Lilly Q1: Price Rises, End of Zyprexa Woes Boost the Numbers

(MoneyWatch)  With its costly Zyprexa settlements out of the way, Eli Lilly got back to business as usual: Raising drug prices. And it seems to have paid off. Lilly's Q1 revenue was $5 billion, up from $4.8 billion the year before (but down sequentially from mid-2008 when quarterly revenues touched $5.2 billion).

The lack of legal settlements -- as much as $7.2 billion* $3.2 billion since 2006 -- contributed to the bottom line, which went up 23 percent to $1.3 billion. This places Lilly in an interesting position: It is more profitable because it hasn't screwed up and gotten sued lately, but its flat revenues are only being sustained by price rises.

Here's a list of Lilly's top products. You can see there's a broad correlation between rising sales and rising prices, offsetting the drugs with declining sales and lower prices:

• Brand, prices, sales
• Zyprexa, higher, flat
• Cymbalta, higher, higher
• Humalog, higher, higher
• Gemzar, lower, lower
• Cialis, higher, higher
• Alimta, NA, higher
• Evista, higher, lower
• Humulin, higher, lower
• Strattera, higher, higher

You can tell that it's the price rises that are keeping revenues up because Lilly's sales, marketing and admin costs were roughly the same as a year ago, even though the sales are higher. A year ago, Lilly's sales force earned back $3.10 for every dollar spent on their salaries and overhead. Today, Lilly gets $3.30. That increase came despite Lilly's ramp-up costs for prasugrel/Effient, which currently produces no revenues.

*Oops. That was a typo.

• See previous coverage of Lilly:
• Amylin Q1: "Icahn Doesn't Know Who Our CEO Is"
• NPR Producer Gets Apology Over Goodwin Affair; Says Peter Pitts Not Upfront About Ties to Eli Lilly
• Lilly, Barr, AZ and Sepracor Were Generous to Sen. Hatch's Utah Charity
• Lilly Advertises "Effient" Despite Lack of FDA Approval
• FDA's Prasugrel Machinations Seem Bound to Attract Doubt
• Eli Lilly Execs Receive $48 Million in Pay; Plus Chairman Taurel Adds $40 Million Nest Egg
• Pfizer, Lilly Have Won the ED War; Bayer Wilts
• Lilly CEO Lechleiter's Prasugrel Bet Appears to Pay Off