuation framework may shift.

That does not guarantee Lilly becomes the world’s largest company. It does mean the company could be competing in a larger category than many investors currently assign to it.

The Bigger AI Lesson

One of the most interesting aspects of this debate is what it says about AI investing more broadly. The early AI winners have largely been infrastructure providers: chip makers, cloud platforms, and model developers. Over time, the bigger opportunity may shift toward companies that combine AI with unique domain expertise and proprietary data.

Healthcare is a prime candidate. Drug discovery is expensive, time-consuming, and data-intensive. If AI can reduce the cost or increase the success rate of finding new therapies, the economic impact could be enormous. Recent advances in protein modeling, genomics, and clinical trial analysis suggest that possibility is no longer theoretical.

That is why some investors now view healthcare as a potential long-term beneficiary of AI, even if it does not dominate today’s headlines.

Key Takeaway

In short, the argument for Eli Lilly is not that it will suddenly become a software company. It is that AI may dramatically increase the value of the company’s existing strengths: metabolic disease expertise, proprietary clinical data, and a growing portfolio of obesity and diabetes treatments.

Of course, there are risks. Drug development remains uncertain and regulatory challenges remain real. Today’s AI infrastructure can become tomorrow’s commodity. Nvidia may continue to dominate AI hardware, and other technology giants could maintain larger market capitalizations for years.

But the broader point is harder to dismiss: in the AI era, the companies with the most valuable proprietary data may ultimately capture more value than the companies that merely provide the tools. 

Eli Lilly’s 150-year head start in metabolic disease research gives it a moat that is difficult to replicate. Whether that moat is large enough to make it the world’s biggest company remains to be seen, but it explains why some investors are starting to view this old-line Indiana pharmaceutical company as one of the most interesting AI stories on the market.

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Over recent months, a striking pattern has emerged: major capital allocators are positioning around AI-driven biology and longevity. According to a Polymarket post on X, Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) founder Brian Armstrong’s longevity startup NewLimit has tripled in value to $3.1 billion. That post sparked a viral reply thread from podcast host Mgoes (@m_goes_distance), cataloging billionaire and corporate bets on programmable biology.

For enterprising investors, the hook is simple. When visionary billionaires and blue-chip operators converge on the same theme, it’s worth understanding what they see. Most named startups are privately held, leaving NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) as the two realistic public-market entry points.

The Verified Anchor: NVIDIA’s $1 Billion Bet With Eli Lilly

In January, NVIDIA and Eli Lilly announced a first-of-its-kind AI co-innovation lab, committing up to $1 billion over five years to industrialize drug discovery, with the lab based in the San Francisco Bay Area and running on NVIDIA’s BioNeMo platform and Vera Rubin architecture. Eli Lilly also built the “LillyPod” supercomputer with NVIDIA GPUs to accelerate drug discovery.

The buildout is structural. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has called the broader AI buildout “the largest infrastructure expansion in human history,” and pharma is increasingly part of that buildout.

The Mgoes Thread: Big Claims, Unverified

The viral X reply by Mgoes goes further. According to the Mgoes post, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos put $3 billion behind Altos Labs, DeepMind Technologies CEO Demis Hassabis raised $2.1 billion for Isomorphic Labs, and Anthropic acquired Coefficient Bio for $400 million (I have not independently verified those figures).

Mgoes also asserts that longevity biotech raised $3.74 billion in Q1 2026, which the post claims is 56% ahead of Q1 2025 (again, I haven’t verified these figures), framing the thesis as “biotech is starting to move like AI did 3 years ago” with the smart money positioning rather than speculating. Even if the specific dollar figures are debatable, the corporate footprint around NVIDIA’s BioNeMo ecosystem is certainly notable.

The Two Investable Names

NewLimit, Altos Labs, Isomorphic Labs, and Coefficient Bio are all privately held. Hence, NVIDIA and Eli Lilly become the practical vehicles for this theme.

NVIDIA is the picks-and-shovels play. Its BioNeMo platform and the Eli Lilly lab make it the compute backbone of programmable biology, and the underlying business is firing on every cylinder. NVIDIA’s Q1 FY2027 revenue hit $81.615 billion, up 85% year over year, with non-GAAP gross margin of 75% and free cash flow of $48.554 billion in the quarter; NVDA stock is up 16% year to date.

Eli Lilly offers the blue-chip applied-biology angle. The company’s Q1 2026 revenue came in at $19.8 billion, up 56% year over year, with non-GAAP EPS of $8.55, and management raised full-year guidance to $82 billion to $85 billion in revenue. Mounjaro and Zepbound prove Eli Lilly can monetize a single therapeutic category at extraordinary scale, which is exactly the playbook AI-discovered drugs could one day replicate.

The Honest Takeaway

The convergence of Bezos-tier visionaries and blue-chip operators on AI-biology is real, even if the dollar figures from the Mgoes thread remain unverified. However, neither public name is cheap: Eli Lilly trades at a P/E ratio of 38x, and NVIDIA at a P/E ratio of 34x.

For investors seeking exposure to programmable biology without underwriting private startup risk, NVDA and LLY stock are the realistic public vehicles. Use the smart-money signal as a reason to study the theme carefully, sizing your positions according to your own risk tolerance rather than chasing it.

The post Move Over AI: Jeff Bezos and NVIDIA Are Quietly Backing a New Breakthrough Industry appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) just grew revenue 55.5% in a single quarter while raising full-year guidance to $82 billion to $85 billion. Mounjaro and Zepbound combined for $12.8 billion in Q1 alone. Yet shares are up just 1.11% year to date, sitting at $1,082.92. Can LLY reach $1,500 a share by 2028?

Why Lilly Shares Have Stalled in 2026

Fundamentals are accelerating while the stock is flat. LLY is up 6.29% over the past week and 24.94% over the past month, recovering ground lost during the early-2026 pullback from the December high near $1,062.

The drag is pricing. Realized prices fell 13% in Q1 as Mounjaro entered China’s reimbursement list and Zepbound cash-pay tiers declined. Management guided to a low-to-mid-teens price headwind for the full year. Investors are also digesting $584M in IPR&D charges tied to four acquisitions and $279M in litigation charges. With a beta of 0.481, this is a quality compounder waiting for the market to focus on volume.

Wall Street Sees 12% Upside. I Think That’s Too Cautious.

The analyst consensus target sits at $1,215.10, with 6 strong buys, 18 buys, 6 holds, and 1 sell. Our internal base case lands at $1,243.22 with high confidence (0.9), and a bull-case 12-month read of $1,435.35.

Consensus is anchored to 2026 numbers and largely ignores the 2028 setup. With 77% bullish sentiment, Q1 EPS growth of 169.9% year over year, and Foundayo’s oral GLP-1 launch only starting to ramp, analysts will need to mark up out-year models.

The Path to $1,500 Per Share

Reaching $1,500 from today’s price of $1,082.92 would require a gain of 38.5%. With forward EPS of $35.46, a price of $1,500 implies a forward P/E of 42x. Our base case of $1,243.22 already implies 37x, meaning the bold target requires roughly 5x additional multiple expansion or equivalent EPS upside.

That is achievable on two fronts. First, EPS. Management raised the 2026 EPS range to $35.5 to $37. With 42 active Phase III programs, retatrutide weight loss of 25 to 37 pounds in TRANSCEND, and Foundayo opening over 1 billion people with obesity worldwide, 2028 EPS in the mid-$40s is plausible.

Second, the multiple. CEO Dave Ricks framed the international setup directly: “Oral GLP-1s for obesity have not yet been introduced outside the U.S.” Four directors purchased shares on three separate occasions at prices between $919 and $989.

The primary risk is a U.S. obesity pricing reset that compresses both volume economics and the multiple.

Where Lilly Trades Today vs Its Earnings Power

At $1,082.92, LLY trades at a forward P/E of 31x against forward EPS of $35.46. Shares sit just below the 52-week high of $1,130.12 and well above the low of $619.40. The ten-year return is 1,596.87%. For a stock compounding earnings at this rate, 31x forward is reasonable.

Is $1,500 Realistic? My Verdict

$1,500 by 2028 requires a 38.5% gain from here. It’s a credible reach.

Three things need to go right: Foundayo scales internationally, retatrutide delivers a clean Phase III obesity readout, and the Medicare bridge converts into broader Part D participation in 2028 as Ricks expects.

A sharp regulatory shift on GLP-1 pricing would derail it. We’ve outlined the blueprint for how Eli Lilly could reach $1,500 in 2028.

The post Where Will Eli Lilly Stock be In 2028? appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Wells Fargo’s chief agriculture economist Dr. Michael Swanson told Bloomberg Businessweek on May 29 that GLP-1 weight-loss drugs (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound) will eventually match statins at roughly 90 million prescriptions, calling the trend “here to stay” because it’s prescribed, not faddish. So this is the next 90-million-customer industry, sitting in plain sight while everyone else stares at AI. It’s the protein-centric food economy being rewired around appetite-suppressed patients who need 90 to 120 grams of protein a day in small volumes.

I’ve been reading every GLP-1 supply-chain report I can find for the better part of two years now, and the five tickers below are where the second-order money is moving while everyone else stares at chatbots.

1. BellRing Brands: The Surprise Pick Hiding in Plain Sight

Start with the most unloved name on this list. BellRing Brands (NYSE:BRBR) owns Premier Protein, the ready-to-drink shake whose product spec (high protein, low volume, easy on a suppressed appetite) maps almost one-to-one onto what a GLP-1 patient is told to consume. The stock has been crushed on a tariff-driven margin miss, which is exactly why the setup is interesting: the demand side of the thesis is still intact while the price has been gutted.

The Q2 FY2026 report explains both halves of the trade. Premier Protein RTD volume grew 11.7%, household penetration climbed to 21.3%, and total distribution points hit an all-time high with 29% YoY growth. Yet EPS came in at $0.14 versus $0.3132 consensus, gross margin collapsed from 32.3% to 27.0%, and management took an $11.3 million inventory charge on a failed third-party ingredient. Shares are down 69% year-to-date.

Here’s the tell: on March 31, eight directors bought common stock equivalents on the same day at $16.09/share, and Director David Finkelstein went back in on May 13 for 4,000 shares at $9.235. Volume-driven brands with insiders buying the dip don’t stay this beat-up forever. Which brings us to the company that actually creates BRBR’s customers.

2. Eli Lilly: The Engine of the 90-Million Forecast

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) is the company actually manufacturing Swanson’s forecast. Mounjaro and Zepbound are the prescription pads driving the appetite suppression that creates the demand BellRing is feeding. And in May, the FDA approved Foundayo (orforglipron), the only approved GLP-1 pill that can be taken any time of day, without food and water restrictions, which is the bridge from injection-only to statin-style scale.

Q1 FY2026 was the kind of quarter that justifies a near-trillion-dollar market cap. Mounjaro revenue hit $8.66 billion, up 125% YoY. Zepbound U.S. revenue grew 80% to $4.16 billion. Total company revenue jumped 55.5% and management raised the full-year revenue outlook to $82.0 to $85.0 billion. CEO David Ricks said “Foundayo will meaningfully expand the number of people who can benefit from GLP-1s.” That’s a CEO telling you the prescription pool is about to balloon.

The stock is up 30% over the past month and 54% over the past year, trading at a P/E of 39. Buy Lilly IF you believe the pill version pulls GLP-1 use toward Swanson’s 90-million ceiling. The inverse: if oral compliance disappoints, the multiple compresses. There is, however, a second drug company that could collect a check on the same megatrend.

3. Novo Nordisk: The Co-Heavyweight With the Oral Wedge

Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO ADR) is the other half of the duopoly. Ozempic, Wegovy, Rybelsus, and as of January 2026 the Wegovy oral pill, plus Wegovy HD launched April 7 with nearly 21% weight loss in trials. NVO has lagged hard, but on a prescription-volume thesis, ignoring it is a mistake.

Q1 FY2026 shows why the stock has stayed in the doghouse and why the demand is still real. Wegovy total franchise hit $18.24 billion, up 12%, while Ozempic fell 8% to $27.83 billion on pricing. The Wegovy oral pill posted $2.26 billion in Q1 sales with over 2 million prescriptions since launch. The wrinkle: a Most-Favored-Nation pricing agreement forces Wegovy and Ozempic U.S. list-price cuts of 50% and 35% in January 2027.

Shares are down 31% over the last year but up 13% over the past month, trading at a P/E of 11 with analyst targets averaging $46.90. Cheap optionality on the same 90-million-prescription wave. Which is also where the food half of the table starts to matter, because every one of those scripts puts pressure on the same dinner plate.

4. Tyson Foods: The Beef-to-Chicken Trade-Down Trade

Swanson explicitly named the protein rotation: consumers trading down from beef to chicken and pork, with Texas brisket prices up 28% over the past year. Tyson Foods (NYSE:TSN) is the single largest publicly traded pure-play on that rotation. Their chicken and prepared foods segments are exactly where a GLP-1 patient who used to splurge on ribeye now lands.

Q2 FY2026 confirms which engine is pulling the train. The Chicken segment delivered $4.286 billion in revenue at a 12.2% adjusted operating margin, and the segment has now posted five consecutive quarters of YoY volume growth. Beef, meanwhile, lost $202 million, and management guides FY2026 Chicken income to $1.9 to $2.05 billion. CEO Donnie King said “protein demand continues to increase, our consistent share gains demonstrate we are well-positioned to capture this momentum.”

USDA projects FY2026 chicken production up about 2%, beef down about 2%, pork up about 2%. Tyson is overweight the protein the consumer is rotating into and the protein the supply chain is producing more of. The stock is up 5% YTD. Decent, but the cleanest punchline on this list is still ahead.

5. Hormel: The Punchline Hiding on the Center Aisle

Here’s the payoff. Hormel Foods (NYSE:HRL) owns Spam, Skippy, Jennie-O turkey, Applegate, Hormel Black Label bacon, Columbus deli, and Planters. Every brand on that list is shelf-stable, protein-dense, and labeled with a grams-of-protein callout. The protein-labeling shift Swanson described as “food packaging across every category prominently featuring protein content” is happening on shelves Hormel already owns. The market is treating this like a tired dividend stock. It’s actually the most accidentally well-positioned brand house in U.S. packaged food.

Q2 FY2026 made the case quietly. Foodservice revenue grew 6.4%, marking the 11th consecutive quarter of organic net sales growth, with adjusted EPS of $0.40 beating $0.3544 consensus and adjusted operating margin expanding to 9.9% from 9.1%. Management is actively pruning low-margin volume, having divested the whole-bird turkey business and sold 51% of Justin’s to concentrate on value-added protein. On March 31, five directors bought stock on the same day at $22.65/share, including the Chairman.

The stock is up 11% over the past month, 9% over the past week, and the company has now strung together 60 consecutive years of dividend increases. Boring is the feature.

The Thread

Lilly and Novo write the prescriptions. BellRing fills the shake. Tyson fills the plate. Hormel fills the pantry. If Swanson’s call holds and GLP-1 use scales toward statin-level volumes, every link in that chain reprices off the same demand curve, and four of these five names still trade like the market hasn’t connected them. The headline industry of 2026 was always going to be AI. The quieter one, the one with 90 million customers walking into the pharmacy with a printed script, is already restructuring the food aisle while nobody is looking.

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Macro strategist Jordi Visser delivered a striking observation on a recent episode of The Pomp Podcast with Anthony Pompliano. Among the roughly 100 stocks in his thematic portfolio, Eli Lilly is the only healthcare company that made the cut. More surprisingly, he views it as an artificial intelligence investment as much as a pharmaceutical one.

A Growth Rate That Turns Heads

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) reported Q1 2026 revenue of $19.8 billion, up 55.5% year over year, while non-GAAP EPS came in at $8.55, well ahead of the $6.79 consensus estimate. The company also raised its full-year 2026 outlook to $82 billion to $85 billion in revenue and $35.50 to $37.00 in non-GAAP EPS.

For Visser, the story starts with that revenue growth figure. “I want people to hear that number. 55%. Now these are the types of numbers that you’re talking about with NVIDIA,” he said.

For context, NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) reported Q1 FY2027 revenue growth of 85.2% year over year and now carries a market capitalization above $5 trillion. Lilly, a company founded in 1876, is approaching the trillion-dollar mark itself. Investors rarely see a company of Lilly’s scale grow at rates normally associated with the most successful AI businesses in the world.

Why Visser Sees Eli Lilly as an AI Company

Lilly’s growth engine remains its blockbuster GLP-1 franchise. Mounjaro generated $8.66 billion in Q1 2026 revenue, up 125% YoY, while Zepbound delivered $4.16 billion, up 80%. Foundayo, the company’s new oral GLP-1, was FDA-approved and can be taken at any time of day without food or water restrictions.

He pointed to a network of AI partnerships that could reshape how Lilly develops medicines. The company has worked with AI drug discovery firm Insilico Medicine, Alphabet-backed Isomorphic Labs, and NVIDIA, which partnered with Lilly to build what the company described as one of the industry’s most powerful AI computing environments for drug discovery.

Pompliano noted that investors have long expected AI to transform biotechnology, but “we haven’t really seen tons of examples yet” beyond isolated cases. Visser’s answer involves drug candidates that “made it to the 20-yard line, but it couldn’t get inside the red zone.” Visser believes Lilly could become one of the first large-scale demonstrations of that shift. Lilly’s four Q1 2026 acquisitions of Orna Therapeutics, Centessa Pharmaceuticals, Kelonia Therapeutics, and Ajax Therapeutics fit into that broader strategy.

Drug discovery could benefit from the Jevons paradox. When AI compresses discovery costs, total demand could expand more than prices fall, growing the market overall. Cheaper AI-discovered therapeutics at scale could produce a larger total opportunity than today’s high-priced boutique drugs.

The Bigger Picture

Visser summarized the opportunity with a broader observation about where healthcare may be headed. “It’s a very, very interesting story that is kind of the, in my opinion, the human software side of what the next decade is going to look like for curing diseases.”

For investors, the practical takeaway is that the next leg of pharma may look more like software development cycles than traditional 10-year drug pipelines. Eli Lilly is up 54% over the past year through May 29, 2026, while NVIDIA has gained 51.73% over the same window. If Lilly’s partnerships with Insilico Medicine, Isomorphic Labs, and NVIDIA begin producing measurable advances in drug development, the comparison Visser is making could become much harder for investors to ignore.

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There’s a tech ETF that has been almost neck-and-neck with the S&P 500 in the past year and has built up a meaningful lead over the past five years. It’s the Vanguard’s Mega Cap Growth ETF (NYSEARCA:MGK). This ETF tracks the price of the CRSP US Mega Cap Growth Index, which in turn tracks companies with high “growth” characteristics like high earnings or sales growth.

The top holdings of this ETF are what you’d expect in a growth-focused ETF, but with greater concentration. Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) comes with a 13.75% weighting, followed by Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) at nearly 11.8%. The weightings then decline progressively, but the top 10 still account for 66.5% of holdings.

Before we look into whether or not it is worth leaning into this concentration, we need to look into MGK itself.

Very techy, but still mediocre

The top ten holdings are almost all tech, except for Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY). You’re looking at 55.3% exposure to tech stocks, followed by 17.2% from the Communication industry, but even that hasn’t been enough for MGK to gain a meaningful lead over the benchmark S&P 500 index.

Dividends reinvested, MGK is up 110% over the past five years vs. the S&P 500’s 92%. That’s worse than what the Invesco QQQ ETF (NASDAQ:QQQ) has gotten you over the same timeframe, that too with less tech exposure. Of the QQQ’s holdings, tech constitutes 54.25%, with Communication at 15%.

Thus, this is truly a mediocre ETF in my eyes. It has leaned into some heavyweight winners, but many of them are yesterday’s winners.

So, what’s good about the MGK ETF?

The only thing that I do think makes this ETF worth owning is the 0.05% expense ratio, or just $5 per $10,000. If you are a strong believer in the biggest tech companies and you want to “set it and forget it,” you can put some money here. But again, you’re going to have to wait for many years before these hyperscalers start seeing any returns from the buildout, and your tech returns will see dilution with dozens of other holdings.

Moreover, you can own this instead of the QQQ if you are adamant about owning fast-growing major financial companies under the same umbrella. The QQQ tracks the Nasdaq-100, so it excludes every NYSE-listed company and also gets rid of financials by rule. MGK does not do this and keeps financials inside the ETF. But again, these financial stocks still constitute a mere 4.5% of its holdings.

2025-2026 has been a rough mean-reversion year for mega-cap concentration, with the equal-weight S&P and small/mid caps catching some bid. If we see a repeat of 2024 in 2027 with hyperscalers receiving early return on investment from the buildout, MGK could deliver good returns.

Buy, hold, or sell MGK?

MGK is not a competitor to the S&P 500. It’s a low-cost concentrated mega-cap growth vehicle for people who already have a core S&P holding and want a satellite tilt.

If you are adamant and you aren’t shaken off by a selloff, you can buy and hold MGK for a very long time and keep reinvesting. The tiny expense ratio can bring the equation to your favor over decades. Moreover, if hyperscalers see high compute demand terminally, the higher cash flow could finally make them deliver more upside than what AI hardware stocks are doing today.

All that said, I don’t think it is worth it at the end of the day. The best strategy you could adopt right now is a barbell strategy. Hold some dividend and defensive stocks to get income and keep reinvesting that on one end, and have aggressive AI hardware stocks on the other end. An ETF that has lots of exposure to AI software stocks is no longer a must-buy in this environment due to how much they are spending and the disruption AI is causing to them. I’d sell MGK.

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Polymarket traders are watching one biotech more closely than any other for an acquisition. Viking Therapeutics (NASDAQ: VKTX) carries a 38.5% implied probability of being acquired before 2027, with all-time volume above $1.68 million on that single contract. The hook is obesity. Viking’s VK2735 dual GLP-1/GIP agonist is arguably the most advanced obesity asset not yet owned by Big Pharma. This scenario analysis examines who would actually benefit if a deal happens.

Why Viking Is the Most-Watched M&A Target

Viking is a clinical-stage biotech with no revenue and a market cap near $3.59 billion. Shares closed at $30.89 on May 22, 2026, down 12.2% year to date. Analyst sentiment, however, is striking, with almost all analysts rating it Buy or Strong Buy, and a mean target price all the way up at $92.33.

The lead asset is doing the talking. Oral VK2735 delivered up to 12.2% weight loss at 13 weeks, with 80% of participants achieving at least 10% weight loss. Phase 3 VANQUISH-1 is fully enrolled with 4,500+ patients. Cash burn is accelerating: Q4 2025 net loss hit $157.66 million against roughly $706 million in cash, sharpening the strategic clock.

Existing Shareholders Benefit

For current holders, the standalone case is the $92.33 analyst target, which assumes successful Phase 3 readouts. A deal would compress that timeline. Biotech buyouts of clinical-stage assets have historically closed well above prevailing prices, and recent obesity deals (notably Pfizer’s roughly $9.8 billion Metsera acquisition) set a reference point. Speculative buyout investing remains one of the highest-risk strategies in biotech: trial setbacks, regulatory delays, and deal breaks can all hit hard.

The Potential Buyer Benefits

Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) already dominates the category. Q1 2026 revenue of roughly $19.8 billion grew 55.5%, with Mounjaro and Zepbound leading. A second platform still adds optionality, though antitrust optics complicate the fit at its $949.7 billion market cap.

Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) has been the most active acquirer in obesity. CEO Albert Bourla said, “2026 will be an important year rich in key catalysts, including our expectation for approximately 20 key pivotal study starts.” A Phase 3-ready dual agonist would integrate directly into the Metsera pipeline buildout.

Novo Nordisk (NYSE: NVO) is defending share. Shares are down 33.2% over the past year, and 2026 guidance calls for adjusted sales growth of −4% to −12%. A defensive bid is plausible.

Merck and Amgen round out the longer-shot list. Merck is underweight obesity and already acquiring Terns Pharmaceuticals, while Amgen has MariTide advancing internally, which may reduce urgency rather than create it.

Competitors and the Industry Benefit

The clearest secondary winner is Structure Therapeutics (NASDAQ: GPCR), whose oral aleniglipron delivered 16.3% placebo-adjusted weight loss at 44 weeks. With a $2.8 billion market cap and a $106.47 average analyst target, Structure would inherit the scarcity premium if Viking is removed from the board. The Terns deal already shows Big Pharma’s willingness to consolidate metabolic assets.

For the broader industry, a Viking transaction would validate the tuck-in playbook, likely re-rate the obesity small-cap basket, and serve as an FTC test case for GLP-1 consolidation. It would also mark Polymarket as a usable M&A signal in biotech research.

The Bottom Line

Even with 61.5% odds priced against a deal, Viking remains at the center of the obesity M&A conversation. If a transaction occurs, shareholders, the acquirer, and the broader obesity basket all stand to gain. Worth watching: Phase 3 enrollment updates, oral VK2735 progress, and any Big Pharma business development signaling through the rest of 2026.

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The Vanguard Dividend Appreciation Index Fund ETF Shares (NYSEARCA:VIG) is having a quieter year than its big-cap dividend-growth reputation suggests, with shares around $229 and a 5% year-to-date gain trailing the broader market. The 12-month picture is stronger at almost 17%, but the recent flattening tells you something important: VIG’s dividend-growth playbook is being squeezed at exactly the moment Treasury yields are spiking. For an ETF that screens the S&P U.S. Dividend Growers Index (companies with 10-plus years of consecutive payout increases), the question for the next 12 months is whether investors keep paying up for that growth when cash is yielding more than it has in a year. The dividend hikes themselves will keep coming; demand for them is the variable.

The macro factor that matters most: the long end of the curve

The 10-year Treasury yield closed at 4.6%, a a near-top-of-range reading over the trailing 12 months and a jump of 35 basis points in a month. That is happening while the Fed has cut its target rate to 3.75%, a 75 basis-point easing cycle since September 2025. A steepening curve where the front end falls and the long end rises is the worst combination for dividend-growth ETFs. The short-end cuts do not help VIG’s valuations (these are large quality compounders, not floating-rate plays), and the long-end backup directly competes with their yields and discounts their future cash flows.

What to watch: the daily DGS10 series on FRED. A sustained move above 4.75% on the 10-year, especially if accompanied by rising real yields, has historically been the threshold where dividend-growth funds underperform the S&P 500 by 200 to 400 basis points over the following two quarters. Check it weekly. Pair it with the next CPI release for confirmation that the move is inflation-driven rather than a growth scare.

The fund-specific factor: AVGO is doing the heavy lifting

VIG’s index methodology is supposed to deliver diversified dividend growth, but in practice the fund’s returns are increasingly tethered to one name: Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO). Broadcom is up almost 80% over the past year on AI semiconductor revenue that hit $8.4 billion in Q1, up 106% year-over-year, with management guiding Q2 AI revenue to $10.7 billion. That growth has masked weakness elsewhere: JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) is down 7% year-to-date despite a 17% EPS jump to $5.94, and Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) is down nearly 5% year-to-date even after a 26% Q1 EPS beat.

The single most important event for VIG over the next 12 months is Broadcom’s Q2 earnings report on June 3, 2026. If Hock Tan’s $10.7 billion AI revenue guide holds and the path toward his $100 billion AI sales target by 2027 remains intact, VIG’s largest growth engine keeps the fund moving. If AI hyperscaler capex shows any sign of digestion, VIG loses the one holding doing most of the offensive work while the dividend-payer cohort underneath gets repriced by Treasury yields. Read the press release, then the call transcript on AVGO’s investor relations site within 24 hours.

What to do with this

The signal for the next 12 months is straightforward. If the 10-year Treasury yield holds above 4.5% and Broadcom’s June 3 report shows any AI revenue deceleration, VIG is structurally challenged regardless of how many dividend hikes the rest of the portfolio delivers, including Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) extending its 64-year increase streak. If yields roll over and AVGO guides higher again, the dividend-growth trade reaccelerates from here.

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Wall Street has rediscovered the stock-split playbook. KLA (NASDAQ: KLAC) announced a 10-for-1 forward stock split in May 2026 alongside a fiscal Q3 earnings beat and a roughly 21% dividend hike, with the stock trading in the $1,800 range. Earlier in the year, Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG) completed a 25-for-1 split announced in February 2026, taking shares from north of $4,000 down to roughly $155.

This has investors hunting for the next high-priced megacap to follow suit. Three names keep surfacing: semiconductor equipment monopoly ASML (NASDAQ: ASML), pharma giant Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY), and aerospace parts maker TransDigm Group (NYSE: TDG). All three trade at eye-watering nominal prices, all three have monster long-term charts, and none of them has announced a split. To be clear, this is a ranking of likelihood only; no board action or timeline is currently on the table for any of these three companies.

Here is the countdown from least likely to most likely.

3. Least Likely: TransDigm

The stock trades at $1,198.09 with a market cap of about $67 billion. The Cleveland-based maker of proprietary aerospace components just posted adjusted Q2 FY26 EPS of $9.85 on revenue of $2.54 billion, up 18.3% year over year.

The bull case for a split is simple: TransDigm carries the highest nominal price of the three, options chains are expensive, and the stock is 98.6% institutionally owned, suggesting management could court retail interest. The bear case is overwhelming. TransDigm returns cash through massive special dividends and aggressive buybacks ($723 million repurchased in Q2 at an average of $1,201) and has never split. Management openly prefers leveraged equity returns to cosmetic financial engineering.

2. Lilly

Shares closed at $1,018.87, with a market cap of roughly $908 billion, knocking on the door of the trillion-dollar club. Q1 FY26 was a blowout: EPS of $8.55 on revenue of $19.80 billion, with Mounjaro at $8.66 billion and Zepbound at $4.16 billion.

The bull case for a split has merit. Lilly is the most retail-watched name in pharma thanks to GLP-1 mania, sentiment spiked to a very bullish score of 85 around the April 30 earnings report, and the company last split in 1997 (2-for-1), so a precedent exists. The bear case: Lilly has telegraphed a clear capital-return philosophy through dividends, hiking the quarterly payout from $1.50 in 2025 to $1.73 in 2026. Management has shown no public appetite for a split despite the run.

1. Most Likely: ASML

ASML (NASDAQ: ASML) closed at $1,550.13, the highest of the three, with a market cap of roughly $597 billion. The Dutch lithography monopoly is on a tear, up 44.6% year to date and 107.0% over the past year. Q1 FY26 delivered EPS of €7.15 ($8.37) on €8.8 billion ($10.3 billion) in revenue, with a 2025 year-end backlog of €38.8 billion ($45.06 billion).

The bull case: ASML now trades above where KLA split, peer optics matter in semicap, and CEO Christophe Fouquet told investors: “The semiconductor industry’s growth outlook continues to solidify, driven by ongoing AI-related infrastructure investments. Demand for chips is outpacing supply.” A lower nominal price could broaden the U.S. retail base for the ADR. The bear case is structural: ASML is a foreign issuer, capital returns flow through a €12 billion buyback program and a euro-denominated dividend, and Dutch-listed parents rarely engineer ADR splits unilaterally. Still, on share price alone, ASML is the most obvious split candidate of the three.

What This Means for Investors

A stock split is cosmetic. It reshapes retail accessibility, options affordability, and short-term sentiment while leaving market cap, earnings, and intrinsic value untouched, which is exactly why KLA and Booking drew so much attention this year. TransDigm ranks at the bottom of this countdown because management’s capital playbook leans on buybacks and special dividends. Lilly has the retail audience but a strong dividend-growth bias. ASML carries the highest nominal price and the clearest peer precedent. None of the three has announced anything. Investors watching for the next splits headline should keep an eye on the stock prices but trade the fundamentals.

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Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) is growing like a software company. Q1 2026 revenue hit $19.80B, up 55.5% year over year, with Mounjaro at $8.66B (+125%) and Zepbound at $4.16B (+80%).

CEO David Ricks told investors “2026 is off to a strong start, we delivered 56% revenue growth in the first quarter and raised our full-year revenue guidance by $2 billion.” Yet shares trade at $1,021.41, down on the year. Can Lilly hit $1,800 by 2030?

What’s Holding Lilly Back Right Now

Lilly is down 4.63% year to date even after a 10.37% one-month bounce and a 3.36% one-week move. Two pressures on the multiple: First, pricing. Realized prices fell 13% in Q1 as Mounjaro hit China’s national reimbursement list and U.S. cash-pay rates came down.

Second, competitive read. Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill is still outselling Lilly’s Zepbound at a comparable launch stage by roughly 1.5x. Add the Supreme Court rejecting Lilly’s Medicaid fraud appeal, and buyers stay cautious. Beta of 0.481 means this stock moves on earnings.

Wall Street Sees 18% Upside. Our Model Sees More

Analysts are constructive. The Street has 6 Strong Buy, 18 Buy, 6 Hold, and 1 Sell ratings, with a consensus target of $1,210. That implies roughly 18% upside. Our base-case model lands at $1,485.05 by May 2030, with a bull case of $1,598.24 and bear case of $1,070.70.

Confidence is 90%. Analysts are anchoring on near-term pricing noise and underweighting the orforglipron ramp. 77% of analysts are already bullish, and trailing earnings growth of 169.9% YoY is doing the heavy lifting that consensus has not fully priced.

The Path to $1,800 Per Share

Reaching $1,800 from today’s price of $1,021.41 requires a 76.2% gain. With forward EPS of $35.47, a price of $1,800 implies a forward P/E of 51. Our base case of $1,165.39 already implies 35x, meaning the bold target needs roughly 16 turns of additional multiple expansion on today’s EPS base.

EPS is moving fast. 2026 guidance is $35.5 to $37, up from a prior $33.5 to $35. If EPS compounds toward $60+ by 2030 on Foundayo, retatrutide and a 47% performance margin, the implied multiple at $1,800 collapses to roughly 30. That is the forward P/E compression story.

Lilly was ranked #1 in both innovation and invention by IDEA Pharma, just raised guidance to $82-$85B on Q1, and closed a $2.3B Ajax acquisition. Primary risk: orforglipron stalls against Novo’s pill or pricing reform accelerates.

Where Lilly Trades Today vs Its Earnings Power

At $1,021.41, Lilly trades at roughly 29 forward EPS. For a company guiding 28% revenue growth and 50% EPS growth in 2026, that is not expensive. Shares sit about 7% below the 52-week high of $1,130.12 and well off the 52-week low of $619.40.

The 10-year return tells the structural story: +1,504.34%. This is one of the highest-quality compounders in pharma, and the current multiple does not reflect the obesity franchise at scale.

Is $1,800 Realistic?

Reaching $1,800 by 2030 requires a 76.2% gain from here. It is a stretch but defensible.

Three things need to go right: Foundayo and retatrutide must scale globally (over 1 billion people with obesity and related conditions is the addressable pool), performance margin must hold near 48%, and capacity from the $21B+ in new U.S. and EU manufacturing must come online on schedule. A serious pricing reform shock or clinical setback on retatrutide would derail it. We’ve outlined the blueprint for how Eli Lilly could reach $1,800 in 2030.

The post Can Eli Lilly Stock Reach $1800 by 2030? Here Is the Bull Case appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

On a recent episode of Earn Your Leisure titled “The #1 Investing Mistake Keeping You Broke,” co-host E delivered a blunt diagnosis for retail investors: stop trading the stocks you should be holding. “The ones that are leading now will lead,” he said, warning that top companies could compound 4,000% or 5,000% over five or six years while impatient traders walk away with 200% profits that get “blown on a car or a vacation or somebody who doesn’t love you.”

His example: an investor who put $100,000 into NVIDIA in 2023 and doubled their money, then exited. The numbers since suggest that decision was costly.

NVIDIA: The Trade That Kept Paying

NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) has returned 1,454.69% since January 3, 2023, and 1,484.53% over five years. The fundamentals back the run. Q4 FY2026 revenue hit $68.13 billion, up 73.2% year over year, with EPS of $1.62 versus a $1.52 estimate. Full-year FY2026 revenue reached $215.94 billion with $96.58 billion in free cash flow. CEO Jensen Huang told investors “the agentic AI inflection point has arrived” in the Q4 release.

AMD: The Other AI Compounder

Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) is up 259.3% over the past year and 96.58% year to date. Q1 2026 revenue came in at $10.25 billion, up 37.9% YoY, with Data Center growing 57% to $5.78 billion. CEO Lisa Su flagged that “Customer engagement around MI450 Series and Helios is strengthening, with leading customer forecasts exceeding our initial expectations.” The Meta deal alone covers up to 6 gigawatts of Instinct GPUs.

Eli Lilly: The GLP-1 Volume Story

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) has returned 427% over five years. Q1 2026 revenue jumped 55.5% to $19.80 billion, with Mounjaro at $8.66 billion (up 125%) and Zepbound at $4.16 billion (up 80%). EPS of $8.55 crushed the $6.79 consensus. Management raised full-year guidance to $82.0 to $85.0 billion in revenue. Analysts carry an average target of $1,210 on the stock.

The Real Cost of Early Exits

Sean Duffy hammered the same point with a fresh example: a company that IPO’d in February 2025 at $1.95 has jumped to $12.89, a 3,400% gain that listeners watched develop “week after week” without acting. E framed the behavioral trap directly: it is “crazy as hell” to “trade an asset to then spend it on a liability.” Reddit threads suggest the pain is real. One viral r/wallstreetbets post celebrated “AMD +21k % – 10 Years of Diamond Hands”, while another anxious holder posted “I got into AMD at ~$60 per share and now have zero strategy for it.” Patience, in each of these three names, has done the heavy lifting.

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The iShares U.S. Pharmaceuticals ETF (NYSEARCA:IHE) is the rare fund that has spent the past year being publicly threatened by the President of the United States and quietly outperforming nearly every healthcare benchmark anyway. Trump signed his “most favored nation” drug pricing executive order last May, tying what Medicare pays to lower prices in other developed countries, and IHE has since rallied 38% over twelve months to roughly $89. So the real question for retirement investors is whether IHE has already absorbed the policy hit, or whether the actual margin compression is still ahead of the ETF.

What IHE is built to do

IHE tracks the Dow Jones U.S. Select Pharmaceuticals Index, holding 59 names with charges of 0.38% a year. The return engine is straightforward. You collect dividends from a basket of mature U.S. drugmakers (the most recent quarterly distribution was $0.2845 per share) and you ride pipeline catalysts when blockbusters land. Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) and its tirzepatide franchise is the obvious one. AbbVie (NYSE:ABBV) and its immunology trio of Skyrizi, Rinvoq, and Humira are driving sales up significantly.

The catch is concentration. Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly together account for 42% of the fund, which means IHE is closer to a two-stock bet with 57 chaperones than a diversified pharma sleeve. Beta sits at 0.50, so volatility is genuinely lower than the broad market, but that statistic flatters the fund. When LLY moves on a GLP-1 data readout, IHE moves with it.

Does it actually deliver

The marketing pitch and the reality diverge in IHE’s favor. Over the past year, while Trump’s MFN order was being drafted, signed, and litigated, IHE returned 38%. The broader Health Care Select Sector SPDR, Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSEARCA:XLV), returned 9% over the same window. Year-to-date in 2026, the gap is even more telling. IHE is up 4% while XLV is down 5%.

Step back to five and ten years, though, and the picture inverts. IHE is up 57% over five years and 128% over ten. XLV returned 29% over five and 149% over ten. Pure pharma lost to broad healthcare across a decade because device makers, insurers, and tools companies (the stuff XLV holds and IHE does not) carried the sector. The recent reversal is GLP-1 economics, plus pharma starting from depressed multiples after the 2024 selloff.

The tradeoffs that actually bite

1. Two-stock risk. If RFK Jr.’s HHS tightens GLP-1 labeling or Medicare negotiates Lilly’s tirzepatide aggressively, nearly half the fund reprices in a session. A 24/7 Wall St. analysis in March flagged this as the structural risk most IHE holders underestimate.
2. Policy overhang still looms. MFN was signed but implementation, court challenges, and the scope of covered drugs are unresolved. The market has priced an outcome while the actual rule remains unwritten.
3. Narrow scope by design. IHE owns mature cash flows and misses the AI-driven drug discovery story playing out at smaller names.

The verdict for retirement portfolios

The case for adding favors discipline over enthusiasm. If you already hold IHE as a healthcare allocation, the thesis (defensive cash flows, pipeline optionality, multiples still below the ten-year average) is working in real time. If you do not own pharma exposure and you are within ten years of retirement, IHE at $89 with a 0.50 beta fits the profile of a 5% to 8% sleeve. Investors who want the GLP-1 upside without 47% riding on two tickers have alternatives in VHT or XLV, accepting lower yield in exchange for diversification. Anyone treating IHE as a growth vehicle is reading the wrong fund.

In short, I would not double down. If you don’t hold it, I would add some exposure.

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The Fidelity MSCI Health Care Index ETF (NYSEARCA:FHLC) is down about 5% year to date while the S&P 500 is up 7%. Over five years, FHLC has returned 15% against about 80% for the S&P 500.

If you bought FHLC for cheap sector diversification, fine. If you bought it expecting healthcare to keep pace with the broader market, the math has been telling you a different story for a while.

What the fund does

FHLC tracks the MSCI USA IMI Health Care 25/50 Index, holding 342 holdings across pharma, biotech, medical devices, and healthcare services. The expense ratio is 0.08%, genuinely cheap and among the lowest in the category. Assets sit at $2.85 billion, which makes it a credible but not dominant player against a larger competing healthcare index fund.

The return engine is dividends plus capital appreciation from large pharma. The fund paid about $0.26 per share in April and $0.23 per share in March, modest quarterly distributions that work out to a yield well under 2%. So this functions as a price-appreciation vehicle that happens to pay a small dividend, and the price has not been appreciating.

The performance gap that actually matters

When you look into healthcare stocks, most of them have been making aggressive moves in recent years. The broader landscape has been shifting in their favor as the population ages. That said, they have underperformed over the long term simply due to how fast tech stocks and indexes have grown, and they’ve dragged up most broad indexes along with them.

FHLC should thus be expected to underperform, and I’d argue you are better off buying biotech instead. The State Street SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (NYSEARCA:XBI) has delivered 59% in one-year gains. In comparison, FHLC has barely kept up with the big-name healthcare ETFs.

This is the part the fact sheet does not advertise. Sector ETFs earn their keep when the sector outperforms. Healthcare, despite the demographic story everyone keeps reciting about aging boomers, has been a market laggard for years. You are paying 0.08% to underperform, which is cheap, but cheap underperformance is still underperformance.

The concentration problem

Concentration is the other complication. Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) represents over 12% of the portfolio, with a handful of mega-cap pharma and managed-care names rounding out the top tier.

A passive index fund is supposed to spread risk across hundreds of names. FHLC spreads it across hundreds of holdings and then bets a meaningful slice on one GLP-1 story. If that weight loss franchise hits a competitive wall, the whole fund tilts with it.

Meanwhile the corners of healthcare that have actually performed, including specific subsector operators like nursing home and skilled-nursing providers, are inside a market-cap-weighted basket dominated by mega-cap pharma. Targeted exposure to those sub-industries would have served a healthcare bull better than this broad index over the past five years.

Where it might still fit

FHLC works as a small defensive sleeve, maybe 3% to 5% of a diversified portfolio, for someone who wants healthcare beta at the lowest possible cost and accepts the sector will move on regulatory news and drug pricing rather than tech-style growth. Larger competing healthcare index funds do essentially the same job with a bigger asset base and a longer track record if liquidity matters to you.

For anyone holding FHLC as a core growth position, the data is unkind. The healthcare story may eventually reassert itself. While you wait, you are giving up market returns to own a sector that has not earned the premium of a dedicated allocation.

if you actually want to make the most out of healthcare, consider looking into biotech and nursing home REITs. They’re likely to do much better than something that tries to hold onto “everything healthcare” at once.

The post If You Hold This Healthcare ETF, You’re Losing Big appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) is the stock everyone wants to talk about, and the reasons are obvious: Mounjaro revenue jumped 125% to $8.66 billion last quarter, the company raised full-year revenue guidance to $82 to $85 billion, and the market cap now sits at roughly $881.8 billion. But here’s what you should actually be watching.

The Hot Trade Is Already Crowded

Lilly is a great company at a price that already reflects greatness. Shares trade near $988.87 after a 21.25% one-year run and a staggering 1,465.32% gain over ten years. The decade of compounding has happened. From here, the math gets harder.

Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) is the other half of the GLP-1 duopoly, and it is fighting a different battle. Q4 2025 revenue fell 7.6% year over year, with US Operations down 15%, and management guided 2026 sales and operating profit to decline 5% to 13% at constant exchange rates. CEO Mike Doustdar has acknowledged “pricing headwinds in an increasingly competitive market.” Shares are down 32.11% over the past year.

The interesting move is following where these giants are spending. Lilly’s CEO David Ricks noted four acquisitions announced in Q1 2026 alone: Orna, Centessa, Kelonia, and Ajax. Novo’s BD head conducted 200 meetings at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, fresh off the $4.7 billion Akero Therapeutics deal. Smart money tends to front-run acquirers rather than pay up at $880 billion.

Three Names On The Shopping List

Viking Therapeutics (NASDAQ:VKTX) is the cleanest strategic fit. Lead asset VK2735 is a dual GLP-1/GIP agonist with both subcutaneous and oral formulations, and Phase 3 VANQUISH-1 was fully enrolled with more than 4,500 patients ahead of schedule. The oral Phase 2 delivered up to 12.2% body weight reduction in 13 weeks. With $706 million in cash and a market cap of just $3.69 billion, Viking is small enough to swallow and dangerous enough that Novo cannot afford to let Lilly grab it. Analysts carry an average target of $92.33 against a current $31.31.

Scholar Rock (NASDAQ:SRRK) plugs the missing piece in the entire GLP-1 thesis. Patients lose muscle alongside fat, and apitegromab is a muscle-targeted therapy with a BLA resubmission expected in 2026 and a European launch planned for the second half of 2026. Scholar Rock is already partnered with Novo Nordisk on the Catalent Indiana facility, an existing tie that makes a takeout straightforward. Market cap sits at $5.55 billion, with analysts at a $57.73 target.

Verve Therapeutics (NASDAQ:VERV) is the most obvious deal of the three. Lilly already has the partnership through VERVE-301 on the LPA program. Lead candidate VERVE-102 is a single-dose gene-editing PCSK9 therapy that produced mean LDL-C reductions of 53% and PCSK9 protein reductions of 60% in the Heart-2 Phase 1b. CEO Sekar Kathiresan calls it a “one dose future” for cardiovascular disease. Lilly holds an opt-in. The math points toward an outright acquisition rather than an opt-in.

What To Watch

The trillion-dollar headline is already crowded. Viking, Scholar Rock, and Verve sit further upstream, where acquirer interest tends to surface first.

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Lance Roberts of RIA Advisors warned on the Thoughtful Money podcast that the S&P 500 has stretched so far above its key moving averages that a mean-reversion move could be a higher-probability scenario heading into the summer. “The big risk here is right now… we’ve got this massive deviation that’s going on kind of in the markets. You know, we’re so far deviated above the 50, 100, 200-day moving averages. You’re going to correct this,” Roberts said.

The Market Is Getting Dangerously Stretched

Roberts outlined a specific downside scenario for the market. “You’re talking about potentially a corrective action this summer between 6,850 and say 6,900 would not be outside the realm of possibility,” he said, adding that “a 10 to 15% pullback would not be out of the ordinary.” The S&P 500 currently trades around 7,400.

Several momentum indicators support the overheating argument. The S&P 500’s 14-day RSI closed at 75.5 on May 8 and has now remained above the traditional overbought threshold of 70 for more than a week. The Nasdaq-100 has surged 17.35% over the past month alone, while the broader market is up more than 9% in the same stretch.

Roberts also pointed to his own internal overextension gauge for technology stocks, which recently hit 0.93 on a scale capped at 1.0. In his framework, that suggests positioning and momentum have become stretched enough that even strong fundamentals may not prevent a reset.

Why Roberts Is Trimming Mega-Cap Winners

Roberts trimmed Google and Microsoft after their recent strength and rotated proceeds into RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies) and Eli Lilly as defensive candidates. Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) posted Q1 revenue of $109.90B with Google Cloud up 63% YoY, and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) cited an AI run rate of $37 billion, up 123% YoY. Both have been long-term winners and will remain long-term holdings.

Roberts’ defensive picks tell the rotation story. RTX (NYSE:RTX) trades at a forward P/E of 25 after a 13.46% one-month pullback. Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) is down 11.6% YTD even after a Q1 revenue beat of 55.5% YoY.

The Rotation Underneath the Surface

Host Adam Taggart added another layer to the discussion by focusing on how market-cap weighting changes the impact of sector rotation beneath the surface. “Capital shifting from one side to the other is not necessarily a zero-sum game because of the market weighting dynamics,” Taggart said.

If capital rotates out of trillion-dollar technology stocks and into smaller sectors like energy or healthcare, the broader index can still decline even while money remains invested elsewhere in the market. That dynamic creates a more difficult environment for passive index investors because the benchmark itself may weaken despite strength in select sectors. Active managers, meanwhile, gain opportunities to outperform through rotation.

Roberts Sees a Reset, Not a Collapse

Roberts closed by tying the market setup back to the broader economy. “Things for the average American have not gotten a whole lot better, even though the economy is doing better at the headline and the stock market is just going off to the moon,” he said. Other indicators also suggest complacency has returned quickly. The VIX recently fell 33.7% over the past month to 17.08, while the 10Y-2Y Treasury spread sits near the low end of its recent range.

Importantly, Roberts is not calling for the end of the bull market. His argument is that the market may simply need a reset after becoming too stretched too quickly. In that framework, a 10% to 15% pullback would represent a routine correction inside a longer-term uptrend rather than the start of a broader collapse.

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Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) just delivered one of the most impressive quarters in big pharma history, and the stock is responding. After a sharp drawdown in early 2026, shares have rebounded 9.27% over the past month as Mounjaro and Zepbound continue to redefine the obesity and diabetes treatment landscape. Our 24/7 Wall St. price target points to meaningful upside from here.

The 24/7 Wall St. Price Target for Eli Lilly

Our 24/7 Wall St. price target for Eli Lilly is $1,164.85, implying 14.68% upside from the current price of $1,015.75. We rate Lilly a buy with a 90% confidence level, reflecting strong analyst consensus, accelerating earnings, and defensive sector positioning.

Q1 Blowout Resets the Narrative

Lilly’s Q1 2026 earnings report on April 30 was the catalyst the bulls needed. Revenue came in at $19.799 billion, beating consensus by 11.25% and growing 55.55% YoY. Non-GAAP EPS of $8.55 handily beat the $6.79 consensus estimate. Mounjaro alone delivered $8.662 billion (up 125%), and Zepbound added $4.16 billion.

Management raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $82 billion to $85 billion and Non-GAAP EPS to $35.5 to $37. Even after the rally, LLY is still down 5.33% YTD and sits 7% below its 52-week high of $1,132.06, leaving room to run.

Why Bulls See a Breakout Ahead

The bull case rests on Foundayo (orforglipron), Lilly’s newly approved oral GLP-1 pill that requires no food or water restrictions. In a head-to-head trial published in The Lancet, orforglipron beat oral semaglutide on blood sugar and weight loss. Retatrutide, Lilly’s triple agonist, hit its Phase 3 endpoints in T2D. Add Mounjaro’s China NRDL inclusion driving 81% rest-of-world growth, and bulls have a clear path higher.

The consensus analyst target sits at $1,209.14 with 24 Buy ratings. Our bull case scenario sees LLY reaching $1,227.11 over the next 12 months, a 20.81% total return.

The Risks Worth Watching

The bear case starts with pricing. Realized prices fell 13% in Q1 as Zepbound cash pay prices dropped and China reimbursement compressed international margins. Lilly also took $584 million in IPR&D charges and $279 million in litigation and restructuring. Revenue concentration in the incretin franchise remains the central risk, and prediction markets price the federal government taking a stake at just 19%, suggesting policy noise will persist.

That said, bulls would counter that the IPR&D charge is actually down from $1.6 billion a year ago, and that 65% volume growth more than offset price declines. Our bear case lands at $982.92, a 3.23% decline.

Our Take on Lilly From Here

The price target of $1,164.85 and buy rating reflect 90% confidence in Lilly’s earnings trajectory. The tipping factor is Foundayo: an oral GLP-1 that opens a massive new patient pool without the friction of injection.

The setup looks more constructive if Foundayo’s commercial launch tracks ahead of expectations and Mounjaro keeps compounding internationally. The thesis weakens if pricing pressure accelerates beyond the 13% realized-price decline. On balance, the risk/reward skews favorably.

Looking further ahead, here is where our model projects Lilly could trade in the coming years, assuming current growth trajectories hold.

These projections assume Lilly continues executing on its GLP-1 franchise and pipeline. Significant upside could come from retatrutide approval; downside risk centers on biosimilar competition late in the decade.

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Few stocks have polarized investors in 2026 like Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY). After a stunning Q1 earnings report and raised full-year guidance, the question is whether the valuation has run ahead of fundamentals. Here is where I land on the $1,000 debate.

The 24/7 Wall St. Price Target for Eli Lilly

Eli Lilly trades at $948.45 as of writing. Our 24/7 Wall St. price target is $1,085 over the next 12 months, implying roughly 14.3% upside. The recommendation is buy with a confidence level of 70%. Management raised guidance, Mounjaro is now the best-selling drug globally, and Foundayo opened a new oral-GLP-1 chapter.

From $640 Lows to a Blowout Q1

Lilly is up 26.43% over the past year and 424.27% over five years, but down 9.13% year to date after peaking near the $1,132.06 52-week high. Q1 2026 reset the narrative. Revenue came in at $19.80 billion, up 55.5% year over year, and non-GAAP EPS of $8.55 beat consensus by $6.79. Mounjaro delivered $8.66 billion, overtaking Merck (NYSE:MRK)’s Keytruda as the world’s top-selling drug. Shares jumped 9.8% on the report and added another 4.32% in the week since.

Why Bulls See a Breakout Toward $1,230

The bull case is straightforward. Cantor Fitzgerald lifted its target to $1,230 with an Overweight rating, citing Mounjaro demand and Foundayo momentum. Foundayo, the only oral GLP-1 dosable any time without food or water, reached 20,000 patients with 80% of scripts from new-to-class users. Barclays has raised the price target to $1,400 with an Overweight rating. 

Retatrutide’s Phase 3 readout delivered 11.1 to 16.6 kilograms weight loss, with a full consumer campaign set for Q3. International revenue is growing 81%. If Foundayo inflects in 2027 and retatrutide adds a second leg, $1,230 looks reachable.

The Risks Worth Watching

The bear case starts with concentration. Mounjaro plus Zepbound generated roughly $12.8 billion of the $19.80 billion Q1 total, and pricing is eroding. Realized prices fell 13%, with full-year price headwinds guided to low to mid-teens.

Lilly Endowment recently sold 15,828 shares near $995, and a Form 144 disclosed a 300,000-share proposed sale. Bulls counter that the $584 million IPR&D charge and $279 million in restructuring costs are non-recurring, and 65% volume growth proves elasticity offsets price. A bear scenario targets roughly $820, a 24 forward multiple on guidance’s low end.

The Bottom Line: Mind the Pricing Curve

Our price target is $1,085 with a buy recommendation and 70% confidence. The deciding factor is raised guidance: management lifted the revenue range to $82 billion to $85 billion after one quarter, with Foundayo contribution still ahead. The thesis strengthens if the next two quarters confirm Foundayo’s payer access translates into prescription velocity. The setup weakens if pricing concessions deepen beyond mid-teens or pharma tariffs materialize in 2026 guidance.

Our model projects Lilly’s trajectory assuming current growth and gradual multiple compression as the GLP-1 franchise matures.

These projections assume Lilly executes on Foundayo, retatrutide, and international expansion. Significant upside or downside could result from biosimilar entry or breakthrough data from competitors like Novo Nordisk and Structure Therapeutics.

The post Eli Lilly Price Prediction: This Is Where The Stock Will End This Year appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

The market adage “Sell in May and Go Away” rarely fits a single name cleanly. Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) is an unusual exception this spring. The GLP-1 leader has ripped higher off its post-earnings lows yet remains underwater for the year, an asymmetric setup that draws seasonal traders toward a tactical trim.

The Setup: A Relief Bounce Into a Weak Window

Lilly closed Monday at $966.99, up 2.9% over the past month and 31.6% over the past year, yet still down 10.0% year to date. That mismatch between a hot tape and a red YTD line is exactly what the “Sell in May” crowd hunts for.

The catalyst was a blowout Q1 report. Revenue hit $19.799 billion, growing 55.55% year over year, with non-GAAP EPS of $8.55 beating consensus by 25.88%. Mounjaro delivered $8.662 billion (+125%) and Zepbound added $4.160 billion (+80%). Management raised full-year revenue guidance to $82.0 billion to $85.0 billion.

One Reddit summary captured the mood: “Even with lower prices, demand keeps ripping.” Sentiment spiked to 85 (very bullish) on April 30, then faded to neutral within 72 hours, a classic relief-bounce signature.

Why the Trim Case Has Teeth

Realized prices fell 13% even as volume jumped 65%, a margin headwind that worsens with the Mounjaro NRDL listing in China and Zepbound cash-pay cuts. Drug pricing rhetoric tends to flare through summer political cycles. The franchise is concentrated, valuation is rich at a 34 P/E, and the Lilly Endowment disposed of 15,828 shares on May 6 near $995.

The Counter: Don’t Sell the Compounder

CEO David Ricks described the pipeline this way: “Foundayo will meaningfully expand the number of people who can benefit from GLP-1s.” Orforglipron beat oral semaglutide head to head in The Lancet, retatrutide is advancing, and four acquisitions deepen the bench. Four directors have systematically added shares at $1,036.05, $989.12, and $919.90. The analyst consensus target stands at $1,209.14 with 24 Buy, six Hold, and one Sell ratings.

How Long-Term Holders Might Frame It

Research-oriented frameworks suggest trimming a slice of the recent bounce while keeping the core position intact, using covered calls to monetize elevated post-rally volatility, mapping a re-entry zone near the 200-day moving average or the prior base, and applying stop-loss discipline rather than a full exit. This is a cleaner seasonal trim case than most mega-cap compounders, but selling a category-defining franchise on a calendar effect rarely ages well. The bounce offers room for tactical positioning while preserving core franchise exposure. Keep an eye on the stock heading into the December 7, 2026, Investment Community Meeting.

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Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) and Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) recently reported quarterly results that read like two scripts from opposite ends of pharma. Lilly posted 55.55% revenue growth from a position of strength. Pfizer is still rebuilding from the COVID cliff. Their M&A playbooks tell the story.

Blowout Quarter Meets a Methodical Rebuild

Lilly’s Q1 2026 revenue hit $19.799 billion, adjusted EPS came in at $8.55 against a $6.79 estimate, and management raised full-year revenue guidance to $82.0 billion to $85.0 billion. Mounjaro alone produced $8.662 billion, up 125%, and Zepbound added $4.160 billion. CEO David Ricks framed it bluntly: “2026 is off to a strong start…we also delivered pipeline progress across all four therapeutic areas and continued investing in Lilly’s future growth through four acquisitions.”

Pfizer’s Q4 2025, by contrast, was a fix-the-foundation quarter. Revenue of $17.56 billion slipped 1.2% year over year, but the non-COVID portfolio grew 9% operationally. Eliquis, Vyndaqel, and Prevnar each posted roughly 10% growth. Comirnaty fell 33% and Paxlovid 70%, exactly the hole Albert Bourla is trying to plug.

Offensive Bolt-Ons Versus Defensive Big Bets

Lilly is buying capability from strength: AI drug discovery via Insilico’s Pharma.AI platform, plus an Nvidia AI co-innovation lab. Pfizer is buying revenue replacement, having entered obesity only after losing the Metsera bidding battle with Novo Nordisk and discontinuing its own oral GLP-1 danuglipron.

The Patent Cliff Decides Who Wins

The industry faces 190+ products losing exclusivity and over $300 billion in sales at risk by 2030. Pfizer’s own $1.5 billion loss-of-exclusivity hit in 2026 and 2026 EPS guide of $2.80 to $3.00 show the pressure. Vyndamax extension to 2031 and the recent Veppanu approval buy time. Lilly’s Foundayo FDA approval, the only anytime oral GLP-1, plus retatrutide Phase 3 wins extend the franchise well past the cliff.

Why Lilly Looks Stronger for a Retirement Portfolio Today

For a retirement-focused investor, the obvious temptation is Pfizer’s 6.7% yield and 3.1% year-to-date gain. But on the fundamentals, Lilly screens stronger by a wide margin. Pfizer’s M&A is reactive. Lilly’s is compounding. Lilly stock is down 11.8% year to date despite a guidance raise, which can be seen as an entry point. Polymarket traders priced a 100% probability of Lilly beating its $7.00 Q1 threshold, and the company delivered $8.55. It is better to pay 34 times earnings for the company writing the next decade’s playbook than nine times for one still patching the last one. If Mounjaro pricing in China collapses faster than expected, this may be worth a revisit. Until then, Lilly appears to be the stronger long-term franchise.

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Investors are concerned about where the stock market is headed this year. While the S&P 500 has maintained upward momentum, the narrative has shifted toward significant sector dispersion. If you are worried about economic uncertainties, focusing on businesses with massive infrastructure investments and clear growth moats can help you navigate the risk of a late-year downturn.

The S&P 500 is currently tracking toward a 12% annual rally target, but megacap earnings power is doing most of the heavy lifting. Building a portfolio that continues to beat the market means choosing businesses with strong fundamentals and significant manufacturing or technological advantages. Here are three businesses that are currently outperforming the broader index.

Eli Lilly

One solid healthcare business for investors navigating a choppy market is Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY | LLY Price Prediction). The company reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $19.8 billion, a 56% jump driven by a 65% increase in volume. Within that total, Mounjaro generated $8.7 billion and Zepbound added $4.2 billion, representing year-over-year gains of 125% and 80%, respectively. Lilly also posted non-GAAP EPS of $8.55, well above analyst expectations, and raised its full-year 2026 revenue guidance by $2 billion to a range of $82 billion to $85 billion.

Lilly’s growth story reaches well beyond its current lineup. The company recently announced an additional $4.5 billion investment in its Indiana manufacturing sites to meet global demand for Foundayo and Zepbound. On the pipeline front, the drug Omvoh showed four-year durable clearance in ulcerative colitis trials, reinforcing Lilly’s position as a long-term compounder. Meanwhile, Foundayo, the newly approved oral GLP-1 pill for weight management, received a broad pharmacy rollout in April and is available on more than 12 major telehealth platforms.

The stock is trading within range of its 52-week high of $1,133, leading some observers to speculate that a split could be on the horizon. With management scaling manufacturing and raising full-year targets, Lilly remains a top-tier conviction pick for 2026.

Chevron Corporation

Chevron (NYSE:CVX) is proving to be a cash-flow powerhouse in the current environment. While crude oil price fluctuations often dominate short-term sentiment, Chevron has stayed focused on production volume, averaging approximately 3.86 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in Q1 2026. Worldwide production rose 15% year over year, with U.S. output surging 24% and exceeding 2 million barrels per day for the third consecutive quarter, thanks in large part to the integration of legacy Hess assets and continued Permian Basin growth.

Chevron’s commitment to shareholder returns is well established. The company raised its quarterly dividend to $1.78 per share, marking 39 consecutive years of annual dividend increases and cementing its Dividend Aristocrat status. Management is on track to deliver $3 billion to $4 billion in structural cost reductions by year-end, with over 60% of those savings coming from durable efficiency gains rather than one-time cuts. In Q1 alone, Chevron returned $6 billion in cash to shareholders through $2.5 billion in repurchases and $3.5 billion in dividends.

With operations spanning Asia, the Americas, and Africa, Chevron carries less exposure to specific regional conflicts than many peers. Its limited Middle East footprint (less than 5% of total production) gave it a meaningful buffer when geopolitical disruptions tightened global crude supply during the quarter. That structural stability makes it a reliable anchor for any market-beating portfolio.

Alphabet

Tech giant Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL | GOOGL Price Prediction) has largely put to rest the concerns that it arrived late to the AI race. Google Cloud revenue surged 63% in Q1 2026 to $20 billion, with a backlog of $460 billion in committed sales already secured. Total company revenue reached $109.9 billion for the quarter, up 22% year over year, and Alphabet’s operating income climbed 30% to $39.7 billion, reflecting a 36% margin. The stock has gained roughly 87% over the past year, recovering sharply off its 52-week low of $184.

Beyond search and cloud, Alphabet continues to broaden its AI presence into security and scientific research. The $32 billion acquisition of cybersecurity firm Wiz closed in early 2026 and is now integrated within Google Cloud, strengthening the company’s enterprise security offerings. Additionally, subsidiary Isomorphic Labs secured a $2.1 billion funding round to deploy AlphaFold for drug discovery, creating high-value synergies in the biotech space.

Alphabet updated its full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance to a range of $180 billion to $190 billion, reflecting both organic AI infrastructure buildout and the inclusion of the Intersect data-center acquisition that closed in March. Management expects 2027 capex to increase further, signaling long-term conviction in its AI infrastructure lead. For investors with patience, the combination of dominant search economics, accelerating cloud growth, and a deepening AI moat provides a compelling multi-year growth thesis.

Editor’s note: This update corrects Chevron’s dividend growth streak from 38 to 39 consecutive years of annual increases, refreshes Alphabet’s year-over-year stock gain to approximately 87% based on current 52-week data, adds Chevron’s confirmed Q1 2026 worldwide production figure of approximately 3.86 million boe/d, incorporates Eli Lilly’s raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance of $82 billion to $85 billion along with individual product revenue for Mounjaro and Zepbound, and adds context on Alphabet’s $32 billion Wiz acquisition now integrated within Google Cloud and its updated full-year capex range of $180 billion to $190 billion.

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Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) received another bullish call from Wall Street. Barclays analyst Emily Field raised her price target on Eli Lilly stock to $1,400 from $1,350 and reiterated an Overweight rating, citing tirzepatide momentum that “takes focus back to the big picture.” The firm also lifted its estimates following the company’s Q1 2026 report.

For long-term investors, the price target raised by Barclays signals that the multi-year GLP-1 thesis remains intact, even as quarter-to-quarter pricing noise persists. The call lands on the heels of a blowout earnings beat and raised full-year guidance.

The Analyst’s Case

Field’s “big picture” framing centers on tirzepatide, the active ingredient powering Mounjaro and Zepbound. Eli Lilly’s Q1 2026 revenue jumped 56% year over year (YoY) to $19.8 billion, beating consensus by 11%, while non-GAAP EPS of $8.55 topped the $6.79 estimate by 26%.

Mounjaro delivered $8.66 billion (up 125% YoY) on international expansion, and Zepbound contributed $4.16 billion in U.S. sales (up 80%). The franchise drove a 65% volume increase, offsetting a 13% drop in realized prices.

Company Snapshot

Eli Lilly is an Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical company whose products are sold in approximately 125 countries. CEO David A. Ricks raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $82 billion to $85 billion and non-GAAP EPS guidance to $35.50 to $37.

Beyond tirzepatide, the FDA approved Foundayo (orforglipron), the only GLP-1 pill that can be taken any time of day without food or water restrictions. Retatrutide, Eli Lilly’s triple-hormone agonist, also posted strong Phase 3 results in type 2 diabetes.

Why the Move Matters Now

Eli Lilly stock closed at $978.46 on May 4, leaving the new $1,400 target well above current levels. The shares carry a P/E ratio of 34x and a forward P/E ratio of 28x, with a consensus analyst target of $1,202.17.

The “big picture” thesis encompasses indication expansion into cardiovascular, sleep apnea, and MASH, oral GLP-1 scaling, and a pipeline strengthened by four announced acquisitions across cell therapy, sleep-wake disorders, in vivo CAR-T, and myelofibrosis. Rival Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) shares are down roughly 33% over the past year, underscoring Eli Lilly’s widening competitive lead in GLP-1s.

What It Means for Your Portfolio

The bulls point to 56% revenue growth, raised guidance, and a deepening pipeline that could carry growth well past the GLP-1 patent cliff in the 2030s. The bear case includes payer pricing pressure, compounded GLP-1 competition, manufacturing capacity questions, and concentration risk in the tirzepatide franchise.

Eli Lilly stock has returned 409% over five years, though it’s down about 9% year to date (YTD). For prudent investors, Barclays’ refreshed target reinforces the long-term story, though moderate position sizing remains sensible given near-term volatility.

Keep an eye on Eli Lilly stock as Foundayo launch metrics, retatrutide obesity readouts, and the Medicare bridge program activation unfold through the second half of the year. These catalysts could shape sentiment around the Barclays thesis into 2027.

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The hosts of Morning Brew Daily made a simple argument on a recent episode that the idea of the “Ozempic economy” should be replaced with the “Mounjaro economy” now that Eli Lilly is controlling 60% of the GLP-1 market. Lilly’s Q1 2026 earnings report backs that up.

Lilly’s Dominance, by the Numbers

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) reported Q1 2026 revenue of $19.80 billion, up 55.5% year over year, with non-GAAP EPS of $8.55 versus a $6.79 consensus. Net income of $7.40 billion roughly doubled, and management raised full-year revenue guidance to $82.0 billion to $85.0 billion.

The two engines:

• Mounjaro: $8.66 billion in quarterly revenue, up 125%, fueled by international expansion, including the addition to China’s National Reimbursed Drug List.
• Zepbound: $4.16 billion in U.S. revenue, up 80%.

Volume across the business climbed 65%, even as realized prices fell 13% on rebates and access deals. The 8-K filing details the full breakdown.

Foundayo (orforglipron) Is Widening the Lead

The new oral GLP-1 pill, referred to as Foundayo (orforglipron) on the segment, launched fast. There were 20,000 prescriptions in the first 20 days, with 80% of those patients new to GLP-1s. That last figure is the one investors should sit with. Lilly is expanding the category itself, drawing in new patients in addition to market share gains from injectable rivals. With roughly 1 in 10 Americans now on GLP-1 medications, the addressable population is still expanding.

CEO David Ricks framed Foundayo as a tool that “will meaningfully expand the number of people who can benefit from GLP-1s.”

The Ripple Effects: Hershey Adapts

Hershey (NYSE:HSY) offered the cleanest corporate signal that legacy food brands are adjusting. Hershey management has described chocolate as “an emotional category” and “a treat, not a meal,” arguing core confections are insulated. The growth, however, is showing up at the edges of the portfolio: protein bars (a response to GLP-1 muscle loss), Ice Breakers mints, and smaller ice cream portions tied to side-effect management.

Q1 2026 revenue rose 10.65% to $3.10 billion, with North America Salty Snacks up 26.0%. Adjusted EPS of $2.35 beat the $2.05 estimate. Hershey shares are still working through a tougher stretch, down 10.65% over the past month.

What to Watch

Polymarket traders currently price a 23.5% probability that the FDA approves retatrutide in 2026, suggesting Lilly’s near-term growth still rides on Mounjaro, Zepbound, and Orforglipron. With Orforglipron onboarding thousands of new patients weekly, the second-order effects across protein, portions, and snacking categories are only beginning to register.

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Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) just delivered one of the strongest first quarters in big pharma history, but shares have pulled back sharply from their February peak. That gap between operating performance and stock price is where our model sees opportunity.

Our 24/7 Wall St. price target for Eli Lilly is $1,133.12 over the next 12 months, implying 21.24% upside from the current price of $934.60. Our recommendation is buy with a 90% confidence rating, our highest tier.

24/7 Wall St. Price Target Summary

From $1,062 Peak to a Buyable Pullback

Lilly is down 12.89% year to date after peaking near $1,062 in December 2025, yet shares jumped 9.8% on April 30 following a blockbuster Q1 earnings report.

Revenue hit $19.80 billion, beating estimates by 11.25% and growing 55.5% year over year. Non-GAAP EPS came in at $8.55 versus a $6.79 consensus, a 25.88% beat. Mounjaro alone generated $8.66 billion (up 125%), and Zepbound added $4.16 billion (up 80%). Lilly raised full-year revenue guidance to $82 billion to $85 billion and EPS guidance to $35.5 to $37.

The Case for $1,219 and Higher

Bulls have plenty of fuel. CEO David Ricks called out “the U.S. FDA approval of Foundayo, the only approved GLP-1 pill that can be taken any time of day, without food and water restrictions.” An oral GLP-1 dramatically expands the addressable obesity market beyond injectables.

Retatrutide Phase 3 data showed significant A1C and weight reductions in type 2 diabetes, and Mounjaro joined China’s National Reimbursed Drug List. Four announced acquisitions (Orna, Centessa, Kelonia, Ajax) extend the pipeline into cell therapy and CAR-T.

Our bull-case scenario takes shares to $1,219.94, a 30.53% total return. Analyst consensus already sits at $1,202.34 with 24 buy ratings against one sell.

The Risks Worth Watching

Realized prices fell 13% in Q1 as rebates and access agreements bit into Mounjaro and Zepbound economics. China NRDL inclusion, while expanding volume, compresses international price per dose. Lilly also booked $584 million in acquired IPR&D charges and $279 million in litigation-related charges this quarter.

Bulls would counter that volume grew 65%, more than offsetting price declines, and IPR&D charges reflect investment in tomorrow’s pipeline rather than core profit erosion. Still, revenue concentration in two GLP-1 products and looming biosimilar competition justify caution. Our bear case lands at $960.71, only 2.79% above today.

Bottom Line

The 24/7 Wall St. price target of $1,133.12 with a buy rating and 90% confidence reflects a rare setup: a mega-cap compounding earnings above 50% while shares trade 12.89% below where they started the year.

The bull thesis hinges on whether Foundayo can scale the GLP-1 category beyond injection-comfortable patients. The bear thesis centers on rebate pressure compressing gross margins faster than volume growth offsets. The risk-reward skews favorable based on our model.

Eli Lilly Price Prediction 2026-2030

Looking further ahead, here is where our 24/7 Wall St. price target model projects Lilly could trade in coming years, assuming current growth trajectories and margin guidance hold.

These projections assume Lilly continues executing on Foundayo, retatrutide, and pipeline acquisitions. Significant upside or downside could come from oral GLP-1 share gains, biosimilar timing, or further pricing concessions in major markets.

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I keep buying Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY), and the latest quarter just made it harder to stop. This is a confession of conviction. I have been adding through every dip in 2026, and the most recent earnings report told me the thesis is accelerating.

What pulls me back to the buy button is simple. Lilly sits at the center of the largest therapeutic shift in modern medicine, the GLP-1 build-out for diabetes and obesity, and it is the only company with a metabolic franchise this deep, this fast-growing, and this defensible.

When CEO David Ricks said “2026 is off to a strong start” and that Foundayo “will meaningfully expand the number of people who can benefit from GLP-1s,” I read that as the next leg of compounding starting.

The data behind the conviction

Reason one is the growth engine. Q1 2026 revenue came in at $19.80 billion, up 55.5% year over year, with non-GAAP EPS of $8.55 against a $6.79 consensus.

Mounjaro printed $8.662 billion, up 125%, and Zepbound delivered $4.160 billion, up 80%. Management raised full-year guidance to $82 billion to $85 billion in revenue and $35.5 to $37 in non-GAAP EPS. Companies this size do not grow this fast by accident.

Reason two is the dividend record. The quarterly payout climbed from $1.30 in 2024 to $1.50 across 2025 and then $1.73 in Q1 2026. Annual dividends went from $2.08 in 2017 to $6 in 2025. That is the kind of compounding I want sitting in a retirement account for a decade.

Reason three is the pipeline and insider conviction. Foundayo, the only approved GLP-1 pill with no food or water restrictions, opens an oral market Ricks pegs at “over 1 billion people around the world with obesity and related conditions.” Behind it sit retatrutide, Jaypirca, Ebglyss, Kisunla, and four announced acquisitions. Then on February 9, 2026, CEO Ricks bought 38,913 shares at $1,044.67, alongside more than a dozen other executives. Four directors have kept buying in February, March, and April 2026. That is the clearest signal I track.

The honest risk

Pricing is the real concern. Realized prices fell 13% in Q1, gross margin slipped to 82.6%, and the Mounjaro NRDL addition in China compresses international economics. Revenue concentration in two products is a genuine vulnerability. The reason it has not changed my thesis is volume.

The business posted 65% volume growth, and Ricks framed it plainly: “Pretty much every time we reduce pricing, we see a pretty large expansion.” Lower price, far more patients, more durable franchise.

Why the buy button stays active

The stock is down 10.21% year to date while the underlying business compounds at over 50% growth. Five-year return: 453.87%. Ten-year return: 1391.89%.

Analyst consensus sits at $1,202.17 with 24 buy ratings against one sell. I am buying a dividend grower with the strongest pipeline in pharma at a price the market has rerated lower while the fundamentals rerated higher. That gap is the gift, and I plan to keep taking it.

The post This Pharma Stock Keeps Earning My Money, Here’s Why appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Growth investors picking a large-cap vehicle in 2026 face a real choice: pay nothing for a passive index, or pay a few basis points for an active manager who claims to add value. The Fidelity Enhanced Large Cap Growth ETF (NYSEARCA:FELG) sits squarely in that second camp, charging 0.18% for an actively managed take on the Russell 1000 Growth universe. The pitch is straightforward: index-like cost, with quantitative tilts intended to beat the benchmark over time.

Whether that pitch holds up depends on what an investor is actually buying, and what they could have owned instead.

The Job FELG Is Hired To Do

FELG is built to fill the large-cap growth sleeve of a portfolio. That is the slice meant to capture the earnings power of America’s biggest secular winners: the megacap technology platforms, the AI infrastructure complex, and a handful of healthcare and consumer names riding durable demand curves. The return engine is straightforward equity ownership, not options income or leverage. Investors get paid when underlying companies grow earnings and the market rerates them higher.

The “enhanced” label means Fidelity’s quant team adjusts weights around the index using factor signals, looking to add a modest spread above the Russell 1000 Growth benchmark while keeping tracking error contained. It is closet-active rather than concentrated stock-picking.

The portfolio reflects exactly what you would expect. NVIDIA sits at roughly 13% of net assets, Apple at about 12%, and Microsoft at 10%. Those three names alone account for 34.27% of the fund.

Round out the top ten with Broadcom near 5%, Amazon and Meta around 4% each, the two Alphabet share classes combining for about 7%, Eli Lilly near 3%, and Tesla near 3%, and you have a portfolio whose fate is decided by roughly a dozen stocks.

Does The Active Tilt Pay Off?

This is where the math gets uncomfortable. Over the past year, FELG returned 31.4%, with shares finishing at around $42. That edged past the S&P 500’s 29.04% over the same window, which is what a growth tilt should do in a rising market.

The harder comparison is QQQ, the obvious passive alternative for an investor who wants megacap growth exposure. The NASDAQ-100 ETF returned 39.96% over the past year and 9.74% year-to-date, while FELG managed just 1.91% YTD.

The one-month rebound was also softer: 12.09% for FELG versus 15.38% for QQQ.

The enhanced overlay is producing a return profile that beats the broad market but lags the most direct passive growth competitor. For some investors, that tradeoff is acceptable in exchange for slightly broader diversification (the Russell 1000 Growth holds more names than the Nasdaq 100, including Eli Lilly and other non-Nasdaq listings). For others, paying 18 basis points to underperform QQQ is a hard sell.

What You Accept When You Buy It

1. Concentration risk dressed as diversification. Owning 200-plus stocks sounds diversified, but with the top three names at 34.27% of assets, a bad quarter at NVIDIA, Apple, or Microsoft moves the whole fund.
2. Rate sensitivity. Growth multiples compress when discount rates rise. With the 10-year Treasury at 4.4%, sitting in the 84th percentile of its 12-month range, the valuation tailwind that lifted these names through 2024 has thinned considerably.
3. Active management that has not yet justified its fee. The enhanced strategy is supposed to add value over a full cycle. Through this cycle, it has trailed the cheapest passive alternative most growth investors would consider.

FELG fits best as a core growth holding for investors who want broader large-cap growth exposure than QQQ provides and trust Fidelity’s quant overlay to earn its 18 basis points over a full cycle; the primary risk is that megacap concentration and a 4.4% discount-rate backdrop punish growth multiples before that overlay has a chance to prove itself.

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CNBC’s Fast Money panel recently made a notable pivot on its April 24 episode, arguing that Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) now offers a more compelling setup than GLP-1 category leader Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) after a peak-to-current decline of roughly 68% from Novo’s mid-2024 high near $127 to recent levels near $40.

The Catalyst: A Soft Launch for Lilly’s Oral Pill

The pivot was triggered by early prescription data on Lilly’s newly approved oral GLP-1, Fendayo. The pill drew about 3,700 prescriptions in its second week, while Novo’s competing oral offering posted over 18,000 prescriptions in a comparable window. Lilly’s quarter was otherwise overpowering. Q1 2026 revenue hit $19.80 billion with EPS of $8.55, and management raised full-year revenue guidance to $82.0–$85.0 billion. CEO David Ricks called Foundayo’s approval “a key milestone.”

The Valuation Reset

A panelist on the show, named Karen, who bought Novo shares the day of the segment, framed the math directly. Despite Lilly’s years of outperformance, “in 2026, a dollar in each at December 31st is now worth exactly the same, $0.82.” Year-to-date, NVO is down 18.08% while LLY is down 20.66%. Even though both have seem similar price performance, the multiples look very different, with Novo trading at roughly 12x earnings, while Lilly sits closer to 26x.

That discount reflects weaker near-term expectations, with Novo guiding for -5% to -13% sales growth in 2026 after posting 10% constant-currency growth in 2025. One caller pushed back, arguing that Novo still has “time on its side” given its leadership in the GLP-1 market. But he framed the opportunity more as a trade than a true turnaround, suggesting this could be a short-term catch-up rather than a sustained re-rating.

The Dividend Yield Angle

One panelist framed Novo as a “get paid to wait” story, pointing to a projected 6.5%+ free cash flow yield in 2027 alongside a roughly 4% dividend yield. For investors focused on returns rather than momentum, those numbers stand out. Lilly offers a very different profile. The stock still trades at a premium multiple, with a P/E closer to 38x, and relies more heavily on continued growth execution to justify that valuation.

The Bigger Picture

The backdrop helps explain why this debate is happening now. Over the past three years, Lilly has massively outperformed, turning $1 into $2.30, while Novo fell to just $0.48 over the same period. That gap created the conditions for today’s setup. Now, the performance is starting to converge, and investors are asking whether valuation should follow.

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The S&P 500 (^GSPC) is off to the races this morning, up 0.50% thanks to tailwinds from mega-cap earnings beats and a sharp pullback in oil prices, even as the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge ran hotter than expected. The broader markets are seeing the glass half full, pushing the S&P 500 (^GSPC) to a gain of 8.5% for the month if today’s performance holds.

A key Fed inflation gauge climbed 0.7% in March, the sharpest monthly jump in years, pushing the annual rate to 3.5% as gas prices drove costs further from the Fed’s 2% target.  Q1 GDP came in at 2%, missing the 2.2% estimate but better than originally thought. Lower oil eases the inflation glide path the Fed needs to keep rate-cut optionality alive. The FOMC held the funds rate at 3.5% to 3.75% Wednesday, but the 8-4 dissent was the widest split since October 1992. The 10-year Treasury yield is anchored near 4.4%, giving equity multiples room to breathe.

Big Tech earnings reshuffle the leaderboard

Four of the Magnificent Seven reported after Wednesday’s close, and Wall Street is responding today with a series of moves.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) beat estimates with Q1 EPS of $5.11 versus $2.63 expected and Google Cloud revenue up 63%, with backlog nearly doubling to $460 billion. Shares rose to about $375 after hours.

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) delivered AWS growth of 28%, the fastest in 15 quarters, sending shares up roughly 3% before the bell.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) beat on EPS and reported its AI business at a $37 billion annual run rate, up 123% year-over-year, but shares slipped about 2% on softer revenue guidance.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) was the laggard, down 9% pre-market after raising 2026 capex guidance to $125 to $145 billion, posting a $4.03 billion Reality Labs operating loss, and confirming a long-dated investment-grade debt sale.

In response: . Morgan Stanley held Overweight on Microsoft, Bank of America reiterated Buy on Amazon with a price target raise to $310, and JPMorgan lifted its Alphabet target to $460 while maintaining Overweight. Meta drew the most attention. JPMorgan downgraded the stock to Neutral from Overweight, though Wells Fargo held its Overweight and kept the faith. Bank of America reiterated Buy on Nvidia with a $300 target, and Oppenheimer initiated Palantir at Outperform with a $200 price target.

Pharma and industrials broaden the rally

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) reported 56% revenue growth to $19.8 billion, with Mounjaro up 125% and Zepbound up 80%; full-year sales guidance was lifted by $2 billion. Merck (NYSE:MRK) topped estimates on Keytruda strength and narrowed its sales range to $65.8 to $67.0 billion, though a $9 billion Cidara charge drove a GAAP loss.

Separately, Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) climbed 5% pre-market on 22% revenue growth, with Power Generation sales up 41% on data center demand. The company also trimmed its full-year tariff hit projection to $2.2 to $2.4 billion.

Oil reversal collides with hot inflation

Brent crude reversed lower after touching a four-year high near $138 on April 7, easing back to $110 to $114 range as Iran risk premium cools. WTI sits around $100, well off its $114.58 peak. The relief comes against a hot March PCE report: headline inflation rose to 3.5% year-over-year, the highest since August 2023, with core PCE at 3.2%, fueled by an 11.6% monthly jump in energy.

What to watch from here

The VIX sits near 17.8, well below the 31 reading from late March, suggesting markets are absorbing the inflation surprise without panic hedging. The 10-year Treasury at 4.4% remains the swing factor against rich tech multiples. Watch Apple’s report tonight and any fresh Iran headlines that could push oil back up.

What To Watch Next

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) reports after the close, the last Magnificent 7 print of the cycle and the swing factor for whether this rally extends or stalls. Watch the iPhone services line and any commentary on China demand, then track WTI for confirmation that the Iran risk premium keeps deflating

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Alex Karnal, co-founder and CIO of Braidwell, a life sciences investment firm, spent 20 years building and backing biotech companies before declaring on the Invest Like the Best podcast that “2025 was probably the single most exciting year in my entire journey.” The catalyst: GLP-1 medicines. His claim deserves scrutiny because the investment and personal health implications are substantial.

A Trillion-Dollar Claim Worth Examining

Karnal’s argument has two parts. First, the commercial case: “This is a class of medicines that will easily be in excess of $100 billion a year in revenue.” Second, the structural case: GLP-1 adoption is “the first commercial proof that we are ready for what I think we’re gonna look back on in time as a once-in-a-lifetime trillion-dollar revolution in all of public health.” He frames this not as a pharmaceutical success story but as a behavioral shift, with consumers “voting with their feet” to move from reactive disease treatment to proactive health protection.

The structural case is harder to price: GLP-1 adoption as a behavioral shift toward proactive health is a compelling framework, but the timeline and policy environment remain genuinely uncertain.

The Commercial Case Has Real Numbers Behind It

Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) generated combined GLP-1 drug sales of $36.5 billion in 2025, comprising around 56% of the company’s total revenues. Its stock has gained 11% over the past year and an extraordinary 407% over five years. Peer-reviewed research published in 2025 confirmed that GLP-1 medicines “improve outcomes in people with cardiovascular, kidney, liver, arthritis, and sleep apnea disorders” through anti-inflammatory and metabolic pathways, with some benefits occurring independently of weight loss itself.

GLP-1 drugs were designed for blood sugar control in Type 2 diabetics, but their benefits in cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, and metabolic liver disease emerged from trials rather than intent, which is part of what makes the platform so unusual.

Forecast Cuts and Competitive Pressure Complicate the Picture

Karnal’s $100 billion annual revenue floor is credible, but the path there is messier than the podcast framing suggests. Analysts at Jefferies revised down their forecast for the weight-loss market to a peak of $80 billion from an earlier estimate of over $100 billion by the early 2030s. Goldman Sachs pegged global obesity drug sales at $105 billion by 2030, down from earlier forecasts of $130 billion, citing steeper price erosion. The $150 billion figure that Wall Street once treated as a floor has shifted to a 2035 target for some analysts.

The headwinds are specific. Novo Nordisk (NYSE: NVO) stock is down nearly 20% year-to-date and 29% over the past year, hit by a clinical trial setback where its CagriSema drug showed 23% weight loss versus Lilly’s tirzepatide at 25.5%. Medicare coverage for GLP-1 obesity drugs remains unresolved, with major insurers, including CVS, opting out through at least this spring. Semaglutide’s patent expired in India in March 2026, enabling generic competition at steep discounts.

The market’s trajectory depends heavily on policy decisions, patent timelines, and which companies execute best.

Time Horizon Determines Whether This Thesis Works for You

Karnal’s framework is most useful for investors with a long time horizon, specifically those comfortable holding positions for a decade or more. The oral pill format is accelerating adoption: Lilly’s newly approved Foundayo drew 1,390 prescriptions in its first week on the market, removing injection barriers and expanding the addressable population. For a long-term investor, the structural argument that GLP-1s represent a platform for proactive health management rather than a single-indication drug is worth taking seriously.

For investors with shorter time horizons or concentrated positions in a single GLP-1 name, the risks are asymmetric. Novo Nordisk shareholders who held through the CagriSema failure in February 2026 experienced a 15% single-day drop. The competitive dynamics between Lilly and Novo, plus the entry of new competitors, including a major e-commerce platform’s GLP-1 management program and a large pharma company’s monthly-injection candidate in Phase 2b, mean that picking the right company matters as much as picking the right sector.

The Health Stack Framework

Host Patrick O’Shaughnessy introduced the concept of a “Health Stack” during the conversation, borrowing from technology, where “your tech stack is all the various components that you use to create your overall thing.” The framing positions GLP-1 adoption as one layer in a broader individual health optimization strategy, alongside glucose monitoring, cardiovascular screening, and preventive interventions.

For investors, the practical implication is that the GLP-1 opportunity extends well beyond drug manufacturers. Diagnostic companies, delivery platforms, and insurers who figure out coverage structures will all be shaped by the same trend Karnal is describing. His point that “the gap is not necessarily needing more medicines, it’s actually pointing those medicines at the impact that they can have” is an argument for the entire ecosystem around drug delivery and patient adoption, not just the molecules themselves.

What remains contested is the timeline, the winners, and whether the policy environment will accelerate or delay adoption — the scientific foundation is solid, but that alone does not determine who profits or when. Investors who treat GLP-1s as a confirmed trillion-dollar outcome rather than a trillion-dollar opportunity with meaningful execution risk are the ones most likely to be surprised by the volatility already underway.

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This article will be updated throughout the day, so check back often for more daily updates.

The markets are retreating in early morning treading after last week’s record run. With tech stocks pushing the Nasdaq Composite to fresh all-time intraday highs las week, the index is modestly lower to start this week. Over the weekend, the U.S. and Iran ceasefire agreement hit a snag, resulting in the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz. This send oil prices rising, with WTI Crude and Brent Crude both up about 4% as they approach the $100/barrel level once again. With a few exceptions, Big Tech stocks are under pressure, including the likes of Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN). Meanwhile, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) stock is up 1%, buoying the company’s market cap to the $4 trillion level.

Here’s a look at where things stand as of morning trading:

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 49,406 Down 0.08%
Nasdaq Composite: 24,359 Down 0.44%
S&P 500: 7,110 Down 0.21%

Market Movers

Stifel hiked its AMD (Nasdaq: AMD) price target by roughly 14%, moving from $280 to $320, while reaffirming its Buy rating on the chipmaker.

Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE)  is making its biggest AI push yet. According to a report in the WSJ, Adobe is launching a fleet of AI agents designed to automate digital marketing for enterprise clients while locking in partnerships with more than 30 of the most powerful names in tech, including AWS, Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Nvidia.

SanDisk makes its Nasdaq 100 debut today, bumping Atlassian from the index. The addition triggers automatic inclusion in all Nasdaq 100-tracking ETFs. ETFs that follow the Nasdaq 100 like QQQ now include SanDisk as a member.

Strategy dropped $2.54 billion on Bitcoin last week, picking up 34,164 coins at approximately $74,395 each. That brings Michael Saylor’s total haul to 815,061 BTC, purchased at a blended average of around $75,527. To put the stockpile in perspective: Strategy now holds 3.88% of every Bitcoin that can ever be mined.

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Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) and Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO) reported quarterly results in early February, and the gap between them has widened significantly. Lilly’s tirzepatide franchise is accelerating. Novo is cutting jobs, warning of a sales decline, and leaning on a newly launched pill to stabilize its position.

Tirzepatide Pulls Away. Semaglutide Faces the Squeeze.

Lilly’s fourth quarter revenue reached $19.29 billion, up 42.6% year-over-year, powered almost entirely by two products. Mounjaro generated $7.41 billion, up 110%, while Zepbound added $4.26 billion, up 123%.

That growth came despite a realized price headwind: volume expanded 46% while prices slipped. Tirzepatide’s dual GIP/GLP-1 mechanism delivers roughly 20% body weight reduction in trials, compared to approximately 14% for Novo’s Wegovy.

Novo’s picture was the inverse. Q4 revenue declined 7.6% year-over-year, with U.S. operations falling 15%. Full-year sales in DKK grew 6.43%, but operating income slipped 0.53% as costs tightened.

CEO Mike Doustdar acknowledged the difficulty directly: “In 2026, Novo Nordisk will face pricing headwinds in an increasingly competitive market.” Novo cut roughly 9,000 jobs and absorbed approximately $8 billion in one-off charges during 2025.

One Bets on the Pipeline. One Bets on the Pill.

Novo moved first on the oral front. The Wegovy pill launched in January 2026 across 70,000-plus pharmacies and is generating roughly 50,000 weekly prescriptions. Doustdar called early uptake “very encouraging,” and the $149 per month starter dose has drawn patients who were never on the injectable version.

Lilly’s oral candidate orforglipron is submitted for approval in the U.S., Japan, and EU. Phase 3 data showed it outperformed oral semaglutide in a head-to-head trial. Retatrutide, a triple agonist, showed weight loss of up to 71.2 lbs in Phase 3.

Lilly is also building manufacturing at scale: new facilities in Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Europe, with commitments to exceed $50 billion in U.S. manufacturing investment since 2020.

Novo faces structural pricing pressure from its Most Favoured Nations agreement with the U.S. administration and semaglutide patent expiry in select international markets. Its diabetes value market share declined 3.6 percentage points to 30.1%. The company still generates enormous cash flow, but the direction is concerning.

Orforglipron Approval Will Set the Tone for 2026

If Lilly receives orforglipron approval in the U.S. by mid-2026, it enters the oral market with a product that has already beaten oral semaglutide in a head-to-head trial. That would put Novo’s pill under immediate competitive pressure as it builds prescription momentum.

For Novo, the question is whether CagriSema, submitted to the FDA for weight management, can deliver differentiated efficacy data. Watch whether Medicare coverage for obesity drugs opens up, which could add roughly 15 million eligible patients to the market and partially offset pricing headwinds for both companies.

Why Lilly Leads Despite Premium Valuation

Lilly trades at a 27x forward P/E versus Novo’s 11x. That gap is real. But Lilly’s one-year price gain of 27.65% reflects a business executing at a high level, while Novo’s 39.85% one-year decline reflects genuine structural concern. Pricing pressure and patent dynamics are structural headwinds with multi-year implications.

Novo at 11x forward earnings could appeal to value investors willing to wait for CagriSema data or a Medicare coverage catalyst. The dividend yield of 4.88% provides cushion while you wait. For growth investors, Lilly’s pipeline depth, manufacturing buildout, and guidance reflect a business executing at a higher level in this race.

The post Eli Lilly vs. Novo Nordisk: The Obesity Drug Race Has a New Leader appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) just made a quiet move that could reshape how Americans access weight-loss drugs. On April 9, 2026, it announced that its pharmacy unit will stock new GLP-1 weight-loss pill Foundayo at One Medical kiosks and offer same-day home delivery, with plans to expand that access to 4,500 locales by end of 2026. Several companies stand to benefit from this distribution expansion, but their exposure varies considerably.

Five Companies Positioned for the GLP-1 Distribution Boom

Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) makes Foundayo and its injectable counterpart Zepbound (tirzepatide). Lilly sells directly to patients through LillyDirect, and Amazon Pharmacy now serves as a key dispensing partner for that channel. Lilly began selling Foundayo directly to cash-pay customers through LillyDirect at $149 per month for the lowest dose.

CVS Health (NYSE: CVS) operates retail pharmacies, the Caremark pharmacy benefit manager, and Aetna insurance. All three arms touch GLP-1 distribution. Caremark decides formulary status, and CVS retail fills prescriptions.

Novo Nordisk (NYSE: NVO) makes Wegovy and Ozempic, Lilly’s primary competitors in the GLP-1 space. Amazon Pharmacy has been stocking Novo’s Wegovy pill at its kiosks since January, so Novo already has a foothold in this channel, though Lilly’s Foundayo now joins it.

Viking Therapeutics (NASDAQ: VKTX) is developing VK2735, a dual GLP-1/GIP agonist with the same mechanism as Zepbound. It has no approved products yet, but every headline validating the GLP-1 market strengthens the investment case for its pipeline.

How Each Business Is Positioned

Lilly has the most direct exposure. Zepbound generated $4.26 billion in Q4 2025 revenue, up 123% year-over-year. Combined with Mounjaro’s $7.41 billion, the two drugs produced $11.67 billion in a single quarter. Because Amazon Pharmacy is now a dispensing arm for LillyDirect, every prescription filled through that channel flows directly to Lilly’s top line. Lilly’s full-year 2025 revenue reached $65.18 billion, up 44.7% year-over-year, and management guided for $80 billion to $83 billion in 2026 revenue.

Amazon benefits differently. Pharmacy is part of a broader retail and consumer health strategy. Amazon Pharmacy began delivering GLP-1 medications in 2021 and has steadily expanded the service. Same-day delivery now reaches nearly 100 million customers. Foundayo, as a pill requiring no refrigeration, fits the kiosk model. Amazon invested over $4 billion in 2025 to triple its companywide delivery options. The pharmacy business builds Prime stickiness and positions Amazon deeper in healthcare.

CVS operates across the entire GLP-1 supply chain. Caremark processes insurance claims, retail pharmacies fill scripts, and Aetna covers many patients. Same-store prescription volume at CVS grew 9.7% in Q4 2025, an accelerating trend reflecting rising GLP-1 adoption. Pharmacy sub-segment revenue grew 15.2% in Q4 2025 to $31.38 billion. Amazon Pharmacy competes with CVS retail, but Caremark still processes many insurance claims behind the scenes.

Novo Nordisk faces the most competitive pressure. Novo’s U.S. operations declined 15% in Q4 2025 due to lower realized prices and market share losses. The company issued 2026 guidance calling for adjusted sales growth of −5% to −13% at constant exchange rates. Adding Lilly’s Foundayo to the same Amazon kiosks where Wegovy already sits intensifies head-to-head competition.

Viking lacks both approved products and an Amazon Pharmacy relationship. Its lead asset, VK2735, is in Phase 3 trials with over 4,500 patients enrolled. The company benefits indirectly: the more patients who start GLP-1 therapy through accessible channels like Amazon Pharmacy, the larger the eventual market for VK2735 if approved.

What Management Is Saying

Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks: “Entering our 150th year with a deep pipeline and platforms like LillyDirect, we’re positioned to reach more patients than ever and expand our global health impact.”

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy: “With such strong demand for our existing offerings and seminal opportunities like AI, chips, robotics, and low earth orbit satellites, we expect to invest about $200 billion in capital expenditures across Amazon in 2026.” Pharmacy sits within that broader investment thesis around reaching customers faster and more directly.

CVS CEO David Joyner: “From lowering drug prices, to improving navigation of health care, to being the front door of care across our country, we are well positioned to achieve our ambition to be the most trusted health care company in America.”

Novo Nordisk President Mike Doustdar: “In 2026, Novo Nordisk will face pricing headwinds in an increasingly competitive market. However, we are very encouraged by the promising early uptake from the US launch of Wegovy pill.” Lilly and Amazon project expansive growth ambitions, while Novo Nordisk strikes a more cautious tone on pricing and competition.

Viking CEO Brian Lian: “The past year was an exceptional year for Viking marked by rapid progress across our obesity portfolio.” Lian is focused on clinical milestones, not commercial distribution, appropriate for a pre-revenue company.

Who Actually Benefits Most

Lilly is the clearest winner. As mentioned, Amazon Pharmacy is a direct dispensing channel for LillyDirect, meaning Foundayo prescriptions written through Lilly’s platform and fulfilled by Amazon flow straight to Lilly’s revenue. Lilly’s manufacturing expansion, including a $6 billion facility in Alabama and a $3 billion oral medicine facility in Europe, supports that scale. The pill format removes the cold-chain barrier that kept injectable GLP-1s off kiosk shelves.

Amazon benefits meaningfully too. Every Foundayo prescription deepens the healthcare relationship with Prime members, adds recurring revenue, and validates the One Medical kiosk model for future drug categories. CVS benefits from accelerating prescription volume even as Amazon competes for retail share because Caremark’s PBM role keeps it embedded in the claims process. Novo faces the most competitive pressure as Lilly’s pill joins Wegovy in the same Amazon kiosks. Viking remains a longer-term story, with Phase 3 data expected to define its commercial opportunity.

The Bottom Line

The GLP-1 distribution race is expanding beyond traditional pharmacies. Lilly benefits most directly, with Amazon a strong secondary winner. CVS retains its integrated role, Novo faces rising competitive pressure, and Viking watches from the sidelines. Watch Lilly’s manufacturing capacity and Amazon’s kiosk expansion pace as key signals going forward.

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Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) shares are up 5% in Thursday’s session, climbing from $221.25 to $232 as of midday. Multiple independent catalysts are landing simultaneously, each capable of moving the stock on its own.

CEO Andy Jassy’s annual shareholder letter is the primary driver of Amazon stock, but reports of acquisition talks with Globalstar (NASDAQ:GSAT) and a new pharmacy partnership with Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) are adding fuel. The bulls are reacting to a company building infrastructure that competitors can’t easily replicate.

$15 Billion AWS AI Revenue and a $200 Billion Bet

The headline from Jassy’s letter is striking. AWS AI services now carry over $15 billion in annualized revenue, a figure that caught many investors off guard. Jassy also disclosed that Amazon’s internal chip business exceeds $20 billion in value, with custom silicon like Trainium and Graviton growing at triple-digit percentages year over year.

Jassy didn’t shy away from the spending question. Amazon plans approximately $200 billion in capital expenditures for 2026, primarily directed at AI infrastructure. He dismissed concerns about an AI bubble, framing this moment as a “once-in-a-lifetime inflection” and projecting substantial future revenue and free cash flow expansion.

The underlying business backs up that confidence. Amazon’a dull-year 2025 revenue hit $716.92 billion, up 12.38% year over year, while AWS revenue grew 20% to reach $129 billion for the full year. In Q4 2025 alone, AWS posted $35.58 billion in revenue, its fastest growth in 13 quarters at 24% year over year.

Project Kuiper Gets a Boost: The Globalstar Angle

Reports that Amazon is in acquisition talks with Globalstar are drawing serious attention. The potential deal would strengthen Project Kuiper, Amazon’s satellite internet initiative and direct challenger to SpaceX’s Starlink. As we explored in Amazon Is Ready to Take on Starlink in Space-Based Broadband, the company has been quietly building out low-earth-orbit capacity with serious intent.

Acquiring Globalstar’s satellite infrastructure would allow Amazon to internalize capacity rather than depend on third-party providers. That’s consistent with Jassy’s broader theme: own the stack, control the cost curve, and build moats competitors can’t replicate. Amazon’s Q1 guidance already bakes in roughly $1 billion in higher Amazon Leo satellite costs year over year, signaling that this buildout is accelerating regardless of the Globalstar outcome.

Amazon Pharmacy Enters the GLP-1 Race

Amazon Pharmacy announced it will offer Eli Lilly’s newly approved oral GLP-1 weight loss pill, Foundayo, with same-day delivery. The service is available in nearly 3,000 cities now, with plans to expand to 4,500 locales by year-end. Unlike injectable alternatives, Foundayo doesn’t require refrigeration, making it well-suited for Amazon’s logistics network.

The pricing is designed to remove friction: as low as $1 per day with insurance, or $5 per day cash pay. Amazon Pharmacy will also offer Foundayo at kiosks inside One Medical primary care clinics, deepening the healthcare ecosystem Amazon has been assembling. The GLP-1 market is enormous, and same-day delivery of an oral weight loss medication is a genuine differentiator.

What Analysts Are Saying

Wells Fargo maintains an Overweight rating on AMZN stock with a price target of $305, citing stable capital expenditure guidance and potential for higher free cash flow as AI infrastructure matures. JPMorgan and Bank of America Securities also maintain positive ratings, with consensus pointing to significant upside from current levels.

The Bear Case Deserves Airtime

The concerns about AMZN stock are real, however. Free cash flow declined sharply in 2025, falling 65.95% year over year, as Amazon poured capital into AI infrastructure. Amazon’s $200 billion capex commitment for 2026 will keep that pressure elevated, and some investors reasonably question whether the return timeline justifies near-term cash burn.

Rising fuel costs could also pressure margins in the retail segment, which still generates the majority of Amazon’s revenue by volume. Amazon stock was down 4.15% year-to-date heading into today’s session, a reminder that this year hasn’t been a straight line higher.

The track record is hard to argue with, though. AMZN shares have handsomely rewarded long-term shareholders, which we detailed in If You Had Invested $1,000 in Amazon vs. Google 10 Years Ago, Here’s What You’d Have Now.

If you believe Jassy’s thesis that AI infrastructure is a generational investment, today’s catalysts read as confirmation. If you’re skeptical of the capex math, Amazon’s free cash flow decline is the number to watch. The next major checkpoint is Amazon’s Q1 earnings, where guidance of $173.5 billion to $178.5 billion in net sales will be put to the test.

The post Amazon Gains 5% on Shareholder Letter, Globalstar Deal, $15 Billion AWS AI Revenue appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

This article will be updated throughout the day, so check back often for more daily updates.

The markets are returning some of yesterday’s gains as reality sets in on the fragility of the ceasefire deal between the U.S. and Iran. Oil prices are rising back to the psychologically sensitive $100/barrel level on reports the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked, sending stocks lower. Stock market averages are mixed, with the Nasdaq Composite attempting slight gains.

Here’s a look at where things stand as of morning trading:

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 47,719 Down 0.40%
Nasdaq Composite: 22,627 (basically flat)
S&P 500: 6,773 Down 0.16%

Economic Snapshot

On the economic front, the U.S. economy ended 2025 on a softer note than thought. Q4 GDP was revised down to a 0.5% annualized pace, missing the 0.7% estimate and falling well short of the 4.4% growth seen in Q3, according to the Commerce Department. GDP gains were powered by tailwinds in consumer spending and investment. The labor market is showing some cracks. Jobless claims came in at 219,000 for the week ending April 4, above the 210,000 estimate.

Market Movers

Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOGL) are joining forces on a multi-year collaboration to advance the next generation of AI and cloud infrastructure, with Intel’s Xeon processors continuing to power Google Cloud workloads alongside expanded co-development of custom infrastructure processing units.

In a tech tie-up, Meta (Nasdaq: META) is directing another $21 billion to CoreWeave (Nasdaq: CRWV) for AI cloud infrastructure, boosting a previous $14.2 billion agreement, with the new spending running from 2027-2032.

Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) Pharmacy wants to get Eli Lilly’s (NYSE: LLY) newly approved GLP-1 pill Foundayo drug into patients’ hands. According to reports, the e-commerce giant will offer same-day delivery in close to 3,000 U.S. cities, with pricing starting at $1 a day with insurance or $5 cash.

Palantir Tech (Nasdaq: PLTR) is losing 3.8% today. Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) is sinking 3.7%.

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Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) both have market caps around $800 billion, putting them in a live race to a $1 trillion market cap. With Lilly at roughly $829 billion and JPMorgan at roughly $798 billion, the gap between them and the milestone is measured in months, not decades. The question is which gets there first, and the data points clearly in one direction.

Growth Trajectory

This is the most decisive dimension in the comparison. Lilly’s GLP-1 franchise is generating revenue growth that almost no large-cap company has ever sustained at this scale. Full-year 2025 revenue totaled $65.18 billion, up 44.7% year-over-year, with net income rising 94.9% to $20.64 billion. Mounjaro alone posted $7.41 billion in Q4 2025, up 110% year-over-year, while Zepbound delivered $4.26 billion, up 123%. Forward EPS growth is projected at 51.4% year-over-year, with 2026 revenue guidance set at $80 billion to $83 billion.

JPMorgan’s growth story is solid but structurally different. Full-year 2025 net income was $57.05 billion, down 2.43% year-over-year, with forward EPS growth at −3.6%. The bank’s headline revenue figures are distorted by a prior-year Visa gain, but even stripping that out, organic growth is single-digit. The federal funds rate has slipped to 3.63%, offering some net interest margin support, with limited capacity to drive explosive earnings expansion.

Winner: Eli Lilly.

Analyst Conviction

The analyst community has spoken with unusual clarity: 80% of analysts covering Lilly are bullish, with a consensus price target of $1,209.21. That target implies a stock price already above the $1 trillion market cap threshold. JPMorgan has 52% analyst bullishness with a consensus target of $337.75.

In October 2025, Jim Cramer named JPMorgan “the most likely company to hit $1 trillion next” when sizing up a field that included Lilly, Oracle, Walmart, Visa, and Mastercard. The data since then has moved decisively against that call. Lilly’s market cap has pulled ahead, its earnings beats have been consistent, and, as mentioned, the analyst target now sits well above the $1 trillion implied price.

Winner: Eli Lilly.

Path to $1 Trillion

Lilly needs less incremental appreciation to cross the threshold. At a current market cap near $829 billion, it requires approximately $171 billion in additional value. JPMorgan, at roughly $798 billion, needs closer to $202 billion. Lilly already traded above $1,000 per share in early 2026, demonstrating the market has briefly priced it at that level. The pipeline adds further runway: orforglipron, an oral GLP-1, has been submitted for approval in the U.S., Japan, and the EU, and retatrutide Phase 3 trials showed weight loss up to 71.2 lbs. JPMorgan’s path requires sustained macro cooperation: stable rates, contained credit losses, and continued capital markets activity, all of which are outside the company’s control.

Winner: Eli Lilly.

Verdict

For a retirement-focused investor who wants steady income and capital preservation with modest upside, JPMorgan remains a defensible core holding. Its 2.0% dividend yield, $50 billion buyback program, and forward P/E of 14x make it a low-drama compounder.

Yet, the investor who wants to own the stock that hits $1 trillion first owns Lilly. The GLP-1 supercycle is still expanding internationally, the oral incretin pipeline opens an entirely new addressable market, and the analyst consensus target of $1,209.21 already prices in the milestone. Lilly gets there first, and it is not particularly close.

The post Lilly vs JPMorgan: Which Hits a $1 Trillion Market Cap First? appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) has built one of the most remarkable growth stories in modern pharmaceutical history through its GLP-1 franchises. Mounjaro and Zepbound conquered the weight-loss market, giving Lilly roughly a 60% share of the weight-loss opportunity, a dominance that pushed full-year 2025 revenue to $65.18 billion, up 44.7% year-over-year. Shares have pulled back 12.8% year-to-date from a strong 2025 run. The question: can Lilly reach $1,120, the price that would push its market cap past $1 trillion?

Wall Street Already Sees Substantial Upside

The consensus one-year price target sits at $1,209.21, implying significant upside from the current price of $935.58. The analyst breakdown: 24 Buy ratings, 6 Hold, and just 1 Sell. Lilly’s 2026 revenue guidance of $80 billion to $83 billion and EPS guidance of $33.50 to $35.00 give analysts concrete numbers to build on. The company beat revenue expectations in all four quarters of 2025 and beat EPS estimates in three of four quarters, suggesting guidance is conservative.

The Math Behind $1,120

Lilly currently trades at a forward multiple relative to the midpoint of its 2026 EPS guidance. Hitting $1,120 would imply a meaningfully higher forward multiple on 2026 earnings. For a company guiding to non-GAAP EPS of $33.50 to $35.00 after growing net income 94.9% in 2025, that multiple is reasonable against the S&P 500‘s 21x to 23x forward earnings.

Several catalysts are already in motion:

• Orforglipron FDA approval: FDA approval is expected in Q2 2026, with submissions filed in the U.S., Japan, and 40+ countries. An oral GLP-1 pill removes the injection barrier for millions of patients.
• AI drug discovery: CEO David Ricks confirmed: “We recently announced a new collaboration with NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) to open a co-innovation AI lab. This project will combine Lilly’s scientific expertise with NVIDIA’s leading technology to accelerate drug discovery.” Lilly also signed a $2.75 billion deal with Insilico Medicine in March 2026, gaining exclusive rights to an AI platform that has already developed 28 AI-generated drugs.
• Medicare expansion: A government agreement caps out-of-pocket costs for Medicare beneficiaries at $50 per month, effective no later than July 1, 2026, opening a senior population that currently uses GLP-1s at below-average rates.
• Retatrutide pipeline: Phase 3 data showed patients lost an average of 71.2 lbs, with six additional Phase 3 readouts expected in 2026.

Lilly’s Track Record Supports the Target

Reaching $1,120 requires meaningful appreciation from current levels. Over the past five years, Lilly shares returned 430.74%, and over ten years, 1,409.7%. Even over the past 12 months, shares gained 15.17% through a volatile stretch. The current pullback from the 52-week high of $1,132.06 puts $1,120 below Lilly’s recent peak, making this a recovery story as much as a growth one.

The Bottom Line

Wall Street’s consensus already points to $1,209.21, meaning analysts effectively expect Lilly to surpass the $1 trillion threshold. The GLP-1 franchise continues generating extraordinary volume growth, the oral GLP-1 catalyst is imminent, and AI drug discovery partnerships represent the next frontier of value creation. Risks include pricing pressure, product concentration, and tariff uncertainty. For a company that grew net income 94.9% in 2025, the path to $1 trillion is well within sight.

The post Eli Lilly’s Path to $1 Trillion Runs Directly Through the AI Boom appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

One of the world’s leading healthcare names, Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) cut prices on Wegovy and Ozempic by up to 48% in India at the start of April 2026, a direct response to low-cost generic semaglutide flooding the market. A debate has been building on Reddit for weeks: is Novo Nordisk a deeply undervalued pharmaceutical franchise being temporarily disrupted, or a value trap with structurally deteriorating pricing power? Shares are trading at around $36.98, down 43% over the past year and near their 52-week low of $35.12.

The price cuts land at a complicated moment. On March 19, Novo Nordisk received FDA approval for Wegovy HD under a National Priority Voucher in just 54 days, with the higher-dose injectable achieving an average weight loss of 20.7% over 72 weeks. On March 26, the FDA approved Awiqli, the first once-weekly basal insulin for adults with type 2 diabetes. The oral Wegovy pill, launched January 5, was already generating roughly 50,000 weekly prescriptions by late January. The pipeline is active. The financials are under pressure.

Sentiment Collapse: From Bullish Bets to Bearish Caution

Reddit sentiment on Novo Nordisk traced a sharp arc over four weeks. In early March, the dominant r/wallstreetbets thread “380k NVO yolo,” drew over 150 upvotes, pushing sentiment as high as 88.

380k NVO yolo
by in r/wallstreetbets

By March 20, a post on r/stocks titled “Everyone is panic selling NVO while the WHO is literally begging for more supply” generated the highest engagement in the dataset: 100 upvotes and 25 comments, pushing sentiment to 82. That bullish spike collapsed within 48 hours.

Everyone is panic selling NVO while the WHO is literally begging for more supply
by in r/stocks

By April 1 and 2, r/investing had taken over, with the dominant post asking “Is Novo Nordisk the new ‘Intel’? (When high ROE meets a falling knife).”

Is Novo Nordisk the new ‘Intel’? (When high ROE meets a falling knife).
by in r/investing

Sentiment dropped to 22 to 42. The composite sentiment index now sits at 48 out of 100, rated neutral with medium confidence.

The bearish case rests on three concerns:

• Eli Lilly now holds more than 60% of the U.S. obesity drug market, with tirzepatide outpacing semaglutide on volume share.
• Novo Nordisk’s 2026 guidance calls for adjusted sales growth of -5% to -13% at constant exchange rates, reflecting the Most-Favored-Nations pricing agreement with the U.S. government and reduced Medicaid coverage for obesity.
• The semaglutide compound patent expires in certain international markets, and compounding of GLP-1s in the U.S. continues to erode realized prices despite the FDA grace period ending.

CagriSema Is the Bet Novo Nordisk Is Making to Win

CagriSema, a combination of cagrilintide and semaglutide, was submitted to the FDA for obesity, with a regulatory decision expected around the turn of 2026 and 2027. Phase 3 data from the REDEFINE 2 trial showed 14.2% weight loss in adults with type 2 diabetes, while REDEFINE 3 showed 11.97% weight loss at 40 weeks versus placebo. CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen said in February: “We remain confident in our ability to drive volume growth over the coming years. Also, this year we look forward to regulatory decisions on next-generation treatments, such as… CagriSema within obesity.”

The consensus analyst target sits at $47.12, with 7 buys, 5 holds, and 1 sell. Bernstein initiated with an Underperform rating in March, warning of an “ongoing earnings downgrade cycle” with a “bare” catalyst path. The CagriSema decision is the clearest binary catalyst before Novo Nordisk’s Capital Markets Day in September 2026.

The post Novo Nordisk Shares Down 43% in a Year as Generic Rivals Force 48% Price Cuts appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

VanEck Pharmaceutical ETF (NYSEARCA:PPH) exists to give investors broad exposure to the global pharmaceutical industry without the binary risk of betting on a single drug pipeline. Right now, that diversification is being tested by two forces pulling in opposite directions: sweeping U.S. drug pricing policy and a dangerous level of concentration in one stock.

The fund is down nearly 8% over the past month, even as its one-year return sits at 15%. That pullback reflects real pressure on the sector, not just noise.

The Policy Risk That Could Reprice the Entire Sector

The single biggest macro factor for PPH over the next 12 months is U.S. drug pricing policy, specifically the Trump administration’s “most favored nation” pricing program. Under deals already struck, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk agreed to significant price discounts on weight loss drugs in exchange for three-year tariff relief and FDA priority review vouchers. The structure looks reciprocal, but it sets a precedent: Washington is now actively negotiating drug prices directly with manufacturers.

If that framework expands to cover more drug classes or more companies in this portfolio, revenue forecasts across the sector would need to be revised downward. Pharma companies price their drugs to recoup enormous R&D costs, and any compression of that pricing power flows directly into earnings. Merck, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Johnson & Johnson all sit in this portfolio and all face potential exposure to future pricing negotiations.

The place to track this is the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which publish any formal rulemaking around drug reimbursement. Congressional Budget Office scoring of related legislation provides early signals on how broadly any pricing changes might apply. Changes here tend to move the entire sector at once, which means PPH would feel it broadly rather than in just one or two holdings.

When the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022 and introduced Medicare drug price negotiation for the first time, large-cap pharma stocks sold off across the board before stabilizing once the scope of the program became clear. A similar clarification or expansion of the current pricing framework could produce a comparable pattern.

One Stock Is Carrying Too Much Weight

The micro factor that deserves the most attention is the fund’s concentration in Eli Lilly. At 17.91% of the portfolio, it is by far the largest single position. The next two holdings, Novartis at 11.23% and Merck at 9.75%, are meaningful but not dominant in the same way.

Eli Lilly is down more than 16% year-to-date and has fallen nearly 14% in just the past month. That slide is a primary reason PPH has underperformed recently despite the fund holding 26 positions. When one stock controls nearly a fifth of the portfolio, its bad months become the fund’s bad months.

The story behind Lilly’s decline is tied to the same GLP-1 drug class that made it a market darling. Oral GLP-1 obesity medications from both Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly are expected to launch in 2026, which should expand the addressable market. But competitive pressure is building simultaneously: Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide patent expired in India in March 2026, opening the door for generic versions at steep discounts. Pricing pressure in emerging markets today has a way of becoming pricing pressure in developed markets tomorrow.

VanEck publishes quarterly holdings updates on the fund’s issuer page, where Lilly’s weighting will shift through index rebalancing. A reduction in that concentration would reduce the fund’s single-stock risk. An increase would amplify it.

What to Watch Over the Next 12 Months

If the White House’s drug pricing program expands beyond GLP-1 deals into broader Medicare negotiations, expect sector-wide pressure on PPH’s largest holdings simultaneously. And if Eli Lilly does not recover its footing on the GLP-1 competitive landscape, the fund’s nearly 18% concentration in one name means that story will define a large portion of PPH’s returns regardless of how the other 25 positions perform.

The post PPH ETF: Drug Pricing Policy and Eli Lilly Concentration Are the Two Risks to Watch in 2026 appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Healthcare spending doesn’t stop during recessions. That structural reality is the core argument for owning Vanguard Health Care ETF (NYSEARCA:VHT), a pure-play sector fund that has quietly compounded wealth for long-term investors while offering insulation from economic cycles that most equity sectors can’t match.

What VHT Is Actually Built to Do

VHT tracks the MSCI US Investable Market Index (IMI)/Health Care 25/50, capturing the full breadth of U.S. healthcare from mega-cap pharmaceutical giants down to small-cap biotechs. The fund holds over 500 positions, with 99.3% of assets in healthcare. This is not a blended or thematic fund. It is a concentrated sector bet with wide diversification within that sector.

The return engine is straightforward: underlying businesses generate cash flows from drug sales, medical procedures, insurance premiums, and diagnostics. There are no options overlays, no leverage, no complex derivatives. VHT’s 4% annual portfolio turnover reflects a true buy-and-hold posture, and its expense ratio of just 0.09% means costs are essentially a non-factor over time.

The top holdings read like a who’s who of global healthcare. Eli Lilly sits at 12.5% of the fund, followed by Johnson & Johnson at 8.8%, AbbVie at 6.1%, Merck at 4.6%, and UnitedHealth Group at 3.9%. The top 10 positions together represent roughly 45% of the portfolio, so Eli Lilly’s trajectory alone has an outsized impact on VHT’s performance.

The Performance Reality Check

VHT has delivered real long-term gains, but investors need to understand what they gave up compared to the broad market. Over the past decade, VHT returned about 158%. Over the same period, the total U.S. stock market returned nearly 215%. Healthcare compounded wealth, but it lagged meaningfully.

The five-year picture reinforces this gap. VHT gained about 28% over five years, while the total market climbed roughly 57%. Year to date in 2026, VHT is down about 5%, slightly worse than the broad market’s 3% decline. The defensive reputation of healthcare hasn’t fully materialized against a market powered by technology and AI.

VHT pays a quarterly dividend. The most recent distribution of $0.994 per share was paid in late March 2026. The fund’s trailing yield sits near 1.4%, modest but consistent, and dividend amounts have grown over several years, though payments vary quarter to quarter rather than following a smooth upward path.

The Tradeoffs Worth Understanding

1. Concentration at the top creates single-stock sensitivity. With Eli Lilly alone representing over 12% of the fund, a setback from a clinical trial failure, pricing legislation, or competitive pressure ripples through the entire portfolio. Investors aren’t just buying “healthcare” broadly; they’re making a meaningful implicit bet on a handful of mega-cap names.
2. Regulatory risk is structural, not temporary. Drug pricing legislation, Medicare negotiation rules, and insurance market reforms directly affect VHT’s largest holdings. Healthcare is one of the few sectors where government policy can reprice entire business models almost overnight.
3. The defensive label has limits. VHT has underperformed the broad market across both the five-year and ten-year windows, meaning investors who used it as a core holding left real returns on the table. It cushions drawdowns in some environments but doesn’t eliminate market risk.

Where This Fund Earns Its Place

VHT is structured as a tactical sector sleeve for investors who want dedicated healthcare exposure without picking individual stocks, and allocations in that range are common in diversified portfolios. Aging populations globally drive sustained demand for pharmaceuticals, devices, and services regardless of economic conditions. For investors who already hold a broad market fund and want to tilt toward healthcare’s structural growth story, VHT delivers that exposure at minimal cost with genuine diversification across the sector’s sub-industries.

VHT offers clean, low-cost healthcare sector exposure as part of a diversified portfolio, though the sector’s recent decade of underperformance raises the question of whether that gap reflects a temporary cycle or a more durable structural constraint.

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The S&P 500 you own through a standard index fund is not as diversified as it looks. The cap-weighted version of the index hands roughly a third of your money to a handful of mega-cap technology names, meaning five or six companies effectively drive your returns. Equal-weight ETFs fix that by giving every holding an identical slice of the portfolio, regardless of size. The result is a fundamentally different exposure profile — one that is drawing renewed attention in 2026 as mega-cap dominance has started to fade.

SPY, the standard cap-weighted S&P 500 ETF, is down about 4% year-to-date. The three equal-weight funds covered here have all held up better over that same stretch, which illustrates exactly why investors reach for this structure when concentration risk becomes a concern.

RSP: The Equal-Weight Benchmark

Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (NYSEARCA:RSP) is the defining fund in this category. With $90.7 billion in assets under management and an inception date of April 24, 2003, it has more history and more liquidity than any competitor. That scale matters for investors who want to move in and out of a position without meaningful slippage.

The mechanism is straightforward: RSP holds all 500 S&P 500 constituents at roughly equal weight, around 0.2% each, and rebalances quarterly. NVIDIA, Apple, and Microsoft each sit at less than 0.2% of the portfolio, the same weight as a mid-sized industrial or regional bank. That quarterly rebalance is a built-in discipline — it systematically trims winners that have run up and adds to laggards that have pulled back, a mechanical value tilt embedded in the structure itself.

The sector allocation reflects this: Industrials leads at 16.1%, followed by Financials at 13.5% and Information Technology at 13.4%. In the cap-weighted S&P 500, Technology dominates at roughly a third of the index. RSP’s more balanced spread means its performance is driven by the broader economy, not just a few platform businesses.

RSP is up about 1% year-to-date and has returned about 11% over the past year, both figures ahead of SPY’s cap-weighted equivalent over the same periods. The expense ratio is 0.2% and the dividend yield sits at 1.57%. The tradeoff is that RSP will lag when mega-cap growth is driving the market — as it did during stretches of 2023 and 2024 when a narrow group of AI-linked names powered the index.

EQL: Equal Weight at the Sector Level

Alps Equal Sector Weight ETF (NYSEARCA:EQL) takes a different approach to the same problem. Rather than equalizing at the stock level, it equalizes at the sector level — each of the 11 GICS sectors receives an equal allocation, and then holdings within each sector are weighted by market cap.

The practical result is meaningful. EQL holds the eleven Select Sector SPDR ETFs as its underlying positions, with Energy (XLE) at roughly 11.7%, Utilities (XLU) at 9.7%, and Materials (XLB) at 9.4% among the largest allocations. Energy and Utilities, which together represent a small fraction of the cap-weighted S&P 500, each get roughly the same weight as Technology or Financials. That is a meaningful structural tilt toward sectors that have historically offered inflation protection and income.

Within each sector, though, the largest companies still dominate. That means you get the mega-caps — Apple in Technology, JPMorgan in Financials, UnitedHealth in Healthcare — but none of them can overwhelm the portfolio because their sectors are capped at equal weight. It is a hybrid: sector-level democracy with within-sector hierarchy preserved.

EQL is up about 3% year-to-date and has returned about 14% over the past year, the strongest recent performance of the three funds covered here. The fund carries $667 million in assets and a 0.27% expense ratio, making it the smallest and least liquid of the group. The dividend yield is 1.58%. Investors who value sector balance over individual stock balance will find this structure more intuitive, but they should be aware that thinner liquidity can mean wider bid-ask spreads on active trading days.

EQWL: Equal Weight Among the Mega-Caps

Invesco S&P 100 Equal Weight ETF (NYSEARCA:EQWL) occupies a distinct niche. It applies equal-weight logic not to the full S&P 500 but to the S&P 100, which is the 100 largest companies in the index. The result is a fund that still holds the biggest names in American business — every mega-cap technology company, major bank, and pharmaceutical giant — but refuses to let any one of them dominate.

This matters because the S&P 100 in cap-weighted form is even more concentrated than the full S&P 500. The top five or six names account for a disproportionate share. EQWL strips that concentration out while keeping the quality filter intact. You are not reaching down into smaller companies the way RSP does — every holding is a large or mega-cap name with deep liquidity and institutional coverage.

The fund’s top holdings cluster around 1.1% each, with Boeing, GE Aerospace, Eli Lilly, and Merck among the highest-weighted positions. NVIDIA, Apple, and Microsoft each sit at roughly 1% weight — meaningful exposure, but not the 7% or 8% they command in a standard large-cap index fund. The fund has been operating since December 2006 and carries a 0.25% expense ratio with a 1.82% dividend yield.

EQWL is down about 2% year-to-date, the only fund in this group with a negative 2026 return so far. That reflects its heavier concentration in mega-cap names that have pulled back alongside broader tech sentiment. Over ten years, however, EQWL has returned 265%, the strongest long-run figure of the three, reflecting the compounding power of holding quality large-cap businesses at equal weight through full market cycles.

The tradeoff is that EQWL’s narrower 100-stock universe means it is more sensitive to what happens in the mega-cap tier. When those names struggle, there is no mid-cap cushion the way RSP provides.

Choosing the Right Equal-Weight Structure

These three funds answer three different versions of the same question. RSP is the broadest and most liquid choice for investors who want to reduce mega-cap concentration across the entire S&P 500 while picking up a natural tilt toward smaller large-cap and mid-cap names. EQL suits investors who think in terms of sector exposure and want every corner of the economy represented equally, without abandoning the largest companies within each sector. EQWL fits investors who want to stay in mega-cap territory but remove the winner-take-all weighting that makes the standard large-cap index so top-heavy. The starting point is deciding whether you want to diversify across stocks, across sectors, or simply within the largest names — each fund is built for a different answer.

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Half of every dollar invested in iShares U.S. Pharmaceuticals ETF (NYSEARCA:IHE) rides on just two companies pulling in opposite directions in 2026. With a 0.38% expense ratio, nearly $1.1 billion in net assets, and a 20-year track record dating to May 2006, it offers income-oriented and sector investors a focused vehicle for pharmaceutical exposure. Focused exposure means the fund’s performance depends heavily on a small number of companies navigating serious headwinds.

When Two Stocks Are Nearly Half Your Fund

The ETF holds 50 positions, but the top two dominate in a way that makes the rest almost incidental. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) carries a 25.4% weight, and Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) sits at 21.4%. Together they account for roughly 46.8% of the entire fund. The next six largest holdings each represent between 4% and 5% of the portfolio. For nearly half the capital invested, the fund’s performance is largely determined by two companies.

The two giants are pulling in opposite directions in 2026, and neither is immune to the regulatory environment bearing down on the industry.

Johnson & Johnson has held up well relative to the broader fund. Shares are up roughly 14% year-to-date, driven by strong pharmaceutical growth. DARZALEX generated $3.90 billion in the most recent quarter, up 26.6% year-over-year, and TREMFYA posted $1.59 billion, up 67.6%. But JNJ faces real headwinds: STELARA biosimilar erosion cut that drug’s revenue by 47.7% in Q4 2025, and the company is navigating $854 million in litigation charges in the same quarter. A planned separation of its Orthopaedics segment adds further complexity.

Eli Lilly is the more volatile story. GLP-1 drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound have driven most of Lilly’s revenue growth, with Mounjaro posting $7.41 billion in Q4 2025 revenue, up 110% and Zepbound delivering $4.26 billion, up 123%. But the stock has fallen roughly 15% year-to-date and is down nearly 10% over the past month. Lower realized prices offsetting volume gains, manufacturing capacity constraints, and compounding competition have all pressured the stock. Because Lilly’s revenue is overwhelmingly concentrated in two drugs, any disruption to the GLP-1 market flows directly into IHE’s second-largest holding.

The Policy Pressure Building Across the Whole Portfolio

The entire ETF faces a policy risk specific to 2026. The Trump administration has been aggressively pursuing drug pricing reform through executive orders, voluntary Most Favored Nation agreements, and proposed CMS rules. By the end of 2025, 16 drug manufacturers had signed voluntary MFN pricing agreements. In late December 2025, CMS proposed the GLOBE and GUARD models, which would incorporate international price benchmarks into Medicare drug rebate calculations for Part B and Part D drugs respectively.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA agenda has introduced regulatory unpredictability that is harder to quantify but real in its effect on investor sentiment. Kennedy has signaled scrutiny of drug approvals, marketing practices, and the GLP-1 category specifically, which directly threatens Lilly’s core franchise. A Polymarket prediction market currently prices a 37.5% probability of the U.S. federal government taking a stake in Eli Lilly, a reflection of how aggressively traders are pricing in government intervention risk for the sector’s largest growth story.

The ETF is essentially flat year-to-date, down about 0.5%, which masks the tug-of-war between JNJ’s gains and LLY’s losses. If the pricing policy environment hardens, the drag on the fund’s largest holding could outweigh JNJ’s defensive contribution.

Two Data Points That Will Drive IHE’s Performance in 2026

Two data points will determine how IHE performs from here:

1. CMS rulemaking on GLOBE and GUARD: These proposed rules would apply international pricing benchmarks to Medicare Part B and Part D drugs. If finalized as proposed, they represent a structural reduction in pricing power for the fund’s holdings. A finalized GLOBE or GUARD rule would materially change the revenue assumptions for nearly every major holding in this ETF. CMS publishes rulemaking updates on its website, typically around its standard announcement windows.
2. Eli Lilly’s realized pricing data: Each quarterly earnings release includes realized net price versus volume. If volume growth continues but net pricing keeps declining, the revenue trajectory that justifies LLY’s valuation at a trailing P/E of roughly 40x becomes harder to defend. A second consecutive quarter of price erosion accelerating beyond volume gains would be a meaningful warning sign for the fund’s second-largest position.

IHE is an efficiently constructed fund. Its 0.24 portfolio turnover and low cost make it efficient. But any investor holding it today should understand that nearly half their exposure lives in two companies navigating very different challenges, both facing a policy backdrop that has rarely been this active. The fund’s near-term performance will be determined less by the other 48 holdings and more by what happens to LLY’s pricing story and how aggressively Washington pursues drug cost reform in 2026.

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NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) shares are up roughly 2% in Monday morning trading, offering a modest but welcome rebound after a rough stretch to start 2026. The stock closed Friday at $172.70, down 7% year to date heading into today’s session.

The broader market is helping. Reports of progress on U.S.-Iran diplomatic discussions sent the Dow surging Monday morning, lifting risk assets across the board. NVDA stock is catching a bid alongside that broader rebound, but the company-specific catalysts announced today are doing real work of their own.

For context on why this move matters, NVIDIA and the broader semiconductor complex have been under pressure for weeks, with NVDA losing ground steadily through the first weeks of 2026. Today’s combination of macro tailwinds and fresh strategic announcements is giving the stock room to breathe.

NVIDIA Bets on Power-Flexible AI Factories

The headline catalyst this morning is a new collaboration between NVIDIA and Emerald AI, partnering with major energy companies AES (NYSE:AES), Constellation Energy (NASDAQ:CEG), and NextEra Energy (NYSE:NEE) to build what the companies are calling “flexible AI factories” that operate as grid assets. The idea is straightforward but genuinely novel: instead of AI data centers being passive energy consumers that strain the grid, they become active participants in grid stability, ramping compute workloads up or down based on grid conditions.

The technical backbone is NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin DSX AI Factory reference design and DSX Flex software, combined with Emerald AI’s Conductor platform. This lets facilities connect to the grid faster while generating AI tokens and supporting grid reliability simultaneously. It’s a clever two-sided value proposition: utilities get a demand-response partner, and NVIDIA gets to plant its architecture deeper into critical infrastructure.

This announcement lands during CERAWeek by S&P Global (March 23-27 in Houston), the energy industry’s premier conference, where NVIDIA is a notable participant. The timing is deliberate.

NVIDIA already has partnerships to build more than 5 gigawatts of AI factories with CoreWeave by 2030, a deal with HUMAIN for AI factories in Saudi Arabia, and is a private industry partner in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission. The Emerald AI announcement adds a new dimension: making those factories smarter about when and how they draw power.

BioNeMo Brings AI Into the Drug Discovery Lab

Separate from the energy story, NVIDIA’s BioNeMo platform for AI-driven biology and drug discovery is drawing renewed attention. BioNeMo is NVIDIA’s framework for accelerating pharmaceutical research, and the company has been quietly building a serious roster of partners around it. NVIDIA announced a co-innovation AI lab with Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) for drug discovery and a collaboration with Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) to advance drug discovery.

The pitch to pharma is compelling. Traditional drug discovery timelines run a decade or longer and cost billions. AI-driven platforms like BioNeMo can compress the early-stage screening and molecular design phases dramatically, letting researchers focus human effort where it matters most. NVIDIA is positioning itself not just as a chip supplier but as the compute layer underneath a potential transformation in how medicines get made.

The Fundamentals Still Command Attention

The selloff that brought NVDA down 8% over the past month happened against a backdrop of genuinely exceptional business performance. NVIDIA reported Q4 FY2026 revenue of $68.13 billion, up 73.2% year over year, with data center revenue alone hitting $62.31 billion.

Free cash flow for the full fiscal year came in at $96.58 billion, a figure that underscores how efficiently NVIDIA converts its explosive top-line growth into cash. CEO Jensen Huang explained the demand picture, stating, “Computing demand is growing exponentially. The agentic AI inflection point has arrived.”

At the current price, NVDA stock trades at roughly 35x trailing earnings, with a forward multiple closer to 21x based on analyst estimates. The analyst consensus target sits at $269, with 59 buy ratings against just 1 sell.

Prediction markets this morning are pricing in an 86.5% probability that NVDA closes higher today, a crowd-sourced signal that aligns with the bullish analyst consensus.

A Measured but Significant Move

Today’s move is modest in absolute terms. NVIDIA is guiding to approximately $78 billion in Q1 FY2027 revenue, and the company’s expansion into energy grid integration and pharmaceutical compute gives it revenue exposure well beyond the data center buildout that drove its initial surge.

Whether the macro mood holds through the close will determine how much of today’s gain sticks. NVIDIA now has meaningful revenue exposure across data center compute, energy grid infrastructure, and pharmaceutical research, a combination no other chip company has assembled at this scale.

The post NVIDIA’s Monday Rebound: What Energy Partnerships and BioNeMo Mean for NVDA Stock appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Growth investing has had a choppy start to 2026. The major growth benchmarks are down in the low single digits year-to-date, and some of the biggest names in tech have pulled back meaningfully from their late-2025 highs. For investors with a multi-year horizon, that kind of consolidation is worth understanding in the context of each fund’s structure and cost.

The three ETFs below represent three distinct ways to access large-cap U.S. growth: a Nasdaq-focused vehicle that leans hard into tech and AI infrastructure, a broad market growth index at an almost negligible cost, and a wider Russell 1000 growth fund that adds more diversification across sectors. Each earns its spot on this list for a different reason.

Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ): The Nasdaq-100 Standard

Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ) is the most direct way to own the Nasdaq-100, the index of the 100 largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq. With $395 billion in net assets, it is one of the most widely traded ETFs in the world, which means tight bid-ask spreads and deep liquidity for investors of any size.

The portfolio is built around the companies leading the current AI infrastructure cycle. Nvidia sits at nearly 9% of the fund, followed by Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Tesla in the top five. Semiconductor and chip equipment names including Broadcom, Micron, AMD, Applied Materials, and Lam Research collectively represent a meaningful share of the portfolio, making QQQ a concentrated bet on the hardware layer of AI computing.

Information Technology alone accounts for roughly 49% of the fund, with Communication Services adding a meaningful secondary allocation. That concentration is both the appeal and the risk. When AI-driven demand is accelerating, QQQ tends to outperform broad market benchmarks. When sentiment shifts against large-cap tech, there is limited defensive ballast. The fund also carries a 0.18% expense ratio, which is modest in absolute terms but higher than the alternatives on this list.

QQQ’s long-term track record reflects the compounding power of owning the Nasdaq-100’s growth leaders — the fund has returned roughly 25% over the past year and 461% over the past decade. The current year-to-date pullback through mid-March 2026 of about 2% mirrors the broader softness in growth equities and sits within the normal range of consolidation the fund has experienced during prior AI-cycle pauses.

Vanguard Growth ETF (VUG): Broad Growth at Near-Zero Cost

Vanguard Growth ETF (NYSEARCA:VUG) tracks the CRSP US Large Cap Growth Index, which pulls from the full large-cap U.S. equity universe rather than limiting itself to Nasdaq-listed companies. The result is a broader portfolio that still leads with the same mega-cap tech names but adds meaningful exposure to financial services, healthcare, and industrials that QQQ structurally excludes.

The expense ratio here is 0.03%, which is about as close to free as a fund can get. The fund manages roughly $336 billion in assets, reflecting its status as one of the most widely held growth vehicles among long-term investors.

VUG’s top holdings mirror QQQ closely: Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft sit at the top, with the three together representing roughly a third of the portfolio. But the differences beneath that surface matter. VUG holds Eli Lilly at nearly 3% of the fund, giving investors exposure to the GLP-1 pharmaceutical cycle alongside the AI infrastructure theme. Visa and Mastercard also appear in the top 15, adding durable growth businesses in financial infrastructure that QQQ’s non-financial screen excludes entirely.

The tradeoff is a slightly different performance profile. VUG has returned about 21% over the past year, trailing QQQ modestly, and is down roughly 6% year-to-date. The broader sector mix can work against the fund in periods when pure Nasdaq momentum is strong, but the added diversification across healthcare and financials reduces single-sector concentration risk.

iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF (IWF): The Widest Net in Large-Cap Growth

iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF (NASDAQ:IWF) tracks the Russell 1000 Growth Index, which applies growth screens to the 1,000 largest U.S. companies. The result is a portfolio of 500-plus positions, making it the most diversified of the three funds here while still maintaining the same mega-cap tech leadership at the top.

The top holdings are familiar — Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft sit at the top of the portfolio, together accounting for roughly a third of the fund, mirroring the leadership seen in QQQ and VUG. What sets IWF apart is what comes next.

IWF’s broader mandate means the fund includes meaningful healthcare weight at 8.3% and industrials at nearly 7%, sectors that are essentially absent from QQQ and underrepresented in VUG. Names like AbbVie, GE Aerospace, and Home Depot appear in the top 20, reflecting a definition of growth that extends well beyond pure technology into businesses with durable earnings across different parts of the economy.

The expense ratio of 0.18% matches QQQ, and the fund carries $116.5 billion in assets. Over the past year, IWF has returned about 20%, and it is down roughly 6% year-to-date, tracking closely with VUG.

The wider holdings list reduces the impact of any single stock’s underperformance, but it also means the fund captures a longer tail of mid-tier growth companies that may not have the same earnings durability as the top 10. Those researching the Russell 1000 Growth benchmark for asset allocation or benchmarking purposes will find IWF the most direct vehicle in this category.

How These Three Funds Compare

QQQ offers maximum concentration in Nasdaq-listed technology and AI infrastructure companies, with the sector tilt that entails. VUG differentiates itself through broader sector diversification and a fee structure that is essentially negligible for long-term holders. IWF provides the widest definition of large-cap U.S. growth, including meaningful healthcare and industrial exposure, within a single liquid vehicle. Investors researching growth ETFs may find it useful to compare these funds against their own benchmarks and asset allocation targets.

The post The Only 3 Growth ETFs I Would Buy and Hold Through Any Market appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Building a seven-figure portfolio from scratch requires one thing above almost everything else: time in the market, compounded through funds that systematically own the companies driving the economy forward. Growth ETFs are the most direct vehicle for that. They screen specifically for companies with above-average earnings and revenue expansion, filtering out the slow-movers that drag on returns.

The three funds below each have an explicit growth methodology, meaningful track records, and structural differences worth understanding before choosing one. Here’s why they’re buys for those looking to generate seven-figure portfolios over time.

Invesco QQQ Trust: The Nasdaq’s 100 Best Growth Companies

Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ) tracks the 100 largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq, which in practice means owning the most dominant growth businesses in the world. Information technology makes up nearly 49% of the fund, with Communication Services adding another 16%. The result is a portfolio built almost entirely around companies whose value comes from future earnings growth rather than current dividends or asset bases.

The top of the portfolio reads like a who’s-who of the AI and semiconductor cycle. Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) sits at roughly 9% of the fund, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) at 7.5%, and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) at 5.9%. Beyond the mega-caps, QQQ runs deep into the semiconductor supply chain, holding a number of other top names that benefit from every dollar spent building out AI infrastructure. That supply-chain depth is what separates QQQ from a simple tech-heavy fund.

This long-term return record reflects the compounding power of owning this basket. Over the past decade, QQQ has returned 459%. Over the past year alone, ETF’s one-year return stands at 25%. Thus, the tradeoff is concentration – when tech sentiment turns, QQQ feels it more than a broader index. Year-to-date in 2026, QQQ is down about 2%, a reminder that the ride is not linear.

Notably, this ETF’s expense ratio is just 0.18%, reasonable for a fund with $395 billion in assets and institutional-grade liquidity. I think QQQ may appeal to those researching maximum exposure to the companies shaping the next decade of technology who are also researching how to evaluate concentration risk.

Vanguard Growth ETF: Broader Growth at the Lowest Possible Cost

Vanguard Growth ETF (NYSEARCA:VUG) uses a rules-based methodology to screen the U.S. equity market for companies with superior earnings growth, sales growth, and return on assets. Where QQQ is defined by its Nasdaq universe, VUG casts a wider net across all major U.S. exchanges, which brings in some names QQQ structurally excludes.

The portfolio carries a similar technology tilt, with Information Technology at 50.6% of holdings, but the growth screening adds meaningful diversification. Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) appears at 2.7% of the fund, giving investors exposure to the GLP-1 pharmaceutical growth cycle. Visa (NYSE:V), and Mastercard (NYSE:MA) together represent about 3% of the portfolio, capturing the structural growth in digital payments. These are companies with durable earnings expansion that simply do not appear in QQQ because of its Nasdaq-only constraint.

The cost structure is where VUG genuinely stands apart. The expense ratio is 0.03%, one of the lowest available for any growth fund. Over decades of compounding, that cost advantage compounds alongside returns in a meaningful way. The fund has been running since 2004, giving it a track record across multiple market cycles including the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic crash, and The fund manages $335.9 billion in assets in assets.

VUG returned 21% over the past year and 81% over the past five years. The fund’s portfolio turnover of just 12% reflects a buy-and-hold discipline that keeps transaction costs low and defers capital gains, which matters in taxable accounts. The main caveat is that VUG’s broader mandate means it will track differently from QQQ during periods when Nasdaq leadership is especially strong or weak.

Schwab U.S. Large-Cap Growth ETF: The Broadest Growth Screen at Near-Zero Cost

Schwab U.S. Large-Cap Growth ETF (NYSEARCA:SCHG) applies a multi-factor growth screen to the Dow Jones U.S. Large-Cap Growth Total Stock Market Index, selecting companies based on projected and historical earnings growth, sales growth, and return on equity. The methodology is more explicit about earnings quality than either QQQ or VUG, which makes it worth considering separately.

The fund’s sector breakdown is somewhat more balanced than the other two. Information Technology sits at 44% of the fund, lower than VUG’s 50% and QQQ’s 49%, while Healthcare carries an 8.8% weight and Financials at 7.1%. That healthcare allocation, anchored by Eli Lilly at roughly 3% of the fund, gives SCHG a more diversified growth exposure. The financial services component, which includes Visa, Mastercard, and BlackRock (NYSE:BLK), adds companies with compounding earnings power that do not fit the traditional tech-growth narrative.

SCHG also has a slightly higher allocation to emerging growth names. Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR) sits at 1.3% of the fund, and GE Aerospace (NYSE:GE) appears as a meaningful industrial growth holding. These positions reflect the index’s willingness to include companies outside the traditional tech mega-cap cluster when the growth metrics justify it.

The cost is nearly identical to VUG at 0.04%, making SCHG one of the cheapest ways to access a diversified growth screen. The long-term return record supports the case (the fund’s ten-year return is 400%, and the one-year return is 19%) suggesting the broader methodology has not come at the expense of performance. The tradeoff relative to the others is scale: at $50 billion in AUM, SCHG is liquid but meaningfully smaller than QQQ or VUG, which can matter in institutional contexts. For those researching long-term growth ETFs, the scale difference is worth noting but may not affect day-to-day trading for most use cases.

Which Fund Fits Which Investor

QQQ offers the deepest concentration in the AI and semiconductor supply chain, reflecting Nasdaq-level focus. VUG provides growth exposure that extends into pharmaceuticals and payments at one of the lowest expense ratios available. SCHG applies a slightly more diversified growth screen across a broader set of industries at near-zero cost.

Each fund’s methodology and sector weights reflect different expressions of the growth factor, and investors may want to research which structure aligns with their existing portfolio and risk tolerance.

The post 3 Growth ETFs to Buy in 2026 and Hold Until Your Portfolio Hits 7 Figures appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) stock is down 5% in Tuesday afternoon trading, with shares falling to $937 from a prior close of $989.12. The move adds to a rough stretch for the stock, which is now down 13% year to date from $1,072.90 at the start of 2026.

The selloff reflects a convergence of pressures: mounting anticipation around an FDA decision on Lilly’s oral obesity pill, fresh competitive noise from Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) in the oral GLP-1 space, and lingering concerns about compounded tirzepatide products. None of these are new stories, but together they are weighing on a stock that had already retreated sharply from its 52-week high of $1,132.06.

FDA Oral Obesity Pill Decision Looms

The primary catalyst today is investor anxiety around the timing and outcome of the FDA’s expected decision on orforglipron, Lilly’s oral GLP-1 obesity pill. Lilly submitted orforglipron for obesity approval in the U.S. and Japan, and for both obesity and type 2 diabetes in the EU, with CEO David Ricks citing the submission as a “key 2025 milestone.” An April decision window has been widely discussed, and markets are pricing in meaningful uncertainty around both timing and label scope.

Phase 3 data showed patients maintained weight loss after switching from injectable incretin therapies to the oral pill, a finding that could meaningfully expand the addressable market for patients who resist injections. Yet, the approval path still carries execution risk, and prediction markets currently assign only 22% probability to FDA approval of Lilly’s retatrutide (a related obesity candidate) by the end of 2026; this reflects broader skepticism about near-term regulatory timelines across Lilly’s obesity pipeline.

Novo Nordisk Rivalry Intensifies in the Oral Space

Meanwhile, the competitive backdrop is getting louder. Novo Nordisk has been working to entrench its position in the oral GLP-1 market through new partnerships and improved drug delivery, with oral Wegovy showing strong initial sales.

A recent industry analysis described Novo’s position as “potentially precarious” as Lilly enters the oral space, but that framing cuts both ways: it acknowledges Novo is still in the game. Lilly’s orforglipron has shown high efficacy in trials but with increased side effects compared to injectable alternatives, a nuance that analysts are watching closely ahead of any approval.

Novo Nordisk shares are themselves under heavy pressure, down 25% year to date and 52% over the past year. That kind of sustained erosion in the sector’s other giant signals that investors are repricing the entire GLP-1 competitive landscape, not just picking winners and losers within it. For more on why institutional investors remain committed to Lilly despite the volatility, see “What Smart Money Loves About Lilly.”

Compounded Tirzepatide Complicates the Story

A secondary headwind surfaced earlier this week when Eli Lilly disclosed that testing of compounded tirzepatide products mixed with vitamin B12 revealed “significant levels of an impurity” across all 10 samples tested. The chemical reaction between tirzepatide and B12 has unknown health effects, and Lilly has reported its findings to the FDA while urging patients to consult physicians. The company is pushing for a recall of all compounded tirzepatide mixed with untested additives.

This is strategically useful for Eli Lilly’s branded Zepbound and Mounjaro franchises, but the near-term narrative around patient safety creates headline risk. Some institutional investors appear to be trimming ahead of the noise: Harvest Fund Management reduced its LLY stake by 37.2%, and Bank of Hawaii cut its position by 21.5% in recent filings.

The Fundamentals Remain Intact

Today’s move is happening against a backdrop of genuinely strong business performance. Eli Lilly reported Q4 2025 revenue of $19.29 billion, up 42.6% year over year, beating the consensus estimate of $17.97 billion. Furthermore, Mounjaro generated $7.41 billion in Q4 alone, up roughly 110% year over year, while Zepbound added $4.26 billion, up 123%. Full-year 2026 guidance calls for revenue of $80 billion to $83 billion.

RBC Capital Markets maintained its Outperform rating on LLY stock as recently as March 16, citing the anticipated orforglipron launch as a key upside driver. The analyst consensus target sits at $1,216.93, with 24 Buy ratings, 6 Hold ratings, and just 1 Sell among covering analysts. At today’s price, Eli Lilly stock trades at roughly 43x trailing earnings, with a forward multiple of around 29x on 2026 estimates.

What to Watch

The next meaningful catalyst is the FDA’s oral obesity pill decision, expected around April. How Eli Lilly manages the orforglipron launch narrative in the weeks ahead, particularly on side effect profiles and pricing relative to injectables, will shape the stock’s near-term direction.

Additionally, the FDA oral obesity pill decision, expected around April, remains the key event for investors tracking LLY stock. For the time being, though, keep an eye out for a rally above or break below the $930 level.

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Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) shares have pulled back sharply, falling  9% over the past month, and 13% year-to-date. Most Wall Street analysts remain constructive, with a consensus price target of $1,216.93 and 24 buy-equivalent ratings versus just 1 strong sell. Now, HSBC analyst Rajesh Kumar is stepping against that tide, downgrading LLY to Reduce with a price target of $850, a significant discount to where shares currently trade. But can LLY realistically reach $850 by end of 2026?

HSBC’s $850 LLY Prediction

Kumar cut his target from $1,070 to $850, arguing that the obesity drug market’s total addressable market is being overstated by investors. HSBC believes the obesity market will reach $80 billion to $120 billion by 2032, well below the $150 billion-plus figure embedded in current expectations. The firm also warns that price competition in the GLP-1 space is likely to be significant, and that Lilly’s 2026 obesity price cuts represent a meaningful headwind even as management’s guidance implies continued high-volume growth.

Key Drivers Behind the Downgrade

1. Oral GLP-1 Expectations May Be Too High: HSBC believes launch expectations for Lilly’s oral GLP-1 candidate, orforglipron, are elevated, and that compliance and persistence with oral anti-obesity medications could disappoint. While an oral pill could expand access, converting that into durable revenue is a different challenge.
2. Pricing Pressure Is Accelerating: Lilly’s own filings confirm volume is carrying the revenue load while prices fall. U.S. prices declined by high single digits in Q3 2025, with 10% lower realized prices partially offsetting a 62% volume increase. That dynamic is unlikely to reverse.
3. Concentration Risk in Two Products: Mounjaro and Zepbound together generated $11.67 billion of Lilly’s $19.29 billion in Q4 2025 revenue, representing over 60% of the quarter’s total. Any demand softness or pricing concession in either drug flows directly to the bottom line.

What Would It Take for LLY to Reach $850?

At $850 per share against approximately 893 million shares outstanding, HSBC’s target implies a market cap well below where Lilly trades today. For the bear case to play out: orforglipron’s launch would need to underwhelm, GLP-1 pricing would need to deteriorate faster than volume compensates, and investor sentiment around the obesity market’s long-term size would need to reset lower. The stock would also need to de-rate from its current 43x trailing P/E.

The primary risk to HSBC’s thesis is that Lilly continues to execute: Q4 2025 revenue of $19.29 billion beat estimates by 7.33%, and 2026 guidance calls for $80 billion to $83 billion in revenue. How the obesity drug market evolves in the coming quarters will be a key factor in whether HSBC’s thesis or the broader Wall Street consensus proves more accurate.

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Eli Lilly’s (NYSE:LLY) GLP-1 therapy Zepbound has become the biggest weight loss drug since its introduction, outpacing Novo Nordisk’s (NYSE:NVO) Wegovy in both sales momentum and patient preference. But the competition is fierce, with Novo Nordisk introducing a pill form of semaglutide that has the potential to boost sales. 

Coupled with its rival’s partnership with Hims & Hers Health (NYSE:HIMS) to sell branded versions of the injectable and oral treatments, Lilly can’t afford to rest in maintaining its lead, and it just may have unlocked the latest growth driver.

New Employer Plan Ushers in a New Era of Access

In early March 2026, Eli Lilly rolled out its groundbreaking direct-to-employer Employer Connect program. The initiative offers Zepbound — in a convenient multi-dose injectable form — at a fixed net price of $449 per month across all doses, less than half the drug’s list price of over $1,000. Employers bypass traditional pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and their opaque rebate system, gaining full price transparency upfront instead of waiting six to nine months for rebates.

Through the platform, companies partner with more than 15 independent program administrators, including GoodRx, Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drug, Sesame, Teladoc Health (NYSE:TDOC), Calibrate, and others. These providers compete on value-added services such as telehealth, nutrition counseling, lifestyle coaching, enrollment, and claims management. Employers select the administrator that best fits their workforce while securing the same $449 drug price regardless of choice. The result? Flexible, budget-friendly obesity coverage with minimal out-of-pocket costs for employees.

Only about 20% of employers with 200 or more workers currently cover weight-loss drugs, leaving roughly half of commercially insured patients unable to start or stay on therapy. The appeal is obvious: employers now get a discounted net price without having to wait for a rebate, making coverage decisions far easier. Analysts expect the program to drive meaningful new Zepbound volume, with material sales contributions likely ramping up in 2027 as more sidelined employers opt in.

Why Lilly’s Model Beats Novo Nordisk’s Plan

Novo Nordisk launched a comparable direct-to-employer offering in late 2025, partnering primarily with Waltz Health to sell Wegovy at discounted fixed prices. Both programs bypass PBMs, but Lilly’s stands apart with its broader ecosystem of 15+ competing administrators delivering comprehensive wraparound care — a clear edge for employers seeking end-to-end obesity management rather than just drug supply.

Zepbound’s superior clinical profile further tilts the scales in its favor. Head-to-head data show tirzepatide delivers approximately 20% average weight loss versus roughly 14% for semaglutide — a 47% relative advantage. Patients and prescribers have voted with their feet and their wallets: Zepbound rapidly became the market leader after its launch. Even at a higher list price, the drug’s greater efficacy and popularity translate into stronger real-world adherence and outcomes, justifying the premium for many employers.

Meanwhile, Novo Nordisk faces headwinds. The company guided for a 5% to 13% sales decline in 2026 — its weakest performance in years — amid the intensifying competition and price pressure. Injectable Wegovy sales are plateauing, with growth shifting to the new oral semaglutide pill. While early demand for the oral version has been encouraging, it has yet to offset broader portfolio softness. Lilly, by contrast, is forecasting 25% overall revenue growth for 2026, the third-highest annual rate in company history.

Key Takeaway

Eli Lilly is not standing still. The company is on track to launch its own oral tirzepatide (orforglipron) as early as Q2, pending FDA approval. Early Phase 3 data show it outperforms Novo’s oral semaglutide, with superior A1C reduction and weight loss (9.2% vs. 5.3%) in head-to-head trials for type 2 diabetes — results that should translate powerfully to obesity. Combined with the more efficacious injectable Zepbound and the new Employer Connect platform, Lilly possesses the clearest path to sustained market dominance in the exploding GLP-1 category.

The stock has pulled back roughly 13% from its recent 52-week highs, creating an attractive entry point. Analysts project robust long-term earnings power, with approximately 27% compounded EPS growth over the next five years. In a sector where innovation and access are everything, Eli Lilly looks like a bargain for investors seeking durable growth in one of healthcare’s most promising markets.

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Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, made a pointed claim on CNBC’s Halftime Report this week about large-cap biotech: “These are growth stocks where you don’t have to worry about disruption. They’re breaking out.” His reasoning is that companies dealing in molecules, proteins, and clinical trials occupy a fundamentally different risk category than software or media. AI can disrupt a platform overnight; it cannot disrupt a decade-long drug approval process.

Large-cap biotech does enjoy a structural insulation from the overnight platform disruption that has hollowed out tech companies. But the sector faces its own slow-motion disruption forces — patent cliffs, biosimilar competition, and government drug pricing reform — that are just as capable of destroying revenue. These are different disruption mechanisms, and conflating them leads to blind positions.

Why Biotech Genuinely Resists AI-Style Disruption

Brown’s core thesis holds up. The five names he and his colleague highlighted — Amgen, AbbVie, Gilead, Biogen, and Eli Lilly — operate in a domain where competitive moats are built in laboratories over many years, not in data centers over months. A new AI model cannot render a biologic drug obsolete the way it can render a content platform or a search engine irrelevant. The FDA approval process, which typically spans a decade from discovery to market, creates a structural time buffer that no software company enjoys.

The year-to-date price performance across these names reflects that relative resilience. Amgen is up 16% year-to-date, and Gilead has gained 21% in 2026 so far. Both are well ahead of the broader iShares Biotechnology ETF (IBB), which is up roughly 3% year-to-date. These are not stocks riding a general biotech wave; they are outperforming the sector itself.

Brown also noted that AI will likely help these companies rather than hurt them, accelerating drug discovery and clinical trial analysis. That is a reasonable expectation and one that institutional investors appear to share. Gilead carries 93% institutional ownership, and Amgen sits at 85%. Large money managers are not treating these as fragile positions.

The Disruption Risk Brown Didn’t Mention

Biotech does not face platform disruption, but it faces something equally damaging: the patent cliff. When a blockbuster drug loses exclusivity, revenue can fall by half in just a few years. This is not a hypothetical risk. It is playing out right now across the very names Brown highlighted.

AbbVie is the most instructive case. Humira, once the world’s best-selling drug, lost exclusivity to biosimilar competition and its revenue fell roughly 50% in just two years — a collapse that would have been fatal without a replacement pipeline. AbbVie had one: Skyrizi grew 33% to $5 billion in Q4 2025, and Rinvoq grew 30% to $2.4 billion. The franchise transition is working, but it required years of pipeline investment and near-flawless execution to pull off. That is not guaranteed to repeat.

Amgen faces a similar dynamic. Its legacy franchises are under pressure from two directions simultaneously: Medicare redesign and biosimilar entry. Enbrel revenue fell 48% in Q4 2025, squeezed by both Medicare Part D redesign and biosimilar pressure, while Prolia declined 10% as biosimilar competition accelerated. These are not cyclical dips — they reflect structural revenue erosion that the company must outrun.

The growth portfolio is picking up the slack — UPLIZNA grew 131% and TEZSPIRE grew 60% in Q4 — but Amgen’s $54.6 billion debt load means the company has limited room for error if newer pipeline bets disappoint. The margin for error is narrow.

Gilead’s clinical trial risk is also worth naming directly. Its ASCENT-07 trial for Trodelvy missed its primary endpoint in first-line breast cancer, and the STAR-221 gastric cancer study was discontinued. Trial failures like these can erase years of pipeline value in a single day. That is a form of disruption, just one that moves at the speed of a press release rather than a software update.

Two Profiles, Two Outcomes

Whether Brown’s thesis works for a specific investor depends heavily on the entry point and time horizon. Consider two realistic scenarios.

An investor who bought Eli Lilly five years ago and held through today has seen the stock appreciate roughly 416% over five years, driven by the GLP-1 revolution. Mounjaro grew 110% to $7.4 billion in Q4 2025, and Zepbound grew 123% to $4.2 billion. The pipeline execution was exceptional.

But Lilly is now down 6% year-to-date in 2026 and trades at a forward P/E of 29 times earnings. The entire bull case rests on GLP-1 dominance continuing. If a competitor closes the efficacy gap or manufacturing constraints persist, the concentration risk is severe.

Contrast that with Biogen. The stock is up 26% over the past year, but the company is guiding for revenue to decline a mid-single-digit percentage in 2026. Its MS franchise fell 14% in Q4 2025, and biosimilars revenue declined 16%. LEQEMBI, its Alzheimer’s therapy, is growing quickly but from a small base. Global LEQEMBI in-market sales reached roughly $134 million in Q4 2025, up 54% year-over-year, but that is not yet enough to offset the structural retreat in the core MS business. Biogen trades at a forward P/E of 12 times earnings, which prices in the uncertainty. Brown’s colleague mentioned owning Biogen alongside Amgen and AbbVie, but the risk profile is materially different.

Three Questions That Separate the Durable Names From the Fragile Ones

Brown’s framing is useful as a starting point for sector allocation. Large-cap biopharma does belong in a different risk bucket than software or consumer tech when it comes to AI-driven obsolescence. The regulatory moat, the capital intensity of drug development, and the long clinical timelines all create structural durability that most sectors lack.

But treating any of these names as immune to disruption is too strong. The practical framework is to evaluate each stock on three specific questions. First, what percentage of current revenue comes from products with patent protection extending beyond five years? Gilead’s Biktarvy, for instance, has patent settlements pushing generic entry to April 2036, which is a genuine moat. Second, does the pipeline contain at least two products with Phase 3 data capable of replacing the largest declining franchise? AbbVie has answered this with Skyrizi and Rinvoq; Biogen’s answer is less clear. Third, is the balance sheet strong enough to fund pipeline investment through a patent cliff without raising equity at a bad time?

Amgen’s CEO Robert Bradway said after Q4 2025: “We enter 2026 with momentum across a broad portfolio of medicines and a clear path towards advancing innovative therapies to deliver sustained long-term growth.” That confidence is backed by 18 products hitting record sales in 2025 and a six-study Phase 3 obesity program in MariTide. The disruption risk is real but manageable for a company with that kind of breadth.

Brown is right that these stocks occupy a structurally protected corner of the market. The investor who understands which type of disruption to worry about — not AI, but patent cliffs and pricing reform — is positioned to hold through the volatility that comes with the territory and capture the long-term compounding these franchises can deliver.

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