5 Defensive Healthcare Dividend Stocks To Invest In

2. Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 87

Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) is an American pharmaceutical company, headquartered in Indiana. The company offers a quarterly dividend of $1.13 per share and has been growing its dividends consistently for the past ten consecutive years. In addition to this, the company has been rewarding shareholders with uninterrupted dividends for 138 years. As of October 22, the stock has a dividend yield of 0.77%.

Of the 910 hedge funds in Insider Monkey’s database, 87 funds owned stakes in Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) in Q2 2023, jumping from 72 in the previous quarter. The collective value of these stakes is more than $5 billion.

Baron Funds mentioned Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) in its Q3 2023 investor letter. Here is what the firm has to say:

“Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY)and Company is a global pharmaceutical company that discovers, develops, manufactures, and sells medicines in the categories of diabetes, oncology, neuroscience, and immunology, among other areas. Stock performance was strong due to strong second quarter sales of blockbuster diabetes/obesity medicine Mounjaro and ongoing enthusiasm surrounding the company’s obesity and diabetes franchises, particularly after Novo Nordisk released its SELECT trial results. We continue to think Lilly is well positioned to grow revenue and earnings at attractive rates through the end of the decade and beyond.

We have positioned the Fund to benefit from this trend by maintaining a large position in Eli Lilly and Company, which we believe will remain a leader in the field with its drug Mounjaro and its deep pipeline of next generation GLP-1 medicines. Analysts now estimate the GLP-1 drug class could surpass $100 billion in revenue by the end of the decade and we expect Lilly to hold a meaningful share of that market.”