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Here's How Much You'd Have If You Invested $1000 in Eli Lilly a Decade Ago

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How much a stock's price changes over time is important for most investors, since price performance can both impact your investment portfolio and help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.

Another factor that can influence investors is FOMO, or the fear of missing out, especially with tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.

What if you'd invested in Eli Lilly (LLY - Free Report) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to LLY for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?

Eli Lilly's Business In-Depth

With that in mind, let's take a look at Eli Lilly's main business drivers.

Indianapolis, IN-based Eli Lilly and Company, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, boasts a diversified product profile, including a solid lineup of new successful drugs. It also has a dependable pipeline in areas like obesity, diabetes and Alzheimer’s.

Its pharmaceutical product categories are neuroscience (Cymbalta, Emgality and others), cardiometabolic health (Mounjaro, Zepbound, Trulicity and others), oncology (Alimta, Cyramza, Verzenio and others), immunology (Taltz, Omvoh and Olumiant and others) and others (Cialis and others). 

Over the past few years, Lilly has been actively seeking acquisitions and in-licensing deals to boost its product portfolio and pipeline. The $6.5 billion purchase of ImClone Systems in2008 brought with it blockbuster cancer compound, Erbitux. Its other key acquisitions include Hypnion (a neuroscience drug discovery company focused on sleep disorders), CoLucid Pharmaceuticals (which added Reyvow for acute migraine), Loxo Oncology (added cancer drugs Retevmo and Jaypirca), Dermira (added atopic dermatitis drug Ebglyss/lebrikizumab), Akouos (expanded efforts in genetic medicines), DICE Therapeutics (strengthened immunology pipeline) and Morphic Therapeutics (added oral integrin therapies for treating serious chronic diseases).

Lilly has collaboration agreements with several companies, including Incyte (Olumiant), Boehringer Ingelheim (diabetes) and Roche (Ebglyss) among others.
    
Lilly divested its Elanco animal health unit as an independent publicly traded company - Elanco Animal Health Incorporated - via an initial public offering (IPO) of a minority stake in 2018. Elanco Animal Health started trading with the ticker symbol ELAN on NYSE on Sept. 20, 2018. Lilly divested the remaining 80.2% stake in the new company through a “tax-efficient transaction” in March 2019. 

Lilly’s 2024 revenues increased 32% to $45.04 billion. Among the key drugs, Mounjaro accounted for around 25.6% of Lilly’s 2024 revenues, Trulicity 11.7%, Verzenio 12.4%, Zepbound 10.9% and Taltz and Jardiance accounted for slightly more than 7% each of the total revenues. 

Bottom Line

While anyone can invest, building a lucrative investment portfolio takes research, patience, and a little bit of risk. If you had invested in Eli Lilly ten years ago, you're probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.

A $1000 investment made in September 2015 would be worth $9,053.91, or a 805.39% gain, as of September 8, 2025, according to our calculations. Investors should note that this return excludes dividends but includes price increases.

Compare this to the S&P 500's rally of 237.36% and gold's return of 207.90% over the same time frame.

Analysts are anticipating more upside for LLY.

Lilly's Q2 earnings and sales beat estimates. Demand for popular GLP-1 drugs, Mounjaro and Zepbound, remains strong, making them the company's key top-line drivers. Launches of these drugs in new international markets and improved supply from ramped-up production led to strong sales in the first half of 2025. Lilly's other new drugs like Kisunla, Omvoh and Jaypirca are also contributing to its top-line growth. Lilly is also making rapid pipeline progress in obesity and diabetes. However, data from phase III studies on its weight-loss pill, orforglipron, was mixed. Declining sales of Trulicity, rising pricing pressure on some drugs and potential competition in the GLP-1 diabetes/obesity market are some top-line headwinds. The stock has underperformed the industry so far this year.

Shares have gained 16.23% over the past four weeks and there have been 11 higher earnings estimate revisions for fiscal 2025 compared to none lower. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.


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