Lilly pulls an obesity trial — plus, Amazon’s $2.5B FTC settlement and Meta-TikTok implications
Every weekday, the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer releases the Homestretch — an actionable afternoon update, just in time for the last hour of trading on Wall Street. Markets : Stocks are moving lower on Wednesday, with the S & P 500 on pace of its third straight session of declines. Unprofitable speculative plays are facing the most selling pressure, in a sign that some frothiness is coming out of the market. Additionally, stocks linked to the artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout are mostly lower as the market begins to question how some of these ambitious data center projects will get funded. What’s receiving attention and raising concerns among some investors is that Oracle can no longer fund its lofty, multiyear AI capital expenditures program with cash flow and has instead turned to the bond market to raise cash through an $18 billion debt sale – the second largest bond sale of the year. And yet, health care was the worst-performing sector in Thursday’s session after the Trump administration announced late Wednesday that it had opened a “Section 232” tariff investigation into medical devices and medical equipment such as personal protective gear and things like syringes. Cowen analysts wrote that they expect little to no tangible impact from the probe, but it has added another overhang to the only sector showing a negative return in 2025. On Thursday afternoon, we used the weakness in health-care supplier Danaher to add to our position . Study stopped: Eli Lilly pulled the plug on a nascent midstage trial involving its experimental muscle-preserving therapy and its blockbuster GLP-1 weight-loss drug tirzepatide, which is sold under the Mounjaro brand for Type 2 diabetes and Zepbound for obesity. Notably, Lilly indicated the decision was made for “strategic business reasons,” not anything related to safety or tolerability. In fact, no patients were ever officially enrolled in the now-shelved study, according to a government website that tracks clinical trials . The muscle-preserving therapy in question is known as bimagrumab. Lilly had planned to study how well and how safely bimagrumab — both on its own and used in conjunction with tirzepatide — generated weight loss among Type 2 diabetes patients who are also considered obese. Lilly is still moving ahead with a separate bimagrumab trial enrolling only people with obesity. “We routinely evaluate our clinical development programs to optimize the potential for each product,” a Lilly spokesperson told the Investing Club in a statement. “Bimagrumab is currently being studied in an ongoing Phase 2 trial with tirzepatide, alone or in combination, in patients with obesity. Results from this trial will be available in 2026.” The interest in bimagrumab is tied to the fact that people shedding pounds thanks to GLP-1s are losing both fat and muscle mass — the ratio is about 70% fat and 30% muscle, analysts at Bernstein previously estimated. However, the loss of muscle could be especially concerning in certain patients, such as those who are elderly. The thinking is that pairing a therapy like bimagrumab with a GLP-1 could help patients lose a greater percentage of fat than would be possible on just a GLP-1. The rationale makes a lot of sense on paper. But, for the most part, Wall Street is in wait-and-see mode on what the market for muscle-preserving combo therapies will look like due to tolerability and safety questions. That was the case in late June when Lilly presented some bimagrumab at the American Diabetes Association’s annual conference , and Thursday’s update certainly does not add any clarity on its commercial prospects. Indeed, Jefferies analysts told clients Thursday that they continue to exclude any sales contribution from bimagrumab in their Lilly financial models, despite believing it can be “a viable drug” for a “niche subset” of patients. Much more important in the near and medium term for Lilly is the future of its oral GLP-1 orforglipron, which the company hopes could be approved by U.S. regulators sometime next year. Jim Cramer, a longtime Lilly bull, is a believer in orforglipron expanding the GLP-1 market . With the now-withdrawn bimagrumab trial, in particular, it’s worth noting the obese patients were also going to have Type 2 diabetes. In past GLP-1 studies, this cohort has generally shown less weight loss on average than overweight people without diabetes. Eli Lilly shares dropped around 3%, but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what’s driving the move considering the health-care tariffs headlines and the broader market dynamics. Other drugmakers such as Merck and Amgen are also under pressure in the session. Surprise resolution: A settlement has been reached between Club name Amazon and the Federal Trade Commission over the civil trial examining the e-commerce giant’s Prime membership cancellation process. Amazon has agreed to pay $2.5 billion, consisting of a $1 billion penalty and $1.5 billion in consumer refunds. This amount represents one of the largest civil penalty in the history of the FTC, which filed the case during the Biden administration. Even so, the stock initially traded higher after the news came out, suggesting investors were relieved the company can now move past this regulatory overhang. The stock did give up those gains and move lower in afternoon trading alongside the market. The company said in a statement, “Amazon and our executives have always followed the law and this settlement allows us to move forward and focus on innovating for customers. We work incredibly hard to make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up or cancel their Prime membership, and to offer substantial value for our many millions of loyal Prime members around the world. We will continue to do so, and look forward to what we’ll deliver for Prime members in the coming years.” What now for Meta?: President Donald Trump is expected to sign a TikTok deal on Thursday that will allow the social media platform to continue operating in the United States. The announcement brings closure to a long-running saga over whether the popular social media platform owned by China’s ByteDance would remain online in the U.S.. When the app briefly went dark in January, it sparked a new bull thesis for Club holding Meta Platforms based on the idea that more user time and advertising dollars would shift to Meta’s family of apps. Throughout Trump’s return to office this year, he has sought to work toward a deal to save TikTok rather than an outright ban, so we weren’t counting on that bull thesis coming to fruition. Now that TikTok’s U.S. operations have found a home — with Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX being the main investors in the new TikTok USA venture , according to CNBC’s David Faber — it doesn’t change the way we view Meta Platforms. We still like its strong use of AI to improve ad targeting and engagement on its apps, as we detailed in Wednesday’s Homestretch item about Instagram crossing the 3 billion active monthly users threshold. Up next: Club name Costco reports after the closing bell on Thursday, and we’ll be monitoring the wholesale retailer’s membership fee trends, gross margins, and how its navigating tariffs. There are no major earning reports Friday. On the data side, we’ll see the Fed’s favorite inflation measure in the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index report and University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment and inflation expectations survey. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing 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’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
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