The IQVIA Friday print reads 7,335 weekly prescriptions in Foundayo's fourth week of availability, up 31 percent from week three's 5,612-script baseline. [1] Lilly priced the launch and built the supply line for a curve that hits 90,000 weekly scripts by week 12 — the bar RBC Capital Markets set as the threshold for Lilly's $1.4 billion full-year revenue model on the asset to clear. Week four leaves Foundayo running at 8 percent of that target run rate, with 24x to close in eight weeks.

Yesterday's paper carried the volume-dollar split into Friday's print. The split has not closed. Novo Nordisk's Wegovy pill, which Lilly's launch was supposed to chase, crossed two million weekly scripts in mid-April — 273 times Foundayo's week-four number. Novo CEO Lars Doustdar called it the strongest U.S. launch outside vaccines on Wednesday's earnings call. [2]

Three reasons Foundayo trails by this much, all logistical: Lilly limited launch supply to 5,000 pharmacies through April, a delay caused by an active-ingredient validation step the FDA required after a March manufacturing inspection; payer formulary placement for Foundayo lags Wegovy's by an average of nine weeks; and the Mounjaro shadow — patients with established Mounjaro relationships are not switching to a daily oral. [3]

The week-12 bar lands the week of June 8. RBC has not revised its target.

-- NORA WHITFIELD, Chicago