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[ad_1] Life expectancy in the U.S. is between three and five years lower than the average in other high-income countries — and the gap comes in part from misinformation, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said. "It's looking worse, not better, over the last several years," Califf told CNBC in an interview Thursday at the agency's headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. It's not just the Covid pandemic contributing to the decline, he said, pointing out the gap with peer nations is widening. Califf said a new factor has joined the list of known causes of life-expectancy disparities like race, ethnicity, income and education: living in a rural area, where he noted that people are exposed to different information sources. "Why aren't we using medical products as effectively and efficiently as our peer countries? A lot of it has to do with choices that people make because of the things that influenced their thinking," Calif

[ad_1] The launch of Eli Lilly 's weight-loss drug Zepbound — a key pillar of our investment thesis in the pharmaceuticals giant — is going swimmingly in the U.S., Jefferies said Friday. Weekly Zepbound prescriptions totaled 7,700 in the week ended Dec. 8, its fourth on the U.S. market, according to Jefferies, which cited data compiled by health-care analytics firm IQVIA. That is more than Novo Nordisk 's Wegovy — currently the most popular obesity drug in the country — had in its fourth week after being approved in 2021, Jefferies concluded. "Zepbound has shown strong launch momentum in the weeks following its first prescription recorded," the analysts wrote in a research note. That's an encouraging finding for investors, given it will be more than a month before Eli Lilly reports earnings with formal revenue contributions from its much-hyped obesity drug. The Club holding typically reports fourth-quarter results in late January or early February. To be sure

[ad_1] Next week is one of the biggest of the year for health-care investors, and it has historically been a good time to own ETFs that track the industry. The 2023 JPMorgan Health Care Conference is set to kick off next Monday in San Francisco. The event features keynote speeches from the CEOs of Sage Therapeutics and Eli Lilly , as well as presentations from dozens of other health-care and biotech companies. The conference typically sees many companies preannounce quarterly results, revise outlooks and update investors about clinical trials. While those updates can break both ways for individual companies, they have recently been good news for the sector as a whole. Over the past five years, many of the biggest ETFs in health care and biotech have seen an average positive return in the first half of January, when the conference is typically held. The three funds below — the SPDR S & P Biotech ETF (XBI) , the Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLV) and the iShares U.S. Medi

[ad_1] Most analysts predict the market for new weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Mounjaro will be enormous, but estimates vary for its exact size depending on who you ask. On Monday, Citi raised its estimate for incretin drug sales to $71 billion by 2035, up from its prior estimate of $55 billion. That viewpoint seems really conservative when placed side by side with predictions like Guggenheim's. Last month, the firm made a case for there being a $150 billion to $200 billion opportunity for these drugs. Guggenheim analyst Seamus Fernandez's conviction comes from his belief that GLP-1-based incretins will become the most prescribed drugs ever by or before 2031. Not only do these drugs work well for managing insulin levels and helping patients lose weight, studies are underway to show their benefits for cardiovascular health, sleep apnea and chronic kidney disease to name a few. Fernandez expects $50 billion in GLP-1 sales will come from patients with diabetes as increti

[ad_1] Aykut Karahan | Istock | Getty Images Think a friend or colleague should be getting this newsletter? Share  this link  with them to sign up. Good afternoon! Several drugmakers are hurrying to capitalize on one of the next major innovations coming to the booming weight loss drug market: effective, convenient and potentially affordable obesity pills.  Most of the weight loss and diabetes drugs available now are weekly injections, such as Novo Nordisk's Wegovy and Ozempic and Eli Lilly's Zepbound and Mounjaro. They are among medications called GLP-1 agonists, which have skyrocketed in popularity over the last year.  Now these rivals and other drugmakers such as Pfizer are hoping to develop oral weight loss and diabetes drugs that are more convenient for patients to take and easier to manufacture at scale. That development may help alleviate the supply shortages plaguing the existing injectable treatments in the U.S. Pills are also typically cheaper than injections, b

[ad_1] Business at GE Healthcare Technologies capped off 2023 on a strong note despite ongoing concerns about China. That coupled with management's upbeat view of this year propelled shares up more than 13% to over $83 each at session highs. That was their highest level since July 2023. The Club stock closed just under $82. Total revenue increased more than 5% year over year to $5.21 billion, beating analysts' expectations of $5.1 billion, according to LSEG. Adjusted earnings-per-share (EPS) of $1.18 exceeded the LSEG estimate of $1.07. Bottom line We always say expectations matter when it comes to earnings season. Sometimes a company can do everything right and deliver a strong quarter but see its stock fall because expectations had gotten a little ahead of themselves. That was Eli Lilly , which also reported earnings Tuesday. In other examples, the stock is down so much that it already anticipates a miss. When the company does miss but the results aren't as bad as fe

[ad_1] In a jam-packed week of earnings, the Club executed multiple trades and elevated price targets for some of our biggest stocks. Many of these moves stemmed from what we saw in quarterly numbers and heard on conference calls. Here's a day-by-day look at the portfolio action. Monday The week began with our decision to exit our Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) position, as the legal road ahead for the pharmaceutical and medical device maker became too treacherous to navigate. After trying to resolve its talc liabilities through bankruptcy failed for a second time, we concluded that upside in the stock would be limited for the foreseeable future, and our money could be put to better use elsewhere. We realized a small profit on Monday's sale of what had been our remaining 500 shares. Microsoft (MSFT) and GE Healthcare (GEHC) fit the bill as better places to put money to work, so Monday afternoon we bought 45 more shares of MSFT and 225 more shares of GEHC. Along with our Micro

[ad_1] Hopes are sky-high for Eli Lilly's recently launched weight loss drug Zepbound. Investors will be tuning into the company's fourth quarter earnings call on Feb. 6, eager to hear more about how that rollout is going. One key statistic will be the number of commercial health insurers providing coverage of the drug, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration on Nov. 8. Lilly also is expected to reveal its outlook for 2024 for the first time. Zepbound, a once-a-week injection, has only been available in pharmacies since early December, but the average analyst expects that the drug's sales reached $75 million in the fourth quarter, according to StreetAccount. More importantly, by the end of 2024, analysts expect sales to ramp up to $3.79 billion, then more than double to $7.83 billion by 2025. Those estimates have been creeping higher heading into Eli Lilly's report, and analysts see the potential for further upside when Lilly provides its outlook. &#

[ad_1] Eli Lilly logo is shown on one of the company's offices in San Diego, California, U.S., September 17, 2020.  Mike Blake | Reuters Eli Lilly on Tuesday reported first-quarter adjusted profit that topped Wall Street's expectations and hiked its full-year guidance on strong sales of its blockbuster diabetes drug Mounjaro and newly launched weight loss treatment Zepbound. The drugmaker now expects full-year adjusted earnings of $13.50 to $14.00 per share, up from previous guidance of $12.20 to $12.70 per share. Eli Lilly also expects revenue for the year to come in between $42.4 billion and $43.6 billion, an increase of $2 billion at either end of the range. Analysts surveyed by LSEG expected full-year adjusted earnings of $12.50 per share and sales of $41.44 billion.  The company said the boosted guidance is in part due to optimism around increased production of Zepbound, Mounjaro and similar drugs for the rest of the year. "Now that we're four months into th

[ad_1] Eli Lilly headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana, US, on Wednesday, May 3, 2023. Eli Lilly & Co.'s shares climbed in early US trading after its experimental drug for Alzheimer's slowed the progress of the disease in a final-stage trial, paving the way for the company to apply for US approval. AJ Mast | Bloomberg | Getty Images Eli Lilly said Friday that the Food and Drug Administration has pushed back its approval decision deadline for the drugmaker's experimental Alzheimer's treatment donanemab in a surprise move. The agency plans to call a last-minute meeting of its outside advisors to further review the treatment's safety and efficacy in a late-stage trial, Eli Lilly said. The FDA has not disclosed the date of that meeting, so a potential approval would likely come after this month. The FDA was expected to decide whether to greenlight the medicine by the end of the first quarter. That deadline was already delayed from an expected approval last ye

[ad_1] There's Eli Lilly (LLY), and then there's everybody else. That's a simple way to describe the performance of the Club's health-care holdings so far this year, in what's been a challenging period for the industry overall. Of the 11 market sectors year to date, health care is the fourth worth-worst performer, falling 4%, followed by consumer staples (down 4.2%), real estate (down 5.8%) and utilities (down 10%). Our standout is unquestionably Eli Lilly, which has soared 50% in 2023 on the promise of its experimental weight-loss and Alzheimer's drugs, making it the most-valuable health-care company in the world. Lilly's run really started in last year's terrible market, soaring more than 30% compared to the S & P 500's nearly 19.5% plunge in 2022. That's a nearly two-year return of almost 100%. LLY XLV YTD mountain Eli Lilly's year-to-date stock performance compared with the XLV, a major ETF that tracks the health-care sector. Lil

[ad_1] The extraordinary activist-investor interest in Salesforce (CRM) eased further in the second quarter, according to the latest regulatory filings from influential Wall Street pros. These big-name investors also made moves in nine other Club stocks during a strong three-month stretch that ended the best first half for the market in years. Starting with Salesforce, Dan Loeb's Third Point shed its stake in the second quarter. Jeff Smith's Starboard Value — the first known activist to target the enterprise software giant — cut its stake by 21% in the three months ended June 30. Those sales are among the Club-related trades revealed this week by the latest batch of securities filings known as 13Fs. Submitted to U.S. regulators on a quarterly basis, these disclosures offer a look — albeit with some limitations — into the investment decisions that closely followed Wall Street pros have made. CRM .SPX YTD mountain Salesforce's year-to-date stock performance, in compariso