GLP-1 medications such as Mounjaro and Zepbound have transformed Eli Lilly (LLY) into a pharmaceutical powerhouse.

Eli Lilly’s stock has climbed nearly 300% in recent years, and the key to that growth has been its GLP-1 offerings. 

With Eli Lilly playing a crucial role in meeting demand for obesity and GLP-1 drugs, investor expectations have likewise risen for the company.

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Obesity GLP-1 medications like Mounjaro and Zepbound have turned Eli Lilly (LLY) into the most valuable healthcare company in the world with a $1 trillion market cap.

Since Mounjaro’s approval in May 2022, the Type 2 diabetes/weight-loss drug has surpassed Merck’s (MRK) Keytruda as the world’s bestselling medication. Zepbound became the world’s most popular obesity medicine within two years of its launch.

Fueled by these tailwinds, Eli Lilly’s stock has climbed nearly 300%. That said, the company still has room to grow in the GLP-1 market.

More than 100 million people in the U.S., and 1 billion globally, suffer from obesity. Yet roughly half of patients still lack access to weight-loss drugs.

The demand for these drugs is enormous. The number of U.S. adults using these drugs jumped from 3% in 2024 to 11% in 2026. About 25 million Americans will be on a GLP-1 treatment by 2030.

And Eli Lilly is working to meet that demand across the board, be it in drug development, affordability, supply, and distribution.

Mounjaro and Zepbound mimic two gut hormones, while Novo Nordisk’s (NVO) Wegovy mimics just one. Eli Lilly’s next obesity candidate, retatrutide, mimics three gut hormones. In a late-stage trial, it produced an average weight loss of 28% across 18 months. 

The company introduced Foundayo, a once-daily obesity pill, in April 2026. It generated about 89,000 prescriptions soon after. This has kept the pressure on Novo Nordisk. Zepbound’s list price is now 20% below Wegovy’s.

Eli Lilly also offers an online platform called LillyDirect. It helps patients connect with doctors and pay out of pocket when insurance falls short. Today, 55% of new Zepbound patients buy their medicine through Eli LillyDirect. (Novo has been slower to adopt these types of channels.)

The company’s most important move was offering single-dose vials when injector pens were in short supply. The vials were cheaper to produce and easier to scale. In August 2024, the firm cut its price in half on Eli LillyDirect. That helped make single-dose vials the site’s bestselling product.

Expectations for Eli Lilly have continued to climb and this can be seen through our Embedded Expectations Analysis (“EEA”) framework.

The EEA starts by looking at a company’s current stock price. From there, we can calculate what the market expects from the company’s future cash flows. We then compare that with our own cash-flow projections.

In short, it tells us how well a company has to perform in the future to be worth what the market is paying for it today.

Eli Lilly’s Uniform return on assets (“ROA”) spent much of the past decade in the low-to-mid teens. It reached about 18% in 2023 and 25% in 2025, as GLP-1 sales ramped up.

Analysts expect the company to move another step higher, with a Uniform ROA of roughly 31% by 2027. But the market doesn’t expect it to go any higher than that. 

Those are lofty expectations but Eli Lilly has already made great strides. And the company is continuing to innovate and expand access to its drugs.

The GLP-1 contest isn’t just about which drug works best. It’s also about logistics. Patients need reliable access. And they gravitate toward products with the clearest path from prescription to delivery.

The company will have to keep improving profitability to meet investor expectations. That said, Wall Street thinks it’ll quickly compound its lead in the pharmaceutical industry.

As long as demand for Eli Lilly’s GLP-1 drugs continues to remain strong, Uniform returns should continue rising, enabling it to meet expectations.

The market has set a high bar. But Lilly’s franchise is capable of clearing it.

Best regards,

Joel Litman & Rob Spivey
Chief Investment Officer &
Director of Research
at Valens Research