In 1876 Eli Lilly, a veteran of the civil war, founded a company in Indianapolis to bring scientific rigour to a medicines market awash with quack cures and miracle remedies. In doing so, he helped usher in the modern pharmaceutical industry. A century and a half later, the company that bears his name wants to reinvent it again.
It has the scale to try. Lilly is the world’s most valuable drugmaker and the first pharmaceutical company to be worth more than $1trn, joining a club mostly dominated by tech giants. Since the start of 2023 its share price has more than tripled. Analysts expect its revenue to grow by around 15% a year, on average, through the end of the decade, more than triple the median of its peers. Investors now value Lilly more like a tech giant than a drugmaker (see chart).
