What Is One of the Best Pharmaceutical Stocks to Own for the Next 10 Years?
Key Points
Drug companies must continue to fill their pipelines.
Lilly recently made three key deals.
- 10 stocks we like better than Eli Lilly ›
The pharmaceutical industry can be a tricky investment.
Remember Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) back in 2020? Its stock price shot from around $33 in February 2020 to nearly $60 by December due to its rapid production/approval of a COVID-19 vaccine. It was the drug stock to own at the time.
Will AI create the world's first trillionaire? Our team just released a report on the one little-known company, called an "Indispensable Monopoly" providing the critical technology Nvidia and Intel both need. Continue »
Since then, demand for that vaccine has waned, and the stock has been on a downward ride. After plummeting in 2023, the price has moved sideways since early 2024. It now sits at around $28, lower than its pre-COVID price.
Demand for certain types of drugs can clearly be volatile. Plus, all drug companies face patent expirations when competitors can launch cheaper generic versions and steal market share. A drug patent is typically 20 years, but because drug development takes so long (often more than 10 years), much of a patent is used up before the drug comes to market. So, the effective market exclusivity is often just 10 to 12 years.
Source: Getty Images.
Drug companies must continually fill the pipeline
So if you want a pharmaceutical stock for the long term, 10 years or more, you need to look for companies that continue to fill their pipelines, ideally with the next blockbuster drug.
That's exactly what Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) has been up to.
It's already been crowned the winner of the massive GLP-1 drug category, the class of medications that have proven extremely effective in lowering blood sugar levels and promoting weight loss.
And this week, Lilly announced a $2.4 billion acquisition of Orna Therapeutics, which is developing innovative drugs that can manipulate a patient's genes and/or cells to fight diseases -- inside a patient's body, not in a lab.
Just before the Orna announcement, Lilly announced it was paying $350 million upfront to collaborate with a Chinese biotechnology company to develop treatments for immune disorders and cancer. In January, it announced another billion-dollar deal with a German company to develop hearing loss gene therapies.
That kind of foresight is what can keep a drug stock moving higher in the long term.
Should you buy stock in Eli Lilly right now?
Before you buy stock in Eli Lilly, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Eli Lilly wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $414,554!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,120,663!*
Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 884% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 193% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors.
See the 10 stocks »
*Stock Advisor returns as of February 14, 2026.
Matthew Benjamin has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Pfizer. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Recommended Articles
