America’s Obesity Problem: ‘I never said thank you…”

Eli Lilly: “And you’ll never have too…” 

The company who single-handedly disbanded your moms Weight Watcher meetings is now dropping a new manufacturing plant right in the middle of GLP-1 mania (read: Huntsville, AL where Waffle House is a religion). Why? Because demand is still so stupidly high that Big Pharma is basically laying concrete as fast as zoning laws will let them.

(Source: Giphy) 

In short, the  new Huntsville site is part of a larger “we’re building factories everywhere” moment for Lilly… $27B in new US plants announced this year alone, on top of the $23B they already spent since 2020. The drug in question here? Orforgilpron… a.k.a a pill that will have the entire country fistfighting their neighbor for. Additionally, the $6B obesity pill plant is said to start construction in 2026 and wraps in 2032. But it’ll eventually bump US API production, give the FDA fewer things to complain about, and help Lilly pump out enough orforglipron to keep TikTok weight-loss trends alive and printing. 

(Source: CNBC) 

What’s more is that given that Trump threatened drug import tariffs, it paved way for Lilly to cut some deals allowing the onshoring panic to finally cool off. Because of this, Huntsville now gets 450 high-paying jobs and about 3,000 construction gigs…which means Alabama just pulled off the economic-development equivalent of winning the lottery without buying a ticket. Whereas, once the pill gets approved (the FDA already threw it a priority-review voucher), production ramps, and every clinic in America starts prescribing GLP-1s like they’re Flintstones vitamins… and Lilly gets to keep holding the crown in the single hottest market on earf. 

Translation: If you thought Alabama football was intense, wait till the state becomes ground zero for the next wave of lifestyle-drug demand. Of course, while this only means one thing and one thing only (read: money), that’s presumably why investors yeeted Lilly shares -1.54% on the day. Apparently, cap ex wasn’t on the menu… but still, it ain’t nothing compared to what Jamie Dimon and the boys are doing in Manhattan and London LOL (see: JPMorgan’s Masterclass in Overblowing Their Budget by $5B). 

(Source: Giphy)

So yeah… Eli Lilly is once again making waves, and the people of Huntsville will now be arguing not just over which cousin to marry, but who gets first dibs on the skinny pill. Place your bets accordingly, friends. Until next time… 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News does not hold positions in companies mentioned in the article.