Shares of Eli Lilly (LLY 0.86%) have made some investors much richer. Over the last decade, for example, Eli Lilly stock averaged annual gains of 25.1%, enough to turn a $10,000 investment into a stake worth $94,204. (The S&P 500 index averaged a still-respectable 12.7% over the same period, turning $10,000 into $33,117.) Had you reinvested your Lilly dividends into more shares of stock along the way, your average gain would have been 26.9%, and your investment's value $108,082.
If you're not an Eli Lilly shareholder, you might be wondering whether you should become one. Well, there's certainly a solid green flag or two. Unfortunately, there's a red flag, too.
A key reason to buy into Eli Lilly is its solid portfolio of drugs and drugs in development. It's already a leader in the increasingly popular realm of weight loss drugs -- with weight loss drug Zepbound and diabetes drug Mounjaro -- and its cancer drug Verzenio is very promising, too. And those are just some of its drugs. My colleague Keith Speights has suggested that Lilly might become the first healthcare company to cross the $1 trillion mark in market value.
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Of course, not every drug will become a best-seller -- and some never even get approved. Eli Lilly reported some disappointing results for its weight loss drug orforglipron recently, which sent its shares downward -- even though patients taking it did lose significant weight.
So what's the red flag? Well, it's Eli Lilly's valuation. With a recent price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 61, well above its five-year average of 50, the stock seems a bit richly priced -- though not wildly overpriced. You could still load up on it if you're a long-term investor, or you could buy into the stock gradually over time. Note, too, that President Trump's threatened tariffs could hurt pharmaceutical companies in general.
