Lilly hits the Mounjaro plateau

It is not just Novo Nordisk that is having trouble meeting demand for its GLP-1. Lilly said today that Mounjaro sold $279m in the fourth quarter of 2022, bringing full-year sales to $483m. This was below SVB analysts’ forecasts: they had pencilled in $370m for Q4. As with Novo’s Wegovy yesterday, the problem is that the company simply cannot make the stuff fast enough; US Mounjaro scrips rose sharply after its launch in June but stalled in mid-November and have been flat since. The question now is what this means for the year to come. The sellside has been raising its Mounjaro forecasts over the past few months and a rough calculation suggests that consensus now approaches $3bn for 2023. Certainly that reflects demand – but can Lilly build the requisite manufacturing capacity? The company has said in the past that it expects its supply capacity for its GLP-1 portfolio, which includes Trulicity as well as Mounjaro, to double by the end of this year. Even so, $3bn looks like a tough bar to hit.