Eli Lilly on Thursday reported third-quarter earnings and revenue that blew past Wall Street estimates and hiked its full-year sales outlook, as sustained, soaring demand for its blockbuster weight loss drug Zepbound and diabetes treatment Mounjaro powered another massive quarter of growth.
Despite that overarching market strength, sales of the pharmaceutical giant’s new GLP-1 obesity pill Foundayo, which launched in the United States in April, came in under analyst expectations for the quarter.
The Indianapolis-headquartered pharmaceutical titan now expects full-year 2026 revenue to come in between $91 billion and $92 billion. That represents a significant upward revision from the company’s previous guidance range of $85 billion to $87 billion, underscoring management’s growing confidence in the global trajectory of its flagship metabolic portfolio.
In addition to raising its top-line expectations, Lilly projects its full-year adjusted earnings will land between $35 and $36 per share. This compares with a previous outlook of $35.50 to $36.50 per share. Explaining the nuanced guidance adjustment, the company noted that it raised its underlying core profit guidance by $4.07 per share at the midpoint, but emphasized that this operational momentum was offset by $4.57 per share in charges tied to recent corporate dealmaking activity completed during the quarter.
The robust financial report and raised sales outlook immediately resonated with investors. The company’s shares rose about 4% in premarket trading on Thursday following the announcement.
Eli Lilly’s monumental diabetes and obesity windfall—alongside its widening market share lead over chief pharmaceutical rival Novo Nordisk—shows no signs of slowing down, even as the company grapples with lower net prices in the U.S. market. Rather than letting those pricing pressures slow its momentum, the pharma giant is actively converting its massive operating profits into an aggressive dealmaking spree. Most recently, Lilly struck a definitive agreement to acquire Merida Biosciences to develop an entirely new class of treatments aimed at addressing serious autoimmune and allergic diseases.
Resilient, multi-quarter demand for Zepbound and Mounjaro has helped fuel several consecutive periods of exceptional financial performance for Lilly, despite lower realized prices for the medications domestically. Those lower domestic net prices followed a high-profile drug pricing agreement struck with the Trump administration last year. In its earnings release, Lilly also pointed directly to expanded U.S. coverage for obesity care as a vital tailwind, referring specifically to Medicare’s landmark decision to start covering GLP-1 medications for chronic weight management under a temporary pilot program beginning in July.
The financial metrics supporting the quarter were striking across the board. Mounjaro’s worldwide revenue surged 65% to reach $10.72 billion for the quarter, a figure that included U.S. sales of approximately $5 billion. That performance easily surpassed the consensus expectations of $10.10 billion in worldwide sales and $4.79 billion in U.S. revenue that analysts had been projecting for the quarter, according to data compiled by StreetAccount.
Mounjaro notably exhibited extraordinary strength in international territories, with sales outside the United States jumping an astonishing 93%.
Meanwhile, Zepbound, which first entered the marketplace roughly three years ago, posted $5.35 billion in revenue for the third quarter. That represents a 49% increase from the year-earlier period, driven by surging prescription volume even as realized unit prices drifted downward. The vast majority of those Zepbound sales originated domestically from the U.S. market. Wall Street analysts had been anticipating $5.09 billion in global sales for Zepbound, including $4.99 billion from the United States, according to StreetAccount estimates.
Not every product in the metabolic lineup matched Wall Street’s lofty expectations, however. Lilly’s newly launched oral obesity pill, Foundayo, which earned U.S. regulatory approval in April, generated $184 million in sales for the third quarter. That figure fell somewhat short of analyst forecasts, which had centered around $229 million in sales, according to StreetAccount estimates.
This marks only the second quarterly earnings report to include revenue from the novel GLP-1 pill, which is currently locked in a fierce, head-to-head commercial competition with a rival oral weight loss drug from Novo Nordisk that launched earlier in January.
Lilly is aggressively working to defend and expand its dominance in the rapidly expanding global market for GLP-1 therapies. According to an earnings presentation shared by the company on Thursday, Eli Lilly commanded a 63% market share of the U.S. obesity and diabetes drug market during the third quarter. By comparison, chief rival Novo Nordisk held a 36.6% market share in the U.S. during the same period.
International markets showed a similarly dominant posture for the American drugmaker. Internationally, Lilly captured a 58.4% share of the relevant market, while Novo Nordisk accounted for the remaining 41.6%, according to the company’s presentation.
Eli Lilly’s overall revenue inside the United States climbed 34% year-over-year to reach $15.1 billion. The company reported that it experienced a 41% increase in absolute volume—representing the total number of prescriptions or physical units sold—primarily led by surging demand for Mounjaro and Zepbound. That immense volume growth was partially offset by a 7% decrease in realized prices, which management noted was driven primarily by pricing dynamics associated with Zepbound.
The company’s third-quarter financial results were also bolstered by a substantial sales-based milestone payout of $410 million for its Type 2 diabetes medication Jardiance, stemming from Lilly’s ongoing commercial collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim.
International performance outside the U.S. was similarly impressive. Sales outside the United States jumped 47% to hit $9.3 billion, propelled by a dramatic 76% surge in volume that was partly offset by a 29% drop in realized prices across foreign jurisdictions.
On the bottom line, the pharmaceutical giant booked net income of $6.45 billion, or $7.22 per share, for the third quarter. This GAAP figure explicitly includes the aforementioned $4.57 per share in charges related to corporate dealmaking and asset transactions completed during the period. That compares favorably with net income of $5.58 billion, or $6.21 per share, reported during the same period a year earlier.
When excluding one-time items associated with the valuation of acquired intangible assets and other operational adjustments, Eli Lilly posted robust non-GAAP adjusted earnings of $7.48 per share for the third quarter.
