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By Patrick Wingrove
(Reuters) -ELI Lilly investors and analysts said they want to hear details of the company about how it is to increase the American sale of popular weight loss medicine Zepbound after the drug predicted last month.
Lilly, who reported his income from the fourth quarter on Thursday, said in January that wholesalers had not recovered their Zepbound inventories as expected, causing the shares to drove by 8%. It was the second time in a year that the turnover was too short because of problems attributed to the supply chain.
Zepbound, the weight loss version of Diabetes Drug Mounjaro, was approved at the end of 2023 and has had a meteorical increase since then, with millions of customers looking for it or the popular weight loss Drugswegovy by Novo Nordisk.
The question was so high that Zepbound was short of last year, according to the US Drugs Regulator. The drug, which has been shown to reduce the weight to 20%, sells for $ 650 a month on its website for patients who have insurance that does not cover the medicine.
One investor and three analysts told Reuters that they expect Lilly to share details about how it is planning to promote Zepbound this year in an attempt to take more market share from Wegovy, a parent, more established medicine.
“Wegovy is still the name of the concept, but Zepbound has (taken) market share in the past six months with limited market costs. What happens if they pick it up?” Said Christian Greiner, Equity Portfolio Manager at F/M Investments, who owns Lilly shares.
The market share of Zepbound is just over 50%, according to IQVIA data that is shared by an analyst, where Lilly started advertising the medicine in November.
Lilly could use the data in December that it appears that patients who took Zepbound lost 47% more weight than they were given Wegovy, including in television advertisements, with a view to getting non-specialist frontline doctors to do the medicine for Writing, said the investor and analysts.
The drug maker can also explain how it is planning to promote Zepbound to older Americans falling under Medicare, now that the American government health program for people aged 65 and older or who have a disability has said it will cover the medicine as a treatment For sleep apnea, she said. Zepbound is expected to be approved later this year as a treatment for heart failure, they noticed that medicine coverage.
Lilly Chief Financial Officer Lucas Montarce told Reuters last month that the drug maker is trying to balance his question generation activities with his ability to deliver more patients. Last year, the company invested billions of dollars in the production capacity to increase Zepbound supplies and that of Mounjaro.
