Being first to market with a drug can be crucial. Eli Lilly is proving that being second but better can also pay. Zepbound, the American firm’s weight-loss jab, was approved in its home country in November 2023, more than two years after Wegovy, made by Novo Nordisk, a Danish rival. Yet in 2024 Zepbound yielded $4.9bn in revenue, more than half of Wegovy’s $8.2bn. On May 7th Novo cut its sales forecast for 2025, citing “lower-than-planned” growth in weight-loss drugs. S&P Global, a financial-data firm, expects sales of Lilly’s obesity drugs to overtake Novo’s by 2027 (see chart 1).
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