Eli Lilly flies the pharma flag in tech-heavy $1tn market cap club

Eli Lilly’s marketplace capitalisation deed the $1tn people successful the past week, becoming the archetypal healthcare institution successful the satellite to articulation the exclusive nine dominated by exertion companies.

Buoyed by unprecedented request for its value nonaccomplishment drugs, the US drugmaker deed the trillion-dollar people for the full worth of its shares connected 21 November.

Share terms successful Lilly closed astatine $1,059.70 connected 21 November, reflecting a 27% summation since January 2025. By trading astatine marketplace unfastened 24 November, stock prices retreated somewhat to $1,056.77.

Eli Lilly present joins Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, and others, arsenic companies with marketplace caps of $1tn oregon much – a important feat for a pharmaceutical institution fixed that tech-centric sectors presently predominate concern landscapes.

GlobalData elder expert Shehroz Mahmood said: “Eli Lilly's ascension to a trillion-dollar marketplace capitalisation represents a watershed infinitesimal for the pharmaceutical industry.”

Lilly breaking done the $1tn marketplace headdress ceiling comes arsenic investors person progressively turned to pharma stocks. The S&P 500 pharmaceutical scale has risen by 19% since the commencement of September arsenic tariff and cause pricing worries successful the manufacture receded amid large pharma institution agreements with the White House.

Eli Lilly owes overmuch of its occurrence to tirzepatide – its flagship value nonaccomplishment product. Marketed nether the marque names Zepbound and Mounjaro for obesity and benignant 2 diabetes (T2D) treatment, respectively, tirzepatide’s income person skyrocketed since archetypal coming to marketplace successful 2022.

Mounjaro generated income of $6.5bn successful Q3 2025, up 109% from the aforesaid play successful 2024. Zepbound exhibited adjacent higher maturation – up 185% from Q3 2024 – to bring successful $3.6bn.

GlobalData investigation forecasts that the 2 brands volition make a combined $64bn successful planetary income successful 2031.

GlobalData is the genitor institution of Pharmaceutical Technology.

Mahmood added that Lilly’s tirzepatide franchise has “fundamentally reshaped the obesity attraction landscape”.

Tirzepatide’s maturation has helped Lilly summation an borderline implicit Novo Nordisk, its main rival successful the glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA) market. Despite being archetypal to marketplace with semaglutide, Novo’s stock prices person been falling amid the company’s marketplace erosion to tirzepatide. Unlike semaglutide – known nether the marque names Wegovy and Ozempic for obesity and T2D treatment, respectively – tirzepatide has a dual-action mechanism, which produces amended efficacy.

Tirzepatide’s show could besides herald a changing of the defender successful the wider pharma industry. The drug’s income person overtaken MSD’s Keytruda (pembrolizumab) – an immunotherapy that has been the top-selling cause globally implicit the past fewer years. For comparison, MSD, which specialises successful crab treatment, has a existent marketplace headdress of $242.6bn.