I usually don’t like looking in the rearview mirror (unless I see flashing blue lights), but what Eli Lilly dropped on Thursday is worth a double take. The pharmaceutical monopoly revealed Phase 3 trial results for their oral weight-loss drug that had investors salivating like my son when I open a bag of doritos… so good that shares surged 16% by the end of the day Thursday. 

Here’s the skinny (pun very much intended): the drug is called orforglipron, which honestly sounds more like a minor villain from Harry Potter than a potential disruptive weight loss drug. But don’t let the name fool you… this thing is a beast. The pill hit two huge targets: it helped patients drop their A1C (a key diabetes marker) and lose significant weight. No needles, no injections… just a pill.

How much weight are we talking? About 16 pounds, or nearly 8% of body weight, over 40 weeks. And get this… the weight loss hadn’t even hit a plateau by the end of the study. So it was still going.

To give you an idea, that 8% weight loss makes Novo Nordisk’s injectable Ozempic (roughly 6% weight loss) look like the diet plan where you just cut out soda. Not bad, but we’ve moved on to bigger things. The weight loss drug market is projected to balloon to a mind-boggling $150 billion in the coming years. 

If you’re wondering why this is so huge, get a load of this… Americans spent $72.6 billion on weight loss in 2018 alone, and that was before we discovered drugs that actually, you know, work. “This is potentially a massive market shift,” says literally every analyst with a functioning brain. “Pills are generally preferred over needles by approximately everyone on planet Earth.”

The winners in this scenario are obvious: Eli Lilly shareholders (duh), people who hate needles (so, everyone), your future skinnier self, and companies making smaller-sized pants. The losers? Novo Nordisk, which tumbled 7%… Pfizer, which had to halt its own oral weight loss drug trial this week after a patient reported liver issues (talk about bad timing), the entire diet industry, and companies making those elastic waistband pants (I made that up, but it’s probably true). As BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman noted with impressive understatement, “While Novo had the headstart… this first mover advantage has waned”.

Of course, there’s no free lunch (literally… you might not want lunch at all). The drug comes with some gastrointestinal side effects similar to Lilly’s injectable counterparts… nausea, indigestion, and diarrhea. These delightful experiences affected between 10% and 26% of patients depending on dosage. So you’ll lose weight, but you might also develop an encyclopedic knowledge of public restroom locations in your city. Win some, lose some.

This was just the first of seven Phase 3 trials, but Lilly is clearly confident in the results. They’re aiming to submit for FDA approval in 2026. Unlike the current shortage situation with injectable GLP-1 drugs (where finding Ozempic is like hunting for PS5s in 2020), Lilly claims they’ll be able to launch without supply constraints. 

If you’re looking for investment opportunities, Lilly just gave you a flashing neon sign. This could be the Apple of weight loss drugs… the company that wasn’t first to market but showed up with something better, more convenient, and ready for mass consumption. If you think that’s too much hype… fine. But one thing is for sure… the race for oral weight loss drugs is officially on and Eli Lilly just took the lead. 

Stocks.News has positions in Eli Lilly, Apple, Novo Nordisk, and Pfizer.