MW Lilly obesity-pill trial results find a warmer reception on Wall Street this time around

By Steve Gelsi

The pharmaceutical giant will now move 'with urgency' toward getting regulatory approval for orforglipron

Eli Lilly said it will move ahead with the commercial launch of its obesity pill containing orfoglipron.

Eli Lilly & Co. earlier this month disappointed Wall Street with clinical-trial data for its obesity pill, but a new round of trial data is getting a warmer reception.

The pharmaceutical giant $(LLY)$ said on Tuesday that results from a Phase 3 trial of its orforglipron pill "met the primary and all key secondary endpoints, with compelling efficacy results and a safety profile consistent with injectable GLP-1 medicines." This trial, called Attain-2, studied the effect of the drug on adults with both obesity or overweight and Type 2 diabetes, whereas the prior Attain-1 trial focused on individuals who did not have Type 2 diabetes.

Lilly now has sufficient data to move "with urgency" toward global regulatory submissions for the medicine, the company said.

"If approved, we are ready to offer a convenient, once-daily pill that can be scaled globally - removing barriers and redefining how obesity is treated around the world," Kenneth Custer, Lilly executive vice president and president of Lilly Cardiometabolic Health, said in a statement.

Lilly's stock was up more than 2% in premarket trading, in contrast to the 14.1% decline seen on Aug. 7, when the earlier round of trial data drove Lilly's stock to its worst single-day performance since 2000.

Wall Street has been excited about the concept of obesity pills, which could appeal to patients who don't want to use injectable drugs, but the earlier trial results didn't show that the drug delivered the degree of weight-loss benefits investors wanted.

In the latest trial results announced Tuesday, Lilly said participants with obesity or overweight and Type 2 diabetes lost an average of 22.9 pounds on the highest dose, bringing their weight down by 10.5%.

All three doses of orforglipron "met the primary and all key secondary endpoints, delivering significant weight loss, meaningful [blood-sugar] reductions, and improvements in cardiometabolic risk factors at 72 weeks," Lilly said. The Attain-2 trial looked more closely at blood-sugar levels than the other trial did.

The overall safety profile of orforglipron in the Attain-2 study was consistent with that of GLP-1 drugs, the company said.

As of Monday's close, Lilly's stock is down 9.9% in 2025, while the S&P 500 SPX has risen 9.5% and the iShares U.S. Pharmaceuticals exchange-traded fund IHE has risen 6.6%.

-Steve Gelsi

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August 26, 2025 09:25 ET (13:25 GMT)

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