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If You Invested $1000 in Eli Lilly a Decade Ago, This is How Much It'd Be Worth Now

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How much a stock's price changes over time is a significant driver for most investors. Not only can price performance impact your portfolio, but it can help you compare investment results across sectors and industries as well.

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

Lilly’s 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), Morphic Therapeutics (added oral integrin therapies for treating serious chronic diseases), Verve Therapeutics (added VERVE-102, a PCSK9 gene-editing therapy), Adverum Biotechnologies (added one-time intravitreal gene therapy Ixo-vec for retinal diseases), Ventyx Biosciences (added NLRP3 inhibitors for inflammatory diseases) and Centessa Pharmaceuticals (added cleminorexton, a orexin-2 agonist for sleep disorders).

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 2025 revenues increased 45% to $65.2 billion. Among the key drugs, Mounjaro accounted for around 35.2% of Lilly’s 2025 revenues, Zepbound 20.8%, Verzenio 8.8%, and Taltz and Jardiance accounted for slightly more than 7% each of the total revenues. 

Bottom Line

Anyone can invest, but building a successful investment portfolio takes a combination of a few things: research, patience, and a little bit of risk. So, if you had invested in Eli Lilly a decade ago, you're probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.

According to our calculations, a $1000 investment made in October 2016 would be worth $14,480.69, or a gain of 1,348.07%, as of October 8, 2026, and this return excludes dividends but includes price increases.

The S&P 500 rose 262.24% and the price of gold increased 211.21% over the same time frame in comparison.

Looking ahead, analysts are expecting more upside for LLY.

Lilly has seen extraordinary momentum in its cardiometabolic franchise. Demand for its popular GLP-1 drugs, Mounjaro and Zepbound, remains strong, making them the company's key top-line drivers. Lilly's other new drugs like Kisunla, Omvoh and Jaypirca are also contributing to top-line growth. It is also making rapid pipeline progress in obesity and diabetes. Its new GLP-1 obesity pill, Foundayo, is expected to be a commercial game-changer. Its next-generation weight loss pill, retatrutide, if approved, could become another multibillion-dollar product. Lilly has announced several M&A deals aimed at diversifying beyond GLP-1 drugs and expanding its presence in immunology, oncology and neuroscience. Rising pricing pressure on some drugs and potential competition in the GLP-1 market are some top-line headwinds.

Over the past four weeks, shares have rallied 5.74%, and there have been 3 higher earnings estimate revisions in the past two months for fiscal 2026 compared to none lower. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.

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