high profile weight-loss and diabetes drugs fell short of Wall Street sales estimates on Wednesday as supplies sat in warehouses, a 180-degree turn for the company after long struggling to meet outsized demand.
Drug wholesalers, or distributors, purchase medicines like Zepbound from manufacturers and sell them to hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and other healthcare providers. The miss comes despite prescriptions of Zepbound and Mounjaro continuing to increase in the U.S. Lilly filled an average of around 140,000 Zepbound prescriptions per week this quarter, compared to just over 93,000 per week last quarter, according to IQVIA data shared by an analyst.
Mounjaro and Zepbound compete with Novo Nordisk’s popular Ozempic and Wegovy. Novo, whose U.S. listed shares were down almost 1 per cent, has been aggressively marketing Wegovy on U.S. television. Zepbound and Mounjaro were in short supply for much of this year due to soaring demand for the medicines that have been shown to help patients lose an average of 20 per cent of their weight. Lilly said supply had started to catch up with demand last quarter.