We recently published a list of 10 Best-Performing S&P 500 Stocks in the Last 3 Years. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) stands against other best performing S&P 500 stocks in the last year.

The past three years have been a bit of a roller coaster ride for the stock market. We saw how the pandemic wrecked several industries’ balance sheets and supply chains. Following the global vaccination drive, economies around the world and in the US opened up with a vengeance, resulting in huge stimulus checks. This, along with the energy and food-price shock and disrupted supply chains, was blamed for the persistently high inflation, which peaked at 9.1% in June 2022.

The Fed had already started hiking interest rates to ease inflation and work towards a soft landing, with the first hike coming in March 2022. By July 2023, the central bank had raised it to 5.25-5.50%, making borrowing all the more challenging.

The tech industry had kept the momentum from 2020 lockdowns well into 2021. The largest tech companies out of the 500 biggest companies trading in the US grew by an average of 33% from the start of 2021 to the end.

However, the tech industry was heavily impacted by the rate hikes that followed in 2022. This resulted in the large-cap aggregate tech indices losing nearly 29% of the gains made in the year prior, as prospects for growth became bleak. The upper percentiles of the energy industry in market cap had a similar run in 2021 but remained immune to the economic downturn that followed in 2022, posting gains of 59% for the year.

The aggressive rally in the energy industry resulted from a combination of supply-chain disruptions, OPEC production cuts, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the revision of energy sourcing in Europe, directing much of the energy capital inflow to the US from the continent.

Coming back to tech – the industry wouldn’t stay on the sidelines for long. The start of 2023 to the end saw the large-cap US-traded tech equity grow by 38.6%. At the core of the resurgence was the AI-led boom combined with semiconductor supply chains that had recovered substantially by then. Other factors included CHIPS and Science Act, improved efficiency in the industry, and a rate-hike slowdown.

What’s Ahead for the Market?

The US economy looks to be on schedule for a soft landing, according to a Financial Times’ survey of economists. This is on the back of the Fed’s rate reduction of 50 basis points in September 2024, which, as noted by the CFO of a large US bank Denis Colman, is a signal towards a soft landing. This is not a sure shot, however, since some experts remain wary and continue worrying about a recession.

For instance, Piper Sandler’s Chief Global Economist Nancy Lazar noted that the “jumbo” rate cut by the Fed is reminiscent of the similar Fed policy easing of 2001 and 2007, which couldn’t avert the problem.

However, according to analysts, the case for a soft landing appears to be justified given the September jobs report and other improving indicators. The September report by BLS shows that the non-farm payrolls grew by 254,000 for the month, exceeding economists’ estimates by 41%. Moreover, the July and August reports, which had spooked some economists, were also revised by a combined 72,000 new hires, which wasn’t without historical precedent.

Further, grocery prices, adjusted for growth in real wages, are back to the pre-pandemic levels. It took 3.59 hours of work to afford a week’s worth of groceries in November 2019 and took 3.57 hours of work to afford them in September 2024.

Moving ahead, Rob Rowe, Regional Research Director and Head of Global Strategy at a large US bank is ‘tactically bullish’ on the back of continuing tech recovery and the markets “pricing in a soft landing”. They expect at-least 25 basis-point rate cuts at each Fed meeting through year-end.

With regards to tech industry, their outlook suggests selectivity. In response to a question about their outlook on the tech industry, they said:

“I think we have to be selective here. We like Semis as a recovery play but we’re kind of underweight on software.”

Rowe has a bearish outlook on oil, given geopolitical variables don’t change in a way that leads to oil prices shooting up.

Our Methodology

For our list, we have picked stocks from the index in question that have had the highest 3-year annualized returns and we ranked them as such, in order of their 3-year CAGR.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).

Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY)

3Y CAGR: 58.38%

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) is a well-known pharmaceutical company out of Indianapolis. The stock has had annualized 3-year gains of 58% and YTD gains of 55%. Eli Lilly’s performance is riding on the success of GLP-1 weight loss and Alzheimer’s treatments. It is especially true for its GLP-1 drugs, which have led to massive gains, with more to come.

Markets and Markets forecasts that GLP-1 drug market could be worth $471.1 billion by 2032, growing at a very high CAGR of 33.2% from 2024 to 2032. In this space, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are two of the biggest players. Barron’s analysis suggests that there could be an annual sales opportunity of $100 billion – $150 billion for GLP-1 drugs in the US and smaller rivals are scrambling to catch their piece of the pie, based on their tracking of 50 GLP-1 drugs in development. However, the fund believes Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk could remain a duopoly in this market for at-least until 2027 or 2028.

Eli Lilly is already cementing its dominance with the next generation of GLP-1 drug in phase 3 trials that has been shown to be even more effective and further generations are in development. In addition, the daily oral GLP-1 that the company has developed is more economical and easier to manufacture and offers the convenience that comes with oral pills. This is likely to lead Eli Lilly to have deeper access in the GLP-1 market.

This is what PGIM Jennison Health Sciences Fund had to say about LLY in their Q2, 2024 investor letter:

“Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) is a diversified biopharmaceutical company with core franchises in Diabetes, Obesity, Immunology, Neurodegeneration, and Oncology. The company is one of the two global leaders in diabetes with blockbuster products in Trulicity and recently launched Mounjaro (tirzepatide) to serve this large underserved market. To date, the Mounjaro launch is the strongest for any diabetes drug ever launched, which we attribute to off label usage in the obesity indication as well as on label use in diabetes. We believe the tirzepatide (the generic name for Mounjaro) franchise is also uniquely positioned to grow substantially from here thanks to its recent approval for obesity. To that note, in late 2023, Eli Lilly received approval for tirzepatide in obesity and is commercializing it for obesity under a new brand name, Zepbound. While still early in the launch, uptake has been extremely strong, exceeding that of both Wegovy and Mounjaro at the same timepoint in their launches. While Alzheimer’s Disease has been a tough market for drug developers, Eli Lilly has breakthrough designation from the food and drug administration (FDA) for donanemab and recently presented Phase III pivotal trial data that positions donanemab as the most efficacious drug in the class. In June, the FDA advisory committee voted unanimously in favor of donanemab as an effective treatment where the benefits outweigh the risks, praising the therapy as innovative. Donanemab was then approved under the brand name Kisunla in early July. Eli Lilly also has exciting franchises in dermatology, immunology, and oncology that are starting to add meaningfully to growth. With a proven history of strong commercial execution and one of the highest research and development (R&D) success rates in the industry, we see opportunity for continued success. With a lack of meaningful patent expirations for the rest of the decade. Eli Lilly is uniquely positioned amongst its larger-cap peers. Recent positive performance has been driven by the continued strong growth of Mounjaro and Zepbound, which led to a big guidance raise on the 1Q call, an unusual action for Eli Lilly this early in the year, which speaks to their confidence in the strong trends they are seeing.”

Overall, LLY ranks 6th on our list of best performing S&P 500 stocks in the last year. While we acknowledge the potential of the best-performing S&P500 stocks in the Last 3 Years, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than LLY but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 8 Best Wide Moat Stocks to Buy Now and 30 Most Important AI Stocks According to BlackRock.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.