Elly Lilly $LLY (+1,78 %)

Share buyback and dividend increase.

The US pharmaceutical company Lilly is planning to buy back billions more shares in the coming years.

In addition, the company, which has benefited greatly from the diabetes and weight loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound in recent years, increased its quarterly dividend by 15 percent to 1.50 dollars.

Over the next three years, the drug manufacturer intends to acquire its own shares on the market for 15 billion dollars, after the program to buy back 5 billion dollars was completed ahead of schedule.

Thanks to the success of the slimming drugs, the share price has increased fivefold in the past four years, even though the share price has lost around 17 percent of its value since the record high of almost 973 dollars.

Following the announcement of the new share buyback program and the dividend increase, the share price rose by around one percent in after-hours trading. With a market capitalization of just over 760 billion dollars, Lilly is now the most valuable pharmaceutical company in the world and one of the ten most expensive US companies.