The notion of a “weight loss drug” has captured the imaginations of the overweight for years. Being able to take a pill to lose weight without missing out on all your favorite foods is almost too good to be true. That’s when healthcare stock Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) and Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) stepped in and made it possible. But Eli Lilly is up fractionally in Tuesday afternoon’s trading thanks to a revelation that it’s actually ahead of the game.
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The latest reports are scathing, at least for Novo Nordisk. A recently completed study, the first of its kind to actually hit outside of a lab setting, revealed that tirzepatide, Eli Lilly’s treatment, is actually three times more likely to prompt a 15% loss in a patient’s weight than Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide treatment. Though the study hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed, it took over 40,000 overweight or obese adults and put them on the two drugs. The results were as expressed, with Eli Lilly pulling ahead by a wide margin over Novo Nordisk.
Eli Lilly Plans to Build Another Gateway Labs Operation
The news comes at the right time for Eli Lilly, who was already seeing something of a renaissance in its operations. In fact, the latest word is that Eli Lilly plans to build another Gateway Labs operation, this time in San Diego. It’ll take some time to complete, but Eli Lilly expects it up and operational before July 2024. That’s the third such location it’s built, with others in Boston and San Francisco. Gateway Labs are designed to work like “accelerators,” giving researchers—or even other companies—access to Eli Lilly’s “expertise.”
Is Eli Lilly a Good Stock to Buy?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on LLY stock based on 19 Buys and one Hold assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 64.37% rally in its share price over the past year, the average LLY price target of $645.72 per share implies 9% upside potential.
