Hims & Hers reports third-quarter results after the U.S. market closes on Monday, November 9, and the timing could hardly be more interesting.
Three days earlier, Eli Lilly announced an agreement allowing eligible Hims patients to access Zepbound and the Foundayo obesity pill directly through the telehealth company’s platform. In exchange, Hims committed not to offer compounded copies of Lilly’s GLP-1 medicines, a category the companies say Hims had never sold.
Novo Nordisk had already reached its own agreement with Hims in March, bringing Wegovy and Ozempic into the company’s branded medicine offering. The telehealth business that once competed with drugmakers through cheaper compounded alternatives now provides access to the products of both major obesity-drug manufacturers.
That is a remarkable commercial reversal. It also raises a question investors will be listening for on Monday’s 5 p.m. Eastern earnings call: what does a branded-drug storefront actually earn when the pharmaceutical companies control the starting medicine prices?
The timing requires one important distinction. Lilly announced its agreement on November 6, more than a month after the September 30 end of the quarter Hims is reporting. The new partnership cannot explain third-quarter revenue or profit. What Monday’s results can show is how the company’s earlier shift toward branded medicines has affected its business, and whether management’s next outlook gives investors a clearer view of what comes next.
What Changed Before the Hims Earnings Report
Before Friday’s agreement, a Hims customer seeking Lilly’s obesity medicines could begin the process on the telehealth platform but had to complete the purchase through LillyDirect, the manufacturer’s own cash-pay channel.
The new arrangement removes that handoff. Patients can complete a consultation, receive a prescription if a licensed provider determines it is appropriate, and arrange home delivery without leaving Hims.
The manufacturers have not handed Hims control of their drug prices.
According to the November 6 joint announcement, Foundayo starts at $149 per month and Zepbound starts at $299 per month, matching Lilly’s publicly offered self-pay starting prices.
Reuters reported that Novo’s Wegovy pill starts at $149 per month on Hims, while the injectable Wegovy pen starts at $199 per month. These are starting medicine prices rather than guarantees of an all-inclusive treatment cost.
Hims also provides a weight-loss membership experience, including access to a care team, nutrition guidance and clinical check-ins. The Lilly announcement does not specify a universal membership charge or disclose the final cost of every possible treatment configuration.
The commercial attraction is convenience.
Ilya Yuffa, president of Lilly USA, told Reuters that obtaining Lilly medicine through the Hims process had not been entirely straightforward, and that additional friction could cause patients to abandon a purchase.
For a manufacturer selling a medicine that many patients pay for themselves, avoiding that lost transaction has obvious value.
Reuters also reported Lilly’s estimate that approximately 40% to 45% of Zepbound sales occur through self-pay channels.
That helps explain why Lilly wants to be available through consumer-facing digital health platforms rather than relying exclusively on its own pharmacy network.
The agreement also includes a commitment to protect independent clinical decision-making. The companies say providers on Hims will continue to prescribe the treatments they consider appropriate for individual patients.
The financial terms are much less transparent. Neither company disclosed the wholesale economics, revenue-sharing structure or contribution margin Hims expects to earn from distributing the medicines.
Hims can now put Lilly and Novo medicines on one digital shelf. What it earns from each transaction remains largely undisclosed.
The Financial Numbers Hims Brings Into Monday
The most useful baseline for Monday is Hims’ second-quarter report, released August 10, not its first-quarter figures.
Hims reported $753.2 million in Q2 revenue, up 38% from a year earlier, with approximately 2.89 million subscribers, an increase of 19%.
Monthly revenue per average subscriber rose to $92 from $76 a year earlier, suggesting that customers were collectively generating more revenue relative to the company’s subscriber base.
Those headline growth figures need context.
U.S. revenue increased 16% year over year to $621.8 million, while revenue outside the United States reached $131.4 million, compared with just $7.5 million a year earlier.
The company’s international acquisitions, including Eucalyptus, which closed in June, contributed substantially to that growth. Consolidated revenue therefore cannot be treated as a direct measure of demand for branded GLP-1 medicines.
Hims also stated in its second-quarter regulatory filing that a majority of its U.S. revenue still came from offerings outside the GLP-1 category.
The profitability figures were considerably less comfortable.
Second-quarter gross margin was 64%, down from 76% a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA fell to $60.3 million from $82.2 million, despite the increase in revenue.
The company reported a net loss of $86.3 million, compared with net income of $42.5 million in the prior-year quarter. Free cash flow was negative $68.2 million.
These are the figures behind the branded-drug profitability question.
The company has indicated that changes in its weight-loss offering, higher product and packaging costs, shipping expenses and other operating investments have affected margins. Its international expansion also complicates comparisons with earlier periods.
The August report gave investors a third-quarter revenue forecast of $880 million to $900 million and adjusted EBITDA of $75 million to $95 million, corresponding to an expected adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 9% to 11%.
For the full year, Hims raised its revenue outlook to $3.1 billion to $3.3 billion while setting an adjusted EBITDA forecast of $275 million to $325 million.
Those are the management benchmarks to compare against Monday’s results.
The critical question is whether Hims can continue expanding its audience and revenue without allowing the cost of acquiring, serving and fulfilling prescriptions to consume the financial benefit.
From Compounding Fights to Pharmaceutical Partnerships
The route to this moment passed through the GLP-1 compounding era.
During shortages of branded semaglutide and tirzepatide, compounding pharmacies operated under regulatory provisions that allowed certain alternatives to be prepared under qualifying circumstances.
Telehealth companies built substantial businesses around connecting patients to these products, often at cash prices below the branded medicines’ original list prices.
As shortages ended and regulatory scrutiny increased, the conditions supporting widespread compounding changed. Grey Pepper has tracked that transition in its coverage of the GLP-1 telehealth enforcement era.
Hims became one of the clearest examples of the commercial and legal tensions involved.
Novo Nordisk previously sued the company over compounded versions of its medicines. In March 2026, the companies reached an agreement providing Hims customers access to approved Ozempic and Wegovy products, including the Wegovy pill.
As part of that arrangement, Hims agreed to stop advertising compounded GLP-1 offerings on its platform and in its marketing, while existing patients could transition to approved alternatives when clinically appropriate.
Novo said it would dismiss its patent-infringement lawsuit while reserving the right to refile.
Friday’s Lilly agreement extends the company’s new commercial position.
The joint announcement states that Hims has never offered compounded copies of Lilly’s GLP-1 medicines and has committed not to do so in the future.
That distinction matters. Hims’ history with compounded semaglutide should not be confused with an admission that it previously sold compounded tirzepatide or other Lilly molecules.
The new agreement is nevertheless commercially significant. Lilly has secured a distribution partner that has made an explicit commitment not to compete with Lilly’s products through compounded copies.
Hims, meanwhile, gains direct access to the branded medicines of both major obesity-drug manufacturers.
The price is greater dependence on suppliers whose product development, pricing and distribution strategies remain beyond the telehealth company’s control.
Hims still competes with LillyDirect, NovoCare and other distribution channels for customers, even while serving as a partner to both manufacturers.
The platform is no longer primarily trying to undercut these companies through compounded alternatives. It is trying to make buying their approved medicines easier.
The manufacturers control the drugs and their starting prices. Hims has to demonstrate that the customer relationship, care experience and convenience are valuable enough to support its own business.
The Economics of Selling Somebody Else’s Drug
There is a straightforward reason investors are interested in the branded-drug transition: the commercial economics of distribution are different from those of selling a product a company can source and price more independently.
In the earlier compounding model, Hims had more room to structure product offerings, subscriptions and customer pricing around the economics of its own supply and fulfillment arrangements.
Under the new manufacturer partnerships, patients are offered the same starting self-pay medicine prices available through the drugmakers’ own channels.
That does not automatically mean Hims earns less from every transaction. The economics could include dispensing arrangements, service fees, membership revenue or other commercial terms that have not been publicly disclosed.
Nor does a $299 starting monthly Zepbound price mean Hims records $299 in revenue from each prescription. Revenue recognition depends on the contractual arrangement and which company is responsible for delivering the underlying goods and services.
What investors can observe is that Hims entered the third quarter with gross margins already substantially below their year-earlier level.
Its second-quarter financials show that revenue growth alone does not guarantee improved profitability.
A platform can attract more customers and sell more medicine while earning less operating profit if fulfillment, product acquisition, clinical services and marketing absorb a larger share of revenue.
Conversely, an efficient distribution model could make up for lower product-level margins through higher retention, greater prescription volume and more predictable customer relationships.
The company has not provided enough transaction-level disclosure to determine how much either scenario applies to the new Lilly arrangement.
There is also a separate consumer issue.
Starting prices are useful marketing benchmarks, but patients need to understand which doses qualify, whether membership or consultation charges apply, and how the cost changes as treatment continues.
A medicine beginning at $149 or $299 per month is not necessarily affordable for every patient who needs long-term treatment.
For Hims, however, the commercial proposition is that patients may prefer an integrated consultation, prescription and delivery experience rather than coordinating those steps across multiple companies.
Whether that convenience is enough to build a sustainably profitable branded-medicine business is the central question left unanswered by the partnerships themselves.
What to Listen for on Monday
The first checkpoint is whether Hims meets its third-quarter revenue forecast of $880 million to $900 million and its adjusted EBITDA forecast of $75 million to $95 million.
The second is subscriber growth.
Hims ended June with approximately 2.89 million subscribers. Investors will want to know whether that base continued expanding through September and whether new customers are becoming more valuable over time.
Monthly revenue per average subscriber reached $92 in Q2, although the company’s definition includes certain revenue from customers who are not counted as subscribers.
That detail makes it important to examine changes in the metric alongside total subscribers, product mix and revenue rather than treating it as a simple measure of recurring subscription spending.
The third checkpoint is gross margin.
After the decline to 64% in Q2, investors will be watching whether margins stabilize as the branded-drug transition develops and international operations become a larger part of the business.
The fourth is management’s discussion of product mix, particularly how branded GLP-1 medicines compare with the company’s other offerings.
Hims now has access to both the Wegovy pill and Foundayo, each offered at a $149 starting monthly self-pay price.
Grey Pepper has examined how the Wegovy pill versus Foundayo market-share debate depends on different prescription-data definitions and incomplete visibility into some telehealth channels.
Hims may eventually gain a useful view of demand for both medicines within the same consumer platform, although its access to patient-level information and the extent of any public reporting remain uncertain.
The fifth checkpoint is forward guidance.
Because the Lilly agreement was announced after the reporting period ended, its future financial implications are more relevant to management’s outlook than to the Q3 results.
Investors should listen for any explanation of the rollout timeline, expected customer uptake, pricing economics and whether the new arrangement changes the company’s assumptions for future growth or margins.
Finally, there is the broader question of self-pay demand.
Analysts cited by Reuters have suggested that employers reducing coverage for obesity medicines could push more patients into cash-pay channels, potentially benefiting consumer telehealth platforms.
That is a forecast, not a demonstrated result. Patients losing insurance coverage may seek cash-pay alternatives, but some may also reduce treatment or stop altogether because of cost.
The potential increase in cash-paying customers does not establish that Hims will capture them profitably.
The Bigger Test for Telehealth After Compounding
Monday’s earnings report arrives during a larger transformation in consumer healthcare.
For years, telehealth companies competed partly by making treatments easier to obtain and, in some categories, by offering alternatives to traditional pharmacy pricing.
The GLP-1 market exposed both the opportunity and the limits of that model.
Consumers showed that they were willing to use online platforms for obesity care. Pharmaceutical companies showed that they were increasingly willing to build direct cash-pay distribution networks of their own.
Regulators and litigation then placed pressure on businesses dependent on compounded copies of medicines that were no longer in shortage.
Hims’ new position sits at the intersection of those trends.
The company can offer access to approved medicines from both major manufacturers while maintaining its own consultation and customer-support experience.
That provides a different form of legitimacy from the compounding era, but also introduces greater reliance on relationships with the manufacturers themselves.
If Hims can continue growing subscribers while improving margins, it would strengthen the case that a telehealth platform can create a valuable business around care coordination, distribution and ongoing patient relationships.
If revenue grows while profitability remains under pressure, investors may conclude that gaining access to popular branded medicines is easier than building attractive economics around them.
Neither outcome can be determined from Friday’s announcement alone.
What is already clear is that the balance of power in obesity medicine distribution has shifted.
Novo Nordisk went from suing Hims over compounded products to partnering with it to distribute approved medicines. Eli Lilly followed with its own deal, tying access to an explicit commitment concerning compounded copies of its GLP-1 drugs.
For Hims, the opportunity is to become a destination where patients compare treatment options and continue receiving care. The challenge is demonstrating that the business can make sufficient money doing so.
On Monday, investors will finally get the next financial update from the company operating in that changing market.
Hims now has both GLP-1 giants on its digital shelf. The earnings question is no longer just how many prescriptions it can attract. It is how much value the platform can retain when the drugmakers supply the products and set the starting prices.
Sources and Further Reading
- Hims & Hers Investor Relations — Third-Quarter 2026 Earnings Announcement and Conference Call Schedule, October 12, 2026.
- Hims & Hers Investor Relations — Second-Quarter 2026 Financial Results, August 10, 2026.
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — Hims & Hers Form 10-Q for the Quarter Ended June 30, 2026.
- Eli Lilly and Hims & Hers — Agreement Expanding Access to FDA-Approved Lilly Medicines, November 6, 2026.
- Novo Nordisk — Expansion of U.S. Access to FDA-Approved Semaglutide Medicines Through Hims & Hers, March 9, 2026.
- Reuters — Lilly to Sell Obesity Drugs Directly on Hims & Hers Site, November 6, 2026.
- Reuters — Hims & Hers’ Shift to Branded Obesity Drugs Drives Wider Quarterly Loss, August 10, 2026.
