Merck, Eli Lilly stocks fall over earnings, outlook concerns

Senior reporter Anjalee Khemlani joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss how pharma stocks are faring after reporting earnings.

Video transcript

[AUDIO LOGO]

DAVE BRIGGS: All right, let's get you up to speed now on some other big movers today. Shares of two of the largest pharmaceutical companies, Merck and Eli Lilly, are falling after the companies reported their fourth quarter earnings. Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani is here with the latest. Hello, my friend. What did we learn?

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Hi. Well, let's start off with Merck because that's, I think, the more interesting story. They have a lot of different things going on. Of course, with their earnings, we were looking at the impact from no longer COVID being a really important topic, at least for most of companies in that category, for 2023. They also did have a little bit of pressure from a report citing some concerns about their COVID treatment molnupiravir and the potential for new mutations as a result linked to that.

So the company has denied that, but it seems like that is something weighing on the stock as well. Meanwhile, they are also facing a potential fall-off of Keytruda. That's something that's still on the radar for them in the outlook.

Meanwhile, Eli Lilly, another COVID company, if you will, their monoclonal antibody totally took a hit. No longer an option, a viable option, against these new variants. So some pressure came from there, as well as disappointing sales of their diabetes drug, which had a little bit of momentum and a lot of excitement around the potential use as a weight loss drug as well. But sales missed there. So there's some pressure on that stock as well.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, we're looking at losses of just over 4% right now with about 50 minutes to go until the bell. All right, Anjalee Khemlani.