A pharmacist arranges boxes of Eli Lilly & Co.’s Munjaro brand tirzepatide medication at a pharmacy in Provo, Utah, on Monday, Nov. 27, 2023.
George Frey | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Demand for weight loss and diabetes treatment is soaring Eli Lilly The company has reached new heights over the past year, but the drugmaker wants to build on its hard-won successes and do even more, outgoing Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi told CNBC.
Ashkenazi said, alphabet Ashkenazi, who took the job on July 31, has played a key role in managing Lilly’s surging revenue and optimistic investor outlook for its diabetes injectable drug Maunjaro and its recently launched obesity drug Zepbound. Ashkenazi became the company’s CFO in 2021 after nearly two decades at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. He was named to CNBC’s inaugural Changemakers list earlier this year.
“You have to study the business, understand the business inside out, understand the industry,” she told CNBC in an interview before announcing her departure. “Only when you understand the whole system can you navigate it and create value. That’s my role as CFO.”
Her tenure was not without its challenges. Novo Nordisk Both companies have struggled to manufacture sufficient supplies of the treatments to meet unprecedented demand, causing shortages of these drugs across the country.
The weekly injections are part of a class of drugs called GLP-1 agonists that mimic certain hormones produced in the gut to suppress appetite and regulate blood sugar, a market some analysts predict could reach $100 billion in 10 years’ time.
Lilly’s surging revenue will allow the company to invest heavily in scaling up manufacturing, ultimately helping to get more medicines to patients, Ashkenazi said.
“Once it begins selling its products and has the revenue and cash flow associated with those sales, the company hopes to put that cash flow back into the business and use it to invest in its manufacturing facilities,” she said.
Eli Lilly doesn’t expect to be able to keep up with the pace of demand this year, and probably not even until 2025, Ashkenazi said at the March conference. But the pharmaceutical giant has made promising progress so far.
A view of Eli Lilly and Company’s pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in Branchburg, New Jersey, on March 5, 2021.
Mike Seeger | Reuters
Ashkenazi said Lilly has several manufacturing sites under construction or “expanding,” including two in North Carolina, two in Indiana, one in Ireland and one in Germany, as well as seven recently acquired from Nexus Pharmaceuticals Inc. Late last month, Lilly announced it would invest an additional $5.3 billion in its manufacturing plant in Lebanon, Indiana.
Ashkenazi said the facilities add to the company’s “existing, very extensive” manufacturing footprint across the U.S. and Europe. The company said in May that it has spent more than $18 billion since 2020 to build, expand or purchase manufacturing plants in those regions.
Ashkenazi noted that Eli Lilly is also addressing another barrier to patient access: limited insurance coverage for weight-loss drugs in the United States.
Some employers and other health plans remain reluctant to cover GLP-1s for weight-loss treatments because their high prices could put a significant strain on budgets. Insurers also have other questions, such as how long patients will actually stay on treatment.
Still, Ashkenazi said coverage of Zepbound by private insurers in the U.S. is improving, with about 67% having private insurer coverage as of April 1. Eli Lilly is working to build that access for the remaining patients, she noted.
“It’s not enough to develop a highly effective, safe drug that can truly transform people’s health care; we also need to make that drug available to everyone,” Ashkenazi said.
She also hopes that patients in the federal Medicare program will eventually be able to expand coverage for weight-loss drugs as Eli Lilly and Co. and other drug companies demonstrate their ability to treat a range of obesity-related conditions.
Eli Lilly is studying tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Zepbound and Maunjaro, in patients with health conditions including obesity, fatty liver disease, obstructive sleep apnea, chronic kidney disease and heart failure.
According to new guidelines issued in March, Medicare Part D plans can cover obesity treatments that receive regulatory approval as an additional health benefit. Medicare prescription drug plans run by private insurers, known as Part D, currently cannot cover these drugs that are intended solely for weight loss.
Ashkenazi said the bigger problem now is the long-standing misconception that obesity is a “lifestyle choice” rather than a chronic disease.
Eli Lilly is looking to change that.
“Our goal is to help society, the health care system and the patients themselves really look at this and understand that this is a chronic disease and therefore should be treated as such,” Ashkenazi said.
