A pharmacist dispenses Eli Lilly & Co. medicine prepared at a pharmacy in Provo, Utah, USA, on Monday, November 27, 2023. Holding a box of Mounjaro brand tirzepatide medication.
George Frey | Bloomberg | getty images
Soaring demand for weight loss and diabetes medications ellie lily Last year it grew to new heights. But outgoing Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi told CNBC she wants to do much more to build on the drugmaker’s hard-won success.
Ashkenazi was appointed as the new CFO. alphabet On July 31, it played a key role in managing a wave of revenue growth and investor optimism driven by Eli Lilly’s diabetes injectable Mounjaro and its recently launched obesity drug Zepbound. Ashkenazi took over as Eli Lilly’s CFO in 2021 after spending nearly two decades at the pharmaceutical giant. She was included in CNBC’s inaugural Changemakers list earlier this year.
“You have to be a really good student of business, understand the ins and outs and understand the industry,” she told CNBC in an interview before announcing her departure. “Only by understanding the entire system can you navigate it to create value. That’s my role as CFO.”
Her tenure was not without its challenges. Eli Lilly and Rivals novo nordisk Both companies have struggled to produce enough supplies of the treatment to meet unprecedented demand, leading to nationwide shortages of the drug.
What they inject weekly is part of a class of drugs called GLP-1 agonists. This medication mimics certain hormones produced in the intestines to suppress a person’s appetite and regulate blood sugar. Some analysts expect the market for the drug to be valuable. 100 billion dollars Around the end of the decade.
Eli Lilly’s surge in sales has allowed the company to invest heavily to expand manufacturing, which will ultimately get more drugs into the hands of patients, Ashkenazi said.
“Once we start selling products and get the revenue and cash flow associated with those sales, the company wants to funnel that cash flow back into the business and invest in manufacturing facilities,” she said.
ellie lily don’t expect Ashkenazi said at a conference in March this year that it needs to keep up with the pace of demand and may not be able to do so in 2025. But the pharmaceutical giant has made encouraging progress so far.
A March 5, 2021 photo of the Eli Lilly and Company pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in Branchburg, New Jersey.
Mike Seeger | Reuters
Ashkenazi said Eli Lilly is building or “expanding” several manufacturing facilities, including two in North Carolina, two in Indiana, one in Ireland and one in Germany, and its seventh, which the company recently acquired from Nexus Pharmaceuticals. He said there are also facilities. Eli Lilly also announced late last month that it would invest an additional $5.3 billion in its manufacturing plant in Lebanon, Indiana.
These facilities add to the company’s “existing very large” manufacturing footprint across the U.S. and Europe, Ashkenazi said. In May, Eli Lilly said it has spent more than $18 billion to build, expand and purchase manufacturing plants in the region since 2020.
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 are still reluctant to cover GLP-1 for weight loss because of its high price, which they say can place a significant strain on their budgets. Insurers also have other questions, such as how long patients actually receive treatment.
Nonetheless, Ashkenazi said Zepbound coverage by U.S. commercial insurers has improved, with about 67% commercial coverage as of April 1. Eli Lilly is working to build this access for the rest of its patients, she said.
“It’s not enough to just have a highly effective, safe drug that can truly transform people’s health care, as well as increase access to it,” Ashkenazi said.
She also hopes patients enrolled in the federal Medicare program will eventually have expanded coverage for weight-loss drugs as Eli Lilly and other drug companies demonstrate their ability to treat a wide range of obesity-related conditions.
Eli Lilly is studying tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Zepbound and Mounjaro, in patients with conditions including obesity, fatty liver disease, obstructive sleep apnea, chronic kidney disease, and heart failure.
New guidance issued in March allows Medicare Part D plans to cover obesity treatment with regulatory approval for additional health benefits. Medicare prescription drug plans administered by private insurers, known as Part D, currently cannot cover medications solely for weight loss.
The bigger problem, according to Ashkenazi, is the long-standing misconception that obesity is a “lifestyle choice” rather than a chronic disease.
Eli Lilly is trying to change that.
“Our goal is to get society, the health care system and the patients themselves to really look at this and understand that this is a chronic disease and it should be treated accordingly,” Ashkenazi said.
