We recently compiled a list of the Billionaire Ken Fisher’s Top 15 Stock Picks Heading Into 2025. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) stands against Ken Fisher’s other top stock picks.
Ken Fisher is the founder of Fisher Asset Management, a financial adviser that he started nearly five decades ago. The firm oversees over $240 billion from more than 150,000 private investors.
Fisher said, “I’ve gone to cash three times in my career; in 1987 before the crash, before the 1990 bear market and in the early 2000s, before the dot-com crash. But I missed the 2007-2009 bear market because I didn’t believe, and don’t believe, mortgages could cause what they are blamed for having caused.”
Besides focusing on long-term investments, Fisher also believes in spreading out investments to reduce risk. Fisher Asset Management is highly diversified, with a portfolio value of about $244 billion. While technology stocks account for 31.8% of the portfolio, the independent money management firm is also heavily invested in the services sector, accounting for 14.6% of the portfolio. Other significant holdings are in the financial services, healthcare, and basic materials sectors.
In the past year, Fisher’s firm made a 32.18% return, mainly because it invested a lot in tech stocks, especially those benefiting from the AI boom. While other managers are selling tech stocks due to high valuations, Fisher’s firm is buying more, especially in companies making AI chips.
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Even though the overall market is at all-time highs, Fisher says there’s no need to worry. He believes that just because the market is high now, it doesn’t predict the future. He expects the market to keep going up as long as the economy and other key factors get better.
“Bull markets hit new highs on an ongoing basis as soon as they have recovered from the prior bear market and hit their first all-time high in that new bull market. They keep doing that over and over again and eventually you do get another bear market and then again get another bull market. Bull markets, not always, are usually significantly bigger and longer than bear markets, significantly,” Ken Fisher said.
Ken Fisher’s portfolio is heavily invested in the “magnificent seven” stocks, based on the belief that the stocks are well poised to continue outperforming the overall market. According to Fisher, growth stocks will continue outperforming value stocks amid the prevailing economic conditions.
“If you think the market is going up, you should expect the magnificent seven to continue to do well. Will they necessarily do better than everything? No, but they never actually did. The fact is they did better as a group than most groups you could find. I think that will continue to be the case because I am optimistic on the market as a whole moving forward”, Fisher said in a video interview.
Our Methodology
We looked through Fisher Asset Management’s portfolio to find Ken Fisher’s top 15 stock picks for 2025. We focused on his biggest investments and ranked the stocks from smallest to largest based on the firm’s stake at the end of Q3 2024.
At Insider Monkey, we are obsessed with 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).
An array of pharmaceutical pills with the company’s logo on the bottle.
Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY)
Fisher Asset Management’s Equity Stake: $4.48 Billion
Number of Hedge Funds Holding Stakes: 106
Eli Lilly & Company (NYSE:LLY) is a biotechnology company that discovers, develops, and sells human pharmaceuticals. LLY’s main products are Verzenio for cancer, Mounjaro, Zepbound, Jardiance, Trulicity, Humalog, and Humulin for heart and metabolic conditions, and Taltz and Olumiant for immune system issues.
It is one of the big players in the sector owing to solid demand for its diabetes and weight loss drugs, which have propelled revenue and earnings growth. In the first nine months of the year, the stock was up by 62%. Nevertheless, the stock took a hit as the company reported a slight pullback in its full-year guidance.
On October 30, 2024, Eli Lilly & Company (NYSE:LLY) said it expects revenues of between $45.4 billion and $46 billion, down from the previous guidance of $45.4 billion to $46.4 billion. Despite the minor adjustment, LLY’s product lineup remains strong. Mounjaro and Zepbound are some of the most sought-after diabetes and weight loss drugs.
In the first half of the year, Mounjaro brought in $4.9 billion in revenue, up from $1.5 billion over the same period last year. Zepbound, approved for weight loss in obese adults, is also in high demand, and Eli Lilly & Company (NYSE:LLY) is working hard to meet it. The company is building a new $4.5 billion advanced manufacturing and drug development center to keep up with the growing demand.
The addressable market for weight loss treatments is poised to hit $100 billion by 2030. Therefore, Eli Lilly & Company (NYSE:LLY) has tremendous opportunities with its current pipeline, even as it works on new drugs.
Baron Funds stated the following regarding Eli Lilly and Company in its “Baron Health Care Fund” second quarter 2024 investor letter:
“Shares of global pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) increased on continued investor enthusiasm around GLP-1 drugs for diabetes and obesity. We remain shareholders. Lilly’s Mounjaro/Zepbound not only offers superb blood sugar control for diabetics but can drive 20%-plus weight loss and likely improve cardiovascular outcomes in both diabetic and non-diabetic obese patients. Lilly is developing next-generation drugs, including retatrutide, which drives approximately 25% weight loss, and orforglipron, a daily pill that produces approximately 15% weight loss. In the U.S. alone, there are 32 million Type 2 diabetics and an additional 105 million obese patients who we estimate would qualify for GLP-1 drugs. Although supply and access are limited near term, we think GLP-1 drugs will become the standard of care for both diabetes and obesity and will become a $150 billion-plus category. We see Lilly setting a high efficacy bar and capturing significant long-term market share. We think the adoption of GLP-1s will drive Lilly to triple total revenue by 2030.”
Overall LLY ranks 7th on our list of Ken Fisher’s top stock picks heading into 2025. While we acknowledge the potential of LLY as an investment, 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.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
