Eli Lilly beats 2023 estimates

The pharma industry was waiting for the financial statements of the giant Eli Lilly to understand the market trend. And the signal was positive, since the American group beat analysts' estimates in the fourth quarter of last year, but above all gave 2024 estimates above the market consensus. In detail, last quarter ended with earnings per share of $2.49 (+13%) on revenues of $9.35 billion, up 28%. Estimates for the current year are for earnings per share in the range of $11.80 to $12.30 against turnover of $40.4 billion to $41.6 billion, compared to a consensus of $39 billion in 2024.

A solid base, therefore, on which to build diversification that will allow sustainable growth in the medium and long term. Thus Eli Lilly, like all the biggies in the industry, is shopping around for research niches that could lead to new drugs. In 2023 alone, it bought seven companies including Canadian Point Biopharma for 1.4 billion, French biotech Mablink and US-based Versanis Bio for 1.93 billion.

The field in which to compete with other large international groups is precisely that of biotechs, which can bring advanced research into specific drugs into their portfolios. As Novartis did yesterday, announcing the acquisition of MorphoSys for €2.7 billion . The Swiss group is offering shareholders EUR 68 per share in cash and will delist MorphoSys if the deal goes through. The deal is subject to certain conditions, including a minimum acceptance threshold of 65 per cent of MorphoSys' share capital and regulatory approvals.

Shares in the Frankfurt-listed German biotech jumped 38.6 per cent on Monday and 43 per cent yesterday, surpassing the offer price and ending the session at EUR 68.20. Novartis with the deal adds pelabresib, a drug to fight forms of cancer such as myelofibrosis, a rare type of bone marrow cancer, and certain types of nodular lymphomas, to its portfolio.

And it is precisely the area of cancer drugs that is currently of most interest to the pharmaceutical bigwigs. In this context, Eli Lilly and Novartis have been the most active in the past 12 months, with seven and six deals respectively, according to Bloomberg data. The others, however, are not standing at the window and in this part of 2024 there are already six deals in the sector with a value of over a billion, including Sanofi's purchase of US biotech Inhibrx for $2.2 billion and Johnson & Johnson's deal to take over Ambrx Biopharma for $2 billion.