The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.

Backed by one-year EPS and revenue growth estimates of 21.72% and 16.23%, respectively, Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) ranks among the best growth stocks to buy and hold in 2026.

Pixabay/Public Domain

As of April 23, 2026, a majority of analysts covering the stock have a Buy rating on it; that is, 77% of all covering analysts, and their consensus price target of $1,250 suggests Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) could climb around 40% from current levels.

That confidence was on display the same day, when Guggenheim raised its price target on Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) to $1,183 from $1,163 and held on to its “Buy” rating, just ahead of the company’s first quarter results.

The firm updated its model to account for a disclosed $584 million charge tied to in-process research and development, equal to $0.52 per share, folding in the cost of Lilly’s recently announced acquisitions of Centessa Pharmaceuticals and Kelonia Therapeutics. Even with those charges weighing on near-term earnings, Guggenheim kept a constructive view on Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY).

The acquisitions themselves tell the bigger story.

On April 20, 2026, Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) agreed to acquire Kelonia in a deal worth up to $7.0 billion — $3.25 billion upfront with the remainder tied to milestone-based payments. Kelonia’s technology is designed to generate CAR-T therapies inside the body rather than outside it, with its lead candidate KLN-1010 targeting a protein called BCMA in patients with multiple myeloma.

A few weeks earlier, on March 31, 2026, Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) had also agreed to acquire Centessa Pharmaceuticals to bolster its neuroscience pipeline. Centessa’s lead asset, cleminorexton, showed a potentially best-in-class profile in Phase 2a studies across three related sleep disorders, which are narcolepsy type 1, narcolepsy type 2, and idiopathic hypersomnia.

Thus, Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) is making a deliberate push into high-value areas of medicine. Management believes the pipeline these deals add can keep it growing for years to come.

Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) develops, manufactures, discovers, and sells pharmaceutical products. These products span oncology, diabetes, immunology, neuroscience, and other therapies.

While we acknowledge the potential of LLY as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock.

READ NEXT: 33 Stocks That Should Double in 3 Years and 15 Stocks That Will Make You Rich in 10 Years.

Disclosure: None. Follow Insider Monkey on Google News.