Weight-loss shots are one of the biggest drug stories of the decade. And the CEO of the company making them says almost nobody is on them yet.
David Ricks says about 1 in 10 eligible Americans are on a GLP-1 right now. His entire growth plan is about closing that gap.
One forecast keeps getting passed around. J.P. Morgan thinks 25 million Americans will be on GLP-1 drugs by 2030.
That is up from 10 million in 2025 and just 6 million in 2024. In plain English - the number of people on these drugs would more than double in five years.
For your portfolio, that is a long runway of growth baked into one drug category. Eli Lilly sits right at the center of it.
Ricks did not sugarcoat the stakes. "Our job is to get medicines to patients, and now we have for the first time a way to... arrest it completely," he said of obesity.
Shots work. They are not for everyone. Two things have held the drugs back - price and needles.
Lilly just got FDA approval for Foundayo, a GLP-1 pill. It is built to fix both problems at once.
"Convenience matters in health care," Ricks said. He also called out cost and time as the real ceiling on adoption.
Pills cost less to make than shots. Early data says they work about as well for moderate weight loss. That is a cheaper sibling to the blockbuster shots - and it opens the door to people who would never stick themselves with a needle every week.
Ricks also made a budget case. He claims obesity drives $4 of every $10 the country spends on health care.
If that number is right, every new GLP-1 user is not just a drug sale. It is a chip off a massive national bill.
That framing matters because it gives insurers, employers, and lawmakers a reason to cover the drugs. More coverage means a bigger market.
Watch insurance coverage rules, the Foundayo rollout, and whether Lilly's factories can keep up with demand. A doubling user base is the bull case baked into the stock. The pill is the tool built to deliver it.
