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For a drug that has been on the market for only a year, Eli Lilly and Co.’s anti-obesity treatment Zepbound has quickly made a huge name for itself, racking up more than $3 billion in sales and prompting the company to spend billions of dollars on new factories to keep up with demand.
But it’s only the beginning of the story, David Ricks, CEO of the Indianapolis-based drugmaker, told a lunch audience Tuesday at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C.
By next year, he said, Zepbound could prove itself the 148-year-old company’s most popular drug ever.
“People have a scale in their bathroom,” he said. “They step on it every day. They love losing weight.”
Ricks predicted that Zepbound and rival drug Wegovy, made by Danish competitor Novo Nordisk, “will easily be the largest-selling drugs in the U.S. next year, and for good reason.”
The reason, he said, is that millions of Americans are obese and are struggling to find ways to take off pounds. According to data from a recent clinical trial, Zepbound helped overweight patients lose an average of 50.3 pounds, compared with 33.1 pounds for patients taking Wegovy.
Those large figures, he said, show that the drugs are successful, and that people are buying in. So are doctors; about eight out of 10 times they are asked about Zepbound or Wegovy, they write a prescription for the patient.
“We’re just at the beginning of this weight-loss story,” Ricks said. “You know, right now, there’s six or seven million Americans who are taking these medicines. There are 110 million with obesity. We need to build more plants and develop more data, get better insurance coverage, and then there’s the whole world to cover.”
Lilly had its share of blockbusters over the years, including anti-depressant Prozac (annual sales of $2.8 billion at its height), anti-psychotic treatment Zyprexa ($4.76 billion) and diabetes treatment Trulicity ($7.4 billion).
Lilly diebetes drug Mounjaro, which uses the same active ingredient (tirzepatide) as Zephound, racked up $5.16 billion in sales last year and has already topped $8 billion through the first three quarters of 2024.
But Zepbound seems to have one of the quickest sales accelerations in memory. The drug, launched in December 2023, rang up $3.01 billion in sales in the first nine months of 2024. The company will release full-year earnings on Feb. 6.
Analysts predict Zepbound could top annual sales of $27 billion by the end of the decade.
Zepbound, a weekly injectable drug, works by mimicking hormones in the gut and the brain to regulate appetite and feelings of fullness. The drug’s mechanism of action is by activating both GIP (glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide) and GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) hormone receptors.
Ricks said Lilly is exploring additional uses for Zephound, including the possibility of it controlling addictive behaviors such alcohol abuse, smoking and drug addiction.
Lilly is also developing a weight-loss pill that would be easier to take but would work on only the GLP-1 hormone receptor. Ricks said the company hopes to have clinical data next year on the pill.
Ricks largely avoided talking about politics or health policy, even though he was addressing a Washington audience.
Axios reported last week that Ricks attended dinner at President-elect Donald Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, along with the CEO of drugmaker Pfizer and the CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
Trump and his incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles, also attended, as did Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services.
“I probably shouldn’t say too much about it, but it was all you can imagine,” Ricks said, “and a little bit more.”
On the subject of meeting with Washington policymakers, he added: “Health care is always a topic, and so then our role in it. And medicine affordability is a key area. … But I think my experience, having done this for eight years, is there’s often more common ground than you’d think, just reading the newspapers.”
Ricks was clearly more comfortable talking about Lilly’s medicines and pipeline, which made up the bulk of his 43-minute discussion, moderated by David Rubenstein, co-founder and co-chair of private equity firm the Carlyle Group.
Ricks said Lilly has 11 pipeline projects altogether aimed at obesity, in different ways. One, for example is a “triple-acting medicine” in late-stage clinical development for patients that have higher body weight or more severe health problems. Others will address obese patients with other needs.
“We think this is going to be a very large segment with many different types of medicines for different conditions and different situations people might find themselves in,” Ricks said. “We’re going to exploit that fully.”
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