Biotech giant Eli Lilly (LLY 0.69%) crushed the stock market last year, but the drugmaker is not starting off so well in 2023. Its shares are down by 7% this year, while the broader market has been rising. It's too soon to tell how things will shape up for the rest of the year for Eli Lilly. And even more importantly, what matters more is whether the company has the tools to perform well in the long run.

Let's dig deeper into Eli Lilly's business and determine whether its shares are worth buying right now.

Eli Lilly's recent financial results

Eli Lilly's latest quarterly update is a key reason it has underperformed this year. In the fourth quarter, the company's revenue declined by 9% year over year to $7.3 billion. But it is worth taking a bit of a closer at this metric. During the worst of the pandemic, some of Eli Lilly's products were sold as coronavirus treatments. And like many other companies in this space, Eli Lilly's COVID-related sales are now dropping as the pandemic recedes.

How much should this matter to investors focused on the long game? Not much. Eli Lilly's coronavirus business was never going to be one of its pillars of growth moving forward. The company's revenue, excluding coronavirus-related sales, increased by 5% -- or 10% in constant currency, a much better performance. Eli Lilly's earnings per share jumped by 13% year over year to $2.14 in the fourth quarter.

Some of Eli Lilly's best-performing products included diabetes medicines Trulicity and Jardiance, cancer drug Verzenio, and immunosuppressant Taltz. Taltz was particularly impressive, with its sales doubling year over year to $808 million. Overall, Eli Lilly's lineup remains strong, and that's not even the end of it.

Multiple potential blockbusters

Last year, Eli Lilly earned approval for Mounjaro, a diabetes medicine that promises to become massively successful. Mounjaro generated $482.5 million in sales last year, which is pretty impressive considering it only earned the green light in mid-May. Sales of Mounjaro should continue to grow rapidly and eventually achieve blockbuster status. And Eli Lilly is working toward other key approvals. The company said it could launch as many as four brand-new products this year.

It is true that one of these, potential Alzheimer's disease (AD) drug donanemab, recently failed to win accelerated approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But even so, it still has a solid shot at earning traditional approval eventually. Eli Lilly is currently running a phase 3 study for donanemab, which will support an application for traditional approval, with results set to come in during the second quarter.

So, Eli Lilly will continue adding new products to its lineup. And once the impact of its coronavirus-related business stops making its financial results look worse than they actually are, the biotech should return to strong revenue growth. 

A solid long-term pick

Eli Lilly outperformed the market last year for some good reasons, perhaps the most important being its exciting pipeline. The company is on the verge of rejuvenating its lineup with medicines that could drive top- and bottom-line growth for years before it has to worry about losing patent exclusivity for any of them. That's a solid reason to buy the stock, regardless of Eli Lilly's unimpressive results in the fourth quarter.

In addition, the healthcare giant is an excellent dividend stock even if its 1.32% yield may suggest otherwise; the average yield of the S&P 500 is 1.74%. Still, Eli Lilly's payouts have more than doubled in the past five years. And given the company's strong business, investors can expect regular payout raises in the future. Eli Lilly has something to offer both growth and income investors who aren't focused on the day-to-day moves of the stock market.

And the stock will only become more attractive for investors if its share price keeps falling in the next few months.