An Eli Lilly & Co. logo is seen on the cap of a pill bottle in this arranged photograph at a pharmacy in Princeton, Illinois.
Daniel Acker | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Shares of pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Merck rose more than 1% in premarket trading on Tuesday after reporting first-quarter financial results that beat Wall Street’s expectations.
However, shares of drug giant Eli Lilly dropped 3.0% after the company reported first-quarter earnings that topped expectations, but revenue that missed. Eli Lilly’s key drugs Trulicity and Alimta fell short of Wall Street’s forecasts.
Health care has been the worst-performing sector in the stock market this year on concerns of drug pricing reform and “Medicare for All” proposals from Democratic lawmakers. The Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund, an ETF that tracks the health-care industry’s biggest companies, has risen by just 2.7% as of Monday, significantly lagging the broader market indexes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 13% over the same period, and the S&P 500 is 17% higher.
For more on investing in health-care innovation, click here to join CNBC at our Healthy Returns Summit in New York City on May 21.