WSJ What’s News - How Eli Lilly Became the First Pharma Company to Reach a $1 Trillion Market Cap

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

P.M. Edition for Nov. 21. It’s mostly tech companies that have hit the milestone of a $1 trillion valuation. As WSJ Heard on the Street columnist David Wainer explains, Eli Lilly’s entrance into this elite club is for a completely different reason: weight-loss drugs. Plus, New Mexico is one of the poorest states in the U.S., but it’s planning to spend millions of dollars per year to be the first state to offer universal childcare. We hear from WSJ economics reporter Harriet Torry about how the plan will work, and what critics say. And now that the U.S. has presented its 28-point peace plan to Ukraine, President Trump says he expects an answer by Thanksgiving, leaving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with what he calls a very difficult choice. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Trump says he wants Ukraine's answer on the U.S. peace plan by Thanksgiving. The Ukrainian leader calls it a very difficult choice. Plus, how booming demand for weight loss drugs has helped Eli Lilly become the first pharmaceutical to join the trillion-dollar company club. What we're seeing right now is that Lily has just the most potent drug and the strongest pipeline. And why social media influencers are pushing people to start taking social security early. It's Friday, November 21st. I'm Alex O'Sullough for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News,

the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. U.S. stocks turned higher today after a top Federal Reserve official made the case for a near-term cut to interest rates, leading investors to boost expectations of a December rate cut. The Dow led the gains in the three-year-old. re-indexes, closing up 1.1%. But the rally hasn't been enough to make up for the sharp declines from earlier in the week, driven by worries about an asset bubble in technology stocks and the value of aggressive artificial intelligence spending plans. Bitcoin remains under pressure

and is down 23% this month. And some traders say the drop in Bitcoin may be forcing some other selling in stock markets. For the week, the Dow closed down 1.9%. The S&P fell 2%, and the NASDAQ dropped 2.7%. Speaking of tech stocks, heads up that we dropped a new bonus episode of What's News and earnings earlier today, looking at the chip sector, the AI boom, and investors' back-and-forth feelings about both. That's in your What's News feed now. A number of financial influencers, or Finfluensers, are saying people should start claiming Social Security as early as possible at age 62 and invested in the stock market. Here is yet another reason why I will be taking my Social Security at 62, and I double-dogged area to challenge me on this one.

I want the money sooner, the flexibility, and if I don't need it, I will invest it where I would never break even by waiting. I'm taking Social Security at 62. How about you? That flies in the face of the traditional advice to delay Social Security as long as possible, until 70, if you can. Jason Swig, who writes the Intelligent Investor column, says in this case, the traditional advice is completely correct. correct. Jason, walk us through the math here. Why do these influencers advise taking your social security as early as possible? The return on social security is low and the historical return on stocks is high. So you should take the money from social security where it's going to get a low return and put it in the stock market where it's going to get a high return. Over the long term,

the stock market has returned an average of 7% a year after inflation. And if you do the math, let's say you get $2,000 a month in Social Security, if you retire at the age of 62, and you just take all that money and you pump it into stocks, if you start doing that at age 62 and you live until age 85, you're going to end up with pretty close to a million dollars. If you delay Social Security until age 70, and then put the same amount of money into stocks every month, you'll end up with a little over 800,000. So you come out ahead. So what's the catch?

There's just one problem with this, which is that stocks don't always return 7% a year. Sometimes they go down. And if this just so happens to be the case right around the time you're retiring, you'll end up with less money if you take your Social Security, early and put it into the stock market, then if you waited until, say, age 70. That was WSJ Investing columnist, Jason Swag. Thanks, Jason. Thanks, Alex. Now that the U.S. has presented Ukraine with a deal to end its war with Russia,

President Trump is pressing for a quick answer. Today, he told Fox News Radio that he wants Ukraine to respond by Thursday on the 28-point U.S. plan. which includes territorial concessions, a cap on the size of Ukraine's active duty military, and other provisions that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has previously rejected. Zelensky acknowledged the challenges facing his country. In a video address, Zelensky said his country now faced a, quote, very difficult choice between losing its dignity or losing the support of the U.S. Now, Ukraine might be up to be a very

hard enough of either or a threat of giddness or risk of the keychievous. Russian leader Vladimir Putin discussed the U.S. plan, which he said could form the basis for a peace settlement at a meeting with his Security Council today. Russian forces continue to advance in eastern Ukraine, while Moscow's attacks on Ukraine's energy systems

have left much of the country with electricity for only a few hours a day. Zelensky also faces political tech. with a corruption investigation focusing on members of his cabinet and other political allies. President Trump and New York City mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani, who have spent months antagonizing one another, set aside their differences for now, following a meeting at the White House today. Here's Trump speaking to reporters after the meeting. I feel very confident that he can do a very good job. I think he's going to be, I think he is going to surprise some conservative people. people, actually.

Coming up, why one of the poorest states in the U.S. is investing millions per year in universal child care. That's after the break. Most of the companies that have joined the $1 trillion club are tech names riding the AI boom, like NVIDIA and Microsoft. Now, Eli Lilly has become the first healthcare company to join their rank. closing today with a market capitalization above $1 trillion. Lilly reached that milestone for a totally different reason than those other companies, weight loss drugs.

Lilly's brands are Moundjaro and Zepbound, and it's emerged as the leader in a blockbuster new market. David Wainer, a herd on the street columnist at the journal covering pharma, joins me now. David, Lilly has hit this $1 trillion milestone. What will determine whether it stays there? So there's three things that are going to be key to Eli Lilly's future. The first and most important one is just how big this obesity market becomes. Right now, Wall Street is modeling tens of millions of long-term users. If adoption were to slow, obviously Lilly's valuation would come down as well.

But to a large degree, that really depends on insurance coverage as well, and that's the second thing. So for a long time, there was this huge demand, and the big bottleneck was supply. These companies just couldn't make enough. Now, Lilly and its competitor, Novo Nordisk, the second largest player here, are making enough to supply the entire market. And what they really need is this market to expand through insurance coverage. And that leads me to the third thing. To expand the market, the drugs need to come down a little bit in pricing. And we're already starting to see that.

You saw Lily and Novo strike a deal with the Trump administration to expand coverage of Medicare in exchange for lower prices. obviously one risk for them will be that the prices don't come down too much, because at that point, their profits will obviously come down as well. Lily is facing a number of competitors, including Novo Nordisk, which makes Ozmpic, and some companies that are just emerging in the weight loss drug market like Amgen and Pfizer. Could they take market share away from Lilly and dent its valuation, or is it the sort of thing where a rising tide lifts all boats? They certainly could, but right now the market is big enough and expanding, and so there's opportunities. for more than one winner. And what we're seeing right now is that Lilly has just the most potent drug and the strongest pipeline. For example, or for Glypron, the pill is almost about to hit the market, and it's the best thing there is right now. And Lily also has powerful

injections that are being developed, next generation drugs that will hit the market in a couple years. That was WSJ heard on the street columnist David Wainer. Thanks, David. Thank you. In Europe, free or subsidized child care, is common. That's not the case in the U.S. But this month, New Mexico became the first state to guarantee free child care for everyone, regardless of how much money they make. The state says the plan should save families around $16,000 a year on average, on daycare bills. It'll cost New Mexico $600 million in the next fiscal year, with most of the money coming from a fund built from oil and gas revenues. It's a big burden. She paid child care. That's Stephanie Neely, a mom of three who lives in New Mexico.

She's planning to apply to the state program for her youngest child and expects to save about $7,000 on child care bills before the child starts public school next year. Neely says her family can put that money toward emergency savings. Like if something were to happen, we don't have those financial savings to fall back on. And so really be able to put that money towards that or towards our debt reduction and really kind of put ourselves forward.

WSJ economics correspondent Harriet Tori joins me now to discuss the details. Harriet, what is New Mexico's goal with this program? Why did the state think it was necessary? This is a state that regularly ranks at the bottom in many rankings of educational attainment, college education, graduation rates, and there are high levels of poverty as well. So the state is really trying to invest in giving children a better start in life. And early childhood education is one of the ways that they're trying to do this. So in recent years, they have been rolling out child care, but now anyone can get it. it. Everybody in the state can now tap this program. What kind of impact are they hoping that it would have on the labor force and who was in it? The participation rate in New Mexico is lower than the

national average. So I think they're hoping to help families who want to work and get into the labor force. Quality childcare is a good way of doing this. They're also trying to attract businesses to the state. This is potentially very attractive for workers. If you think, okay, I have these daycare bills. I have student loans. I have all these things. And maybe if I take a job in New Mexico, I can alleviate one of these really big financial outlays every month. And it's also aimed at keeping families with young children in the state because many people have been moving away to neighboring states like Texas, like Arizona, for jobs. This is not a totally new idea for New Mexico. Since 2022, the state has actually provided free child care, but it was capped by income. A family of four had to make less than $130,000. What kinds of challenges is the state expecting with a bigger, more expanded program? So before the policy change, there were 32,000 children in the state-sponsored program, and that number is expected to double by the fiscal year 2028. So the state wants to add about 5,000 more workers, and they are doing this in various ways.

So trying to incentivize people to study early childcare, open new daycare centers. They're offering, for instance, low-interest loans. and they also want to encourage people to open in-home child care operations. Those are often very key in rural areas where there might not be big child care centers. The state has these enhanced incentive rates for facilities that are open for longer hours. It's a voluntary program. Some of the providers are just kind of trying to figure out how that will work in terms of having to raise wages. What do opponents of this program say?

So opponents have concerns that by opening the doors to everybody to be able to, access-free care. This is potentially going to create a lot of, you know, long-waiting lists and maybe just gum-up access for people who really need it. And they worry that they want people to get off, you know, state dependency and become more independent. That was WSJ reporter, Harriet Torrey. Thanks, Harriet. All right, thanks. And that's what's news for this week. Tomorrow you can look out for our weekly markets wrap-up, what's news and markets? Then on Sunday, we'll have a discussion about some big geopolitical trends like U.S.-China-related. courtesy of our friends at the Bold Names podcast.

Today's show is produced by Pierre Bienname and Zoe Colkin with supervising producer Tali Arbell. Michael Laval wrote our theme music. Jessica Fenton is our technical manager. Aisha L. Muslim is our development producer. Chris Zinsley is our deputy editor. And Falana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. I'm Alex Osala.

Thanks for listening. I'm going to be able to be.