Each weekday, the CNBC Investment Club with Jim Cramer publishes The Home Stretch, a handy evening update, just in time for the final hour of trading on Wall Street. Rally in the markets: Stocks rose across the board Tuesday afternoon, led by the Nasdaq Composite, which added 0.7% and was on track to close back-to-back records. The S&P 500, which had been hovering near the flatline early in the session, advanced about 0.4%. Shaking off earlier losses, the Dow Jones Industrial Average added about 100 points, or 0.25%. Big news for Lilly: The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved Eli Lilly’s Alzheimer’s treatment donanemab. The drug will be sold under the brand name Kisunla and will cost $32,000 for a 12-month course of treatment. Eli Lilly shares pulled away from session lows following the news. The stock was under further pressure earlier in the day as President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders criticized the cost of the company’s fast-growing weight-loss drug, Zepbound. Kisunla is not expected to be a significant growth driver for Eli Lilly this year or in 2025, especially when you consider the billions of dollars in projected sales for Zepbound and its sister drug Mounjaro, which shares an active ingredient, tirzepatide, and is used to treat type 2 diabetes. Still, we’ve seen the FDA approval of Lilly’s Alzheimer’s drug as a major catalyst for the company to reach a $1 trillion market value. Analysts see $477 million of sales for Kisunla in 2025 and roughly $1 billion in 2026, according to FactSet. And already, Lilly has next-generation treatments to succeed Kisunla in the pipeline. Lilly had hoped to have Kisunla approved by the end of March, but the timeline was pushed back after the FDA surprisingly convened a meeting of an advisory panel to more closely examine the safety and efficacy data. The 11-member panel finally met in June and offered unanimous support for the drug. Tuesday’s approval represents a major breakthrough in Eli Lilly’s costly, decades-long quest for treatments for Alzheimer’s, a memory-robbing disease that affects millions of Americans. Before Kisunla, Lilly had run out of numerous other experimental drugs, most notably solanezumab, which failed in a high-profile late-stage study in 2016. The company officially ended development of that drug last year. Lilly’s Kisunla is the second such treatment to receive full FDA approval, following in the footsteps of Leqembi, which was co-developed by Biogen and Eiasi in July 2023. The drugs similarly seek to slow the progression of the disease by reducing the buildup of so-called amyloid plaques in a patient’s brain. These abnormal clumps of the amyloid protein have long been an indicator of Alzheimer’s disease, though their exact role in the condition is unknown. Both drugs are administered intravenously. Leqembi has seen a slower-than-expected rollout as the U.S. health care system worked to set up the infrastructure to support this new class of treatment. Patients must first see a doctor who can determine their eligibility for the anti-amyloid drug. Intravenous infusions to deliver the drug must then be scheduled every two weeks along with regular MRI scans to monitor for side effects, which include brain swelling and bleeding. Leqembi’s price tag is steep — more than $26,000 a year — so making sure it’s reimbursed by insurance has been another important piece of the treatment puzzle. Biogen said in late April that uptake of Leqembi is accelerating, and executives offered encouraging comments about hospital systems that are better equipped to treat patients taking the drug. Lilly’s entry into the Alzheimer’s market may further accelerate that progress, according to Alisha Alaimo, Biogen’s head of business in North America. “In a space like this, where the medical community has had to pull out all the stops, a competitor or another option is always really a good thing,” Alaimo said at a Goldman Sachs health care conference on June 12. “It’s a good thing for physicians. It’s a good thing for patients. But more importantly, the market will develop faster with Lilly in the market.” We had discussed taking profits on Eli Lilly on Tuesday morning but ultimately decided against it because any elevated political risk from Washington in the near term doesn’t change the long-term story for the pharmaceutical giant. We’ve been saying for years that its growth prospects were the best among its large-cap peers, with Mounjaro and Zepbound as its anchor, and now Kisunla can officially be considered part of the story. Corona on Tap: Constellation Brands, the club’s holding company, is scheduled to report its quarterly results before the bell on Wednesday. The post-earnings conference call is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. ET. While there has been some concern about bad weather around Memorial Day impacting Constellation’s quarter, several analysts remain bullish on the stock heading into the earnings release. In a note to clients on Friday, Goldman Sachs said investor expectations are low due to softer trends across the sector. But analysts said that based on feedback from its distributor and retail contacts, the Corona and Modelo parent is poised to beat expectations on top and bottom lines. Wall Street expects the company to earn $3.46 a share on revenue of $2.67 billion, according to estimates compiled by LSEG. We’ll also be watching for comments on how the summer is shaping up for its core Mexican beer brands and whether there are any green shoots in Constellation’s struggling wine and spirits business. Up next: The U.S. stock market closes early Wednesday, at 1 p.m. ET, ahead of the Fourth of July. It’s closed Thursday in observance of the holiday. Before the break, though, we’ll look at private payroll growth in June via the ADP employment survey on Wednesday morning along with weekly initial jobless claims. (See a full list of the stocks in the Jim Cramer Charitable Trust here.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investment Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust portfolio. If Jim has discussed a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE FOREGOING INVESTMENT CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND OUR DISCLAIMER. NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS OR IS CREATED BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEPTION OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTMENT CLUB. NO SPECIFIC RESULTS OR PROFITS ARE GUARANTEED.
Every weekday, CNBC's Investment Club with Jim Cramer publishes Homestretch, a practical afternoon update, just in time for the final hour of trading on Wall Street.
