WSJ What’s News - What’s News in Earnings: How Big Pharma Is Expanding the GLP-1 Market

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

Bonus Episode for May 8. Financial results from pharmaceutical companies Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb and AbbVie show strong demand continuing for weight-loss drugs and autoimmune treatments. Wall Street Journal pharma reporter Peter Loftus discusses which drugmakers have the upper hand in the race to dominate those markets.  WSJ Heard on the Street columnist David Wainer hosts this special bonus episode of What's News in Earnings, where we dig into companies’ earnings reports and analyst calls to find out what’s going on under the hood of the American economy. Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey listeners, it's Friday May 8th. I'm David Wainer for the Wall Street Journal, and this is What's News and Earnings, our look at some of the biggest themes standing out this earnings season. The weight loss drug market is still growing faster than Wall Street expects. Industry leader Eli Lilly last week reported results that blew past analyst estimates, and the company raised its forecast for sales this year. And that was mostly because of consumer demand for its GLP1 injections. Meanwhile, Novo Nordisk said the prescriptions for its new Wagovi pill are off to a strong start.

That showed that people around the world just can't get enough of weight loss drugs, with growing demand for the pills as well as the injectables. Elsewhere in pharma, companies are mostly delivering positive results, with Merck, Bristolmeyer Squibb, and Avi, all posting earnings beats. But investors are still debating the durability of their long-term growth. We're joined now by Wall Street Journal reporter Peter Loftus, who covers the pharmaceutical industry. Peter, where do things stand on the whole pill versus pill battle? Basically, Novo's oral Wagovi going up against Lillis Fondeo.

Is there a clear winner emerging, or is it still too early to call? Right now, you'd have to say Novo Nordisk has the edge. Their Wagovi pill really has had one of the fastest launches of any drug in pharma history. They've already had more than a million patients using it just since January, since it came out. Of course, it did get a head start on Eli Lilly, whose Fondaio came out in April. But even if you adjust for the timing of the launch, it's clear that the Wigovee pill was doing better. And there's a couple of reasons for this. One is that the Wigovee pill showed stronger efficacy in trials than Fondaio did.

And also the Wigovie pill is using this established brand name that we first saw five years ago. when the injectable version came out. Whereas Fondaio is a brand new brand name. It's less familiar to consumers. Now, that said, Lily hasn't really started the consumer promotion, like TV ads and more. And a lot of analysts think that Lilly will have an edge when it comes to rolling this drug out internationally outside the U.S. and having a big enough supply to be able to meet all that demand.

Because it's actually a lot easier for Lily to make a lot of its pills than it is for, Novo Nordist. One other interesting aspect for both of these companies is that the pills seem to be expanding the market for weight loss drugs overall rather than just taking business away from the shots. And that sort of validates the whole premise that the companies had for developing pills in the first place was they felt there was a large, untapped market of people who would just prefer a pill for weight loss. But aside from the pills, the reports showed that injections are still the main business and international markets are expanding. How do we think about the growth path from here and what are risks investors should be watching for?

Yeah, I mean, Lilly's results showed that sales of Mungaro, which is for both diabetes and obesity, more than doubled. And it's probably on track to being the highest selling drug in the world. Zepbound, the weight loss version of this in the U.S. was up something like 80%. There's still an expectation of just strong continued growth for these drugs in both shot and pill form. The one thing that's changing, and I guess you could call this a risk for investors, but maybe good for consumers, is that the pricing has been coming down in a pretty remarkable way. These drugs started with list price of $1,000 a month or above. Now they're coming down to as low as $149 a month. That big price reduction is going to put a damper on overall sales so much so that some analysts have actually reduced their estimates of the overall market size for obesity.

drugs. Novo Nordis is actually predicting its overall sales will decline this year. So the companies have basically accepted this trade-off of price for volume. Let's switch gears. Another massive market is the autoimmune space. Think of all those ads for clear skin or joint pain. The market for drugs that treat conditions like psoriasis and Crohn's has gotten incredibly competitive. The big fear here for the leader, Avi, has been J&J, making inroads. with its spills while Avi tries to defend its turf with its injections. Did Avi's results this week put those fears to rest? There was a lot of concern the first few months of the year that Johnson & Johnson

would really take market share with not only its new pill, but also another injectable drug, but it turned out that Avi's autoimmune drugs, they had solid sales growth for this past quarter, and in fact it was better than expected. AbV actually raised its sales guidance for its two main autoimmune drugs, immune drugs, Skyrizi and Renvoke. Certainly, J&J, you can't count them out because they've also been a strong leader in

autoimmune drugs. But I think that there's a sense that Abvi will be okay. That was Peter Loftus, Walser Journal's Farmer reported. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. And that was What's News in earnings. Today's show was produced by Danny Lewis with supervising producer Tali Arbell. Later today, we'll have the PM edition of What's News out for you as usual.

And we'll be back later this earning season diving into another industry. Until then, I'm David Wainer. Have a great day.