Successful investing depends on the ability to both accurately read the present and extrapolate the future. In other words, you need to gauge where a company is now and where it could be going by digging into its fundamentals.
In the pharmaceutical industry, the present is a company's current product portfolio, which will drive growth in the near term. But just as importantly, for the future, a drugmaker needs a strong enough product pipeline to offset the risk of drug patent expirations. Here are two big pharma stocks that arguably deliver on both accounts, making each of them compelling buys for investors.
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1. Eli Lilly: Ready to own the future of the pharmaceutical industry
Eli Lilly's (LLY 1.19%) product portfolio consists of dozens of medicines across a variety of therapy areas like oncology, diabetes, and immunology. The company has six products on pace to be blockbusters or megablockbusters in 2023 (at least $1 billion or $5 billion in annual sales, respectively).
This portfolio includes the diabetes medicines Trulicity and Mounjaro, the oncology drug Verzenio, and the heart failure and diabetes therapy Jardiance.
Trulicity is already a megablockbuster. And with the rapid growth rates that Lilly's other three top-selling products are generating, there's reason to believe that each of them will be megablockbusters in the years to come.
This is especially the case with Mounjaro, which doubled its revenue sequentially in the first quarter of 2023 to nearly $570 million. If the drug is approved later this year or early next year to treat obesity, as is widely expected, analysts predict an annual peak sales floor of $15 billion. This alone is a major growth catalyst for Eli Lilly, which is anticipated to bring in $28.1 billion in total revenue in 2023.
Combining that with the dozens of indications that the company currently has in differing stages of clinical trials, the analyst consensus is for 23.3% annual earnings growth over the next five years. That blows the average annual earnings growth outlook of the drug manufacturing industry -- 6.6% -- out of the water.
Eli Lilly's 1.1% dividend yield isn't too appealing in terms of immediate income, considering that the S&P 500 index currently yields 1.7%. But with such huge payout growth prospects, this seems like an acceptable trade-off.
And if you're a growth investor, you can acquire it at a reasonable valuation premium relative to its peers: Eli Lilly's forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 36.3 is (deservedly) almost triple the drug manufacturing industry's average forward P/E of 13.4.
2. Amgen: A blend of income and value
Just like Eli Lilly, Amgen (AMGN 0.22%) has a particularly robust product portfolio. Ten of its medicines are on track to be blockbusters in 2023, such as the popular osteoporosis treatment Prolia, the cholesterol-lowering drug Repatha, and the cancer treatment Kyprolis.
Amgen also has several blockbusters in the making, like its Humira biosimilar Amjevita, the asthma medicine Tezspire (co-owned with AstraZeneca), and the cancer drug Lumakras. And with three dozen compounds in different stages of clinical development for numerous indications, earnings growth should be solid in the years ahead.
If you're an income investor you may be intrigued by Amgen's 3.7% dividend yield, which is more than double the S&P 500 index's 1.7% yield. And since the company's dividend payout ratio is poised to come in below 48% in 2023, this dividend appears to be safe.
Best of all, shares of Amgen can be picked up at a discount to its peers: The stock's forward P/E of 12.3 is just below the drug manufacturing industry's average forward P/E of 13.4, which makes it a buy for dividend-growth investors.
