Recently, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly (LLY) has become the focus of market attention. On one hand, its two star GLP-1 drugs—Mounjaro for diabetes and Zepbound for weight loss—continue to drive soaring performance, contributing the vast majority of the company’s revenue growth. On the other hand, its market capitalization exceeding $950 billion and high valuation have also raised market concerns about excessive business concentration and intensifying competition.
Lilly’s recently announced Q4 2025 results remain impressive. The company’s quarterly total revenue reached $19.3 billion, a 43% year-over-year increase. Among this, Mounjaro sales grew 110% to $7.4 billion, while the more recently launched Zepbound achieved nearly $4.3 billion in sales with a 123% growth rate. The combined quarterly sales of these two drugs reached a high of $11.7 billion, already accounting for over 60% of the company’s total revenue. Market forecasts suggest that Zepbound is expected to surpass Mounjaro in the near future, becoming the company’s best-selling product.
Over the past several years, Lilly has achieved astonishing growth relying on these two blockbuster drugs, and its stock performance confirms this. However, this also brings a prominent issue to the forefront: the company’s high growth and revenue prospects are almost entirely tied to a few core products, which undoubtedly presents significant concentration risk.
The vast prospects of the GLP-1 market have attracted a large number of competitors. Several pharmaceutical giants are investing heavily in developing potential competitive products, which could erode Lilly’s market share in the future. The market is concerned that the intense competitive landscape may put downward pressure on Lilly’s stock price in the short term, especially considering the company’s current price-to-earnings ratio has reached a high of 46x. This high valuation reflects investors’ strong expectations for sustained high future growth; should growth fall short, the stock price may face an adjustment.
However, some views hold that as an early leader in the GLP-1 field, Lilly’s market position and technological leadership justify its current premium valuation to some extent. For long-term investors, despite potential short-term volatility, Lilly may still be considered an outstanding growth stock worth holding.
While consolidating its existing advantages, Lilly is also actively expanding its future technology portfolio. On February 9 this year, Orna Therapeutics announced it had entered into a definitive acquisition agreement with Lilly. According to the agreement, Lilly will fully acquire Orna for a total of up to approximately $2.4 billion in cash to strengthen its cutting-edge position in the fields of cell therapy and genetic medicines.
The core assets of this acquisition are Orna’s unique circular RNA technology platform and its in vivo CAR-T development pipeline. Orna’s technology is characterized by combining engineered circular RNA with a novel lipid nanoparticle delivery system, aiming to enable patients’ bodies to generate therapeutic cells themselves, thereby achieving more durable therapeutic protein expression. This has the potential to overcome some limitations of current RNA and cell therapies.
Overall, Lilly is leveraging the strong momentum of its GLP-1 drugs to capture a leading market position, but the risks of business concentration and competition cannot be ignored. Looking ahead, whether its newly acquired cutting-edge technologies can be successfully translated into the next generation of blockbuster therapies, and how the company balances short-term performance pressure with long-term innovation investment, will be key to maintaining its status as a “growth giant.”
