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Alaska Airlines forecast second-quarter earnings of between $2.20 to $2.40 per share.
The carrier expects 2024 earnings of as much as $5.25 a share, well above estimates.
Alaska said travel demand has strengthened.

An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 taxis at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on March 25, 2024 in Seattle, Washington. 
Stephen Brashear | Getty Images

Alaska Airlines forecast second-quarter and full-year earnings well ahead of estimates on Thursday thanks to strong travel demand, despite a first-quarter loss stemming from a midair blowout of a door plug on a nearly new Boeing 737 Max 9 in January.
Alaska forecast adjusted earnings per share of between $2.20 and $2.40, above the $2.12 analysts polled by LSEG expected. For 2024, the carrier expects earnings ranging from $3.25 to $5.25 a share, well above the average of $4.36.

The company’s shares were up more than 3% in premarket trading.
Delta and United have also forecast strong travel demand for 2024 will drive earnings.
The airline received $162 million from Boeing for the Jan. 5 accident, which caused the Federal Aviation Administration to briefly ground the planes. Alaska said it expects additional compensation from the manufacturer.
The Seattle-based carrier reported a net loss of $132 million, or $1.05 a share for the first quarter, down from $142 million, or $1.11 a share a year earlier. It also reported revenue of $2.2 billion for the first quarter, slightly above the estimated $2.19 billion analysts polled by LSEG expected and 2% above last year.
Adjusting for one-time items, Alaska posted a net loss of 62 cents a share, less than the $1.05 per-share loss analysts were expecting, according to LSEG. More

Ex-WWE CEO Vince McMahon is taking lavish vacations and staying in touch with former President Donald Trump since he left the organization that he turned into a global phenomenon, according to sources.
McMahon resigned as executive chairman of the WWE earlier this year after a former employee, Janel Grant, accused him of sexual abuse and trafficking, allegations he has denied.
Sources said McMahon has not stayed in contact with WWE leaders but has been in touch with John Cena and Dwayne Johnson, two of the wrestling outfit’s biggest success stories.

Vince McMahon, right, and Donald Trump attend a press conference about the WWE at the Austin Straubel International Airport in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on June 22, 2009.
Mark A. Wallenfang | Getty Images

As he faces a mountain of legal woes, former WWE leader Vince McMahon is traveling, eating out and keeping in touch with friends and associates — including former President Donald Trump.
McMahon resigned as executive chairman of World Wrestling Entertainment’s parent company in late January after a former employee, Janel Grant, accused him in a bombshell lawsuit of sexual abuse and trafficking. He denied the allegations. McMahon, 78, is also facing a federal criminal investigation, although he hasn’t been charged.

NBC News and CNBC talked with 11 people familiar with McMahon and WWE about how he’s been spending his time — and how the global brand he built over more than four decades is moving on without him. These people, including close personal associates and company insiders, declined to be named, citing ongoing legal cases and the confidential nature of internal corporate communications.
Multiple WWE insiders said he hasn’t had any contact with company leaders and figureheads since he resigned. Mark Shapiro, the operating chief of WWE parent company TKO Group Holdings, said in March that McMahon “doesn’t work for the company, doesn’t come into the office, and he’s not coming back to the company.”
That also means McMahon hasn’t talked to his son-in-law, WWE creative chief and former superstar Paul “Triple H” Levesque, or daughter, Stephanie McMahon-Levesque, regarding company matters, sources said. While she introduced WWE’s WrestleMania event earlier this month, McMahon-Levesque, who worked beside her father for more than 20 years and played roles in storylines, currently has no involvement with the company, according to people familiar with the matter. Levesque and McMahon-Levesque declined to comment through a spokesperson, as did a WWE representative.  
McMahon is nonetheless indelibly linked to the wrestling outfit, which he bought from his father 42 years ago. Still, he seems to have moved on, according to multiple sources. McMahon has kept up his other routines, and it’s as if he’s unfazed by his legal fights, two sources said.
For instance, on an afternoon in late March, McMahon returned on a private plane to the United States from the sunny Turks and Caicos Islands — but he wasn’t alone, according to a person close to him. He had with him seven kittens and a puppy, all of which he brought back to be adopted by his friends, this person added.

“If anything, he’s enjoying life,” said the person, who added that McMahon had also taken a trip to Italy. 
Jessica Rosenberg, an attorney for McMahon, declined to comment regarding the aspects of the former WWE chief’s life reported in this article. In an emailed statement Tuesday, however, she criticized Grant’s suit: “The lawsuit’s claims are false, defamatory and entirely without merit. We intend to vigorously defend Mr. McMahon and are confident that he will be vindicated.”

Life amid litigation

The details of McMahon’s life after his WWE reign present a stark contrast to Grant’s accusations, which paint a graphic portrait of a violent and controlling man. In the federal lawsuit, filed Jan. 25, Grant’s attorneys said that she was “the victim of physical and emotional abuse, sexual assault and trafficking at WWE,” naming McMahon and former WWE executive John Laurinaitis. Both men have denied the accusations in the suit. The lawsuit also named WWE as a defendant. WWE and its parent company, TKO, have said that they take Grant’s allegations “very seriously.” 
“Vince McMahon raped, trafficked and physically assaulted Janel Grant as part of his decades-long normalization of treating women within the WWE as objects. He might have thought that Janel would just walk away, but that wishful thinking couldn’t be further from the case,” Ann Callis, an attorney for Grant, said in a statement Wednesday. “Every day we are focused on adding to our mountain of evidence, speaking with other victims, hiring renowned experts on sex trafficking/coercive control and preparing to vociferously litigate this case.”
Federal investigators seized a phone from McMahon and have been trying to determine whether federal law was broken in the conduct surrounding Grant’s allegations, NBC News reported in February. WWE had disclosed last summer that investigators served McMahon with a federal grand jury subpoena and executed a search warrant in July.
McMahon is cooperating with authorities, according to one of the people close to him. McMahon believes officials won’t bring any charges against him and that Grant’s civil case will be settled out of court, said a person close to the former wrestling executive.
Nicholas Biase, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, declined to comment.
A spokesperson for Grant’s attorneys said that there have been absolutely no settlement talks with McMahon.
While his legal battles persist, McMahon is often ferried by a private driver from his posh Connecticut home to Manhattan, according to one of the sources close to him. There, he eats with friends at restaurants such as the old-school Italian spot Il Tinello East on 46th Street, sees his longtime barber for biweekly haircuts and works with his personal trainer multiple times a week, the source said. 
Two other sources, however, say McMahon has otherwise been “quite guarded” and often on the phone with his lawyers to map out plans since Grant’s lawsuit was made public.

Staying in touch

McMahon has also talked to Trump, according to two of the people close to the wrestling impresario. The two billionaires have been in touch regularly, according to a person close to McMahon, although it isn’t clear what they’ve discussed.
Trump and the McMahon family go way back: The former president hosted two WrestleMania events in Atlantic City in the late 1980s, engaged in a wrestling “feud” with McMahon in 2007 and is a member of the WWE Hall of Fame. Linda McMahon, McMahon’s wife, served as the Small Business Administration’s head in Trump’s Cabinet, led a pro-Trump super PAC and is now on the board of the publicly traded Trump Media and Technology Group.

Donald Trump watches a match billed as the “Battle of the Billionaires” at WrestleMania 23 in 2007.
Bill Pugliano | Getty Images

In 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that McMahon paid $5 million in previously unrecorded expenses to the since-dissolved Donald J. Trump Foundation during two of the years Trump appeared on WWE programming.
Trump, who’s running for a second term as president, has also been accused of sexual assault and is facing his own costly pile of civil and criminal legal troubles, including four separate indictments. Trump has denied wrongdoing in his various cases, pleading not guilty in each criminal proceeding, including a New York trial that started Monday. 
Another person close to McMahon said that the two men don’t discuss their legal problems and that Trump doesn’t provide legal advice.
Hours after the publication of this story, a spokesperson for McMahon pushed back.
“Mr. McMahon has not been ‘staying in touch’ or ‘been in touch regularly’ with former President Trump. He has spoken with Mr. Trump once in the past several years and that was for about a minute or so after Mr. McMahon’s back surgery. Other than that, there have been no communications between the two,” the spokesperson said.
A representative for Trump declined to comment.
Since he resigned, McMahon has been in touch with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and John Cena, sources said. Johnson and Cena, both Hollywood superstars, are two of WWE’s biggest success stories.
Publicly, Johnson has thanked TKO and WWE executives regarding his addition to the TKO board in late January. In February, Cena told the radio host Howard Stern that “the whole thing is super unfortunate and it sucks,” while noting that he loves McMahon and has a “great relationship” with him. “But in the same breath,” he added at the time, “I’m also a big advocate of accountability.”
Cena and Johnson are both represented by the William Morris Endeavor agency, which is part of Endeavor Group — the majority owner of TKO.
A spokesperson for Johnson declined to comment. A representative for Cena didn’t respond to requests for comment.

WWE in transition

This isn’t the first time WWE has had to contend with controversy stemming from its former longtime leader. McMahon was acquitted of federal criminal charges in the early 1990s related to the steroid scandal that engulfed the wrestling world at the time. 
In 2022, he briefly stepped down as WWE’s leader after the Journal reported that he paid millions of dollars to multiple women to cover up his alleged extramarital affairs. The Journal also reported that other women had come forward with sexual misconduct allegations. WWE amended its financial reports to reflect the payments. McMahon denied all wrongdoing.
His daughter helped take over leadership of the company in the interim, but McMahon-Levesque resigned when her father, who owned a controlling stake in WWE, returned in early 2023. McMahon then engineered a deal to merge the company with Endeavor Group’s UFC to form TKO. Longtime Hollywood super agent Ari Emanuel is the CEO of both Endeavor and TKO. 

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Ari Emanuel, Vince McMahon and other members of the board of TKO ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange in New York City, Jan. 23, 2024.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters

That deal, announced in April 2023, made McMahon the executive chairman of the new company, and he gave up majority control of WWE. At the time, he told CNBC he wouldn’t be “in the weeds” with creative decisions but he would weigh in on big decisions. 
That marked a big shift for McMahon. His family has been in the business dating back to the early 20th century. After buying the company from his father, who was known as “Vince Sr.,” the younger McMahon then employed flamboyant superstars such as Hulk Hogan and the Rock, staging glitzy pay-per-view events like WrestleMania, to build it into an international sensation. And while WWE is still defined in part by the family, McMahon’s daughter and son-in-law are publicly attempting to push the brand into the future. 
At WrestleMania 40, held earlier this month in Philadelphia, McMahon-Levesque surprised the crowd with an appearance and hailed her husband’s leadership. 
“Every Wrestlemania is special for its own reason, but I think WrestleMania 40 might be the one I’m most proud of, because this is the first WrestleMania of the Paul Levesque era,” she said. (Linda McMahon joined her daughter backstage, according to an Instagram photo posted by wrestling star Charlotte Flair.) Levesque himself proclaimed a “new era” for WWE. 
It was a significant moment for the brand, coming during the first WrestleMania since the Grant lawsuit — and it’s the first one under TKO’s management. Still, some rank-and-file WWE employees have griped that the company hasn’t done more to address the situation, according to an insider. After McMahon quit, Shapiro told a global town hall for both TKO and Endeavor employees “in no uncertain terms” that the former wrestling boss wouldn’t return, according to another insider. Shapiro also assured employees that Levesque and WWE President Nick Khan have his support, this person said. 
Otherwise, WWE is more relaxed since McMahon resigned in January, sources said. When McMahon was still running things, he would come in late in the afternoon and often stay until around midnight or beyond, two current employees said. (His office at WWE headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, is unoccupied but otherwise intact, according to an executive, who called it “spooky.”) He had a reputation for being capricious and quick to fire employees, which generated fear and created a chilling effect, according to sources. 
Now there’s more levity and freedom to make a mistake or suggest an idea, some employees said.
The current leadership operates more conventionally, giving underperforming employees a standard progress report and opportunities to improve before taking action, they added. 
Some McMahon loyalists remain, but one employee said: “WWE is actually a really great place to work, and Vince distracted from that. It’s been much better since he left.” Another said: “People feel like they’re on steadier ground.”
The company, meanwhile, is charting its post-McMahon course with the help of lucrative media rights deals. In September, WWE signed a $1.4 billion deal with CNBC’s parent company, NBCUniversal, for domestic rights to “Friday Night SmackDown.” In January, it signed a 10-year, $5 billion pact with Netflix to move its flagship “Raw” show and other programs to the streaming giant next year. WWE announced both agreements after it became part of TKO and McMahon ceded much of his official control over the brand.
There’s yet another sign suggesting that McMahon’s distance from WWE is more than temporary: He has sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of shares in TKO since November, a sizable chunk of those sales coming after he resigned in January. That’s different from when he briefly stepped down in 2022. 
“This time, it’s like, OK, now, it’s OVER over,” one of the insiders said.
— NBC News’ Tom Winter contributed to this report.
A version of this story was published on NBCNews.com.
Disclosure: NBC and CNBC are divisions of NBCUniversal. More

Airline executives expect a record summer travel season.
Demand is growing despite persistent inflation and safety concerns.
Air travel demand has been resilient despite persistent inflation and a spate of high-profile safety issues that have sparked congressional hearings.

Travelers at LaGuardia Airport in New York on June 30, 2022.
Leslie Josephs | CNBC

While the aviation industry has been in the spotlight lately for a host of safety issues, airline executives say there is no sign of slowing demand for flights.
United Airlines “as an airline and as an industry” will carry record numbers of travelers this summer, the carrier’s Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella said on an earnings call Wednesday.

“Demand continues to be strong, and we see a record spring and summer travel season with our 11 highest sales days in our history all occurring this calendar year,” Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said on his company’s call a week earlier. American Airlines and Southwest Airlines report results on April 25.
Air travel demand has been resilient despite persistent inflation that has weighed on household budgets, as well as a spate of high-profile safety issues that have sparked congressional hearings and have become the butt of jokes from late-night television to TikTok.
Public and regulatory scrutiny of the industry increased after a door plug blew out of a Boeing 737 Max 9 in January. That sparked a new safety crisis for Boeing and slowed its deliveries of new planes to airlines.
United Airlines itself is undergoing a safety review with the Federal Aviation Administration after several incidents this year, including a tire that fell from one of its older Boeing 777s.
Airlines, which make the bulk of their money in the spring and summer, have also been grappling with higher costs of fuel and labor, with fresh contracts giving pilots and other workers large raises after years of stagnant pay.

Nonetheless, demand for international trips and rebounding corporate travel have helped boost global carriers. Both Delta and United’s second-quarter forecasts outpaced Wall Street estimates. Customers appear willing to pay up for first class and other cabins above standard coach, executives said.
Nocella said on the earnings call Wednesday that the airline could further segment the front of the plane, much like United and other airlines have done with coach. “You have many teams of people working on how to further innovate and provide more and more choice and to monetize that choice on our behalf, obviously, in the future,” he said.
Delta, meanwhile, has said premium revenue growth has outpaced sales from standard coach for years.
Delta, United and American have announced upgraded first- and business-class cabins as well as more and larger lounges to accommodate swelling numbers of travelers willing to pay up for higher-priced tickets or elite status or high-fee rewards credit cards.
Delta is slated to open a new, more exclusive tier of airport lounge later this year.
Domestic-focused and low-cost airlines are scheduled to report results in the coming weeks. Some of those carriers have struggled in recent months because of higher capacity, limited airplane availability and higher costs.

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Eli Lilly said its highly popular weight loss drug Zepbound showed the potential to treat patients with the most common sleep-related breathing disorder in two late-stage clinical trials.
Zepbound was more effective than a placebo at reducing the severity of obstructive sleep apnea in patients with obesity after a year.
The pharmaceutical giant said it plans to present the preliminary trial data at an upcoming medical conference and submit it to the Food and Drug Administration and regulators in other countries in mid-2024. 

An injection pen of Zepbound, Eli Lilly’s weight loss drug, is displayed in New York City, U.S., December 11, 2023. 
Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Eli Lilly on Wednesday said its highly popular weight loss drug Zepbound showed the potential to treat patients with the most common sleep-related breathing disorder in two late-stage clinical trials.
The initial results add to the long list of potential health benefits of weight loss and diabetes treatments, which have skyrocketed in demand over the last year despite their high prices and spotty insurance coverage.

Zepbound was more effective than a placebo at reducing the severity of obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA, in patients with obesity after a year, according to preliminary data from both trials. OSA refers to interrupted breathing during sleep due to narrowed or blocked airways. The pharmaceutical giant said it plans to present the results at an upcoming medical conference and submit them to the Food and Drug Administration and regulators in other countries in mid-2024.
Eli Lilly previously announced that the FDA granted Zepbound “fast track designation” for patients with moderate-to-severe OSA and obesity. That designation ensures that drugs that intend to both treat a serious or life-threatening condition and fill an unmet medical need get reviewed more quickly.
The results are an early sign of hope for the estimated 80 million patients in the U.S. who experience OSA, Eli Lilly said in a press release. Around 20 million of those people have moderate-to-severe forms of the disease, but 85% of OSA cases go undiagnosed, according to Eli Lilly.
OSA can lead to excessive daytime sleepiness and loud snoring, as well as contribute to serious complications, including hypertension, stroke and heart failure. Patients with the condition have limited treatment options outside of cumbersome and often uncomfortable machines that provide positive airway pressure, or PAP, to allow for normal breathing.
“Addressing this unmet need head-on is critical, and while there are pharmaceutical treatments for the excessive sleepiness associated with OSA, [Zepbound] has the potential to be the first pharmaceutical treatment for the underlying disease,” Dr. Jeff Emmick, Eli Lilly’s senior vice president of product development, said in the release on Wednesday.

Zepbound has slipped into shortages since receiving approval in the U.S. for weight management in November. The active ingredient in Zepbound, known as tirzepatide, is also approved under the brand name Mounjaro for diabetes.
Mounjaro and other diabetes drugs are typically covered by insurance, while Zepbound and other weight loss drugs are not. But the new data in sleep apnea patients gives Eli Lilly a “pathway to gaining Medicare Part D coverage for Zepbound,” even before any changes to the federal program’s coverage of obesity treatments, JPMorgan Chase analyst Chris Schott wrote in a note Wednesday.
Under new guidance issued in late March, Medicare can cover certain weight loss drugs as long as they receive FDA approval for an added health benefit. Medicare prescription drug plans administered by private insurers, known as Part D, currently cannot cover those drugs for weight loss alone.
Schott added that the new data gives Eli Lilly a path to increase the use of Zepbound among men. He said the company has suggested that men may be more likely to use a so-called GLP-1 drug such as Zepbound for sleep apnea compared to obesity.
Eli Lilly’s Zepbound works by imitating two naturally produced gut hormones called GLP-1 and GIP. GLP helps reduce food intake and appetite. GIP, which also suppresses appetite, may also improve how the body breaks down sugar and fat.

Initial trial results

The two phase-three trials, both called SURMOUNT-OSA, tested Zepbound in two groups of patients. Notably, 70% of participants across the studies were men, Eli Lilly said in its release.
Researchers specifically examined how much the weekly injection reduced the so-called apnea-hypopnea index, or AHI, which records the number of times per hour a person’s breathing shows a restricted or completely blocked airway. The index is used to evaluate the severity of obstructive sleep apnea and the effectiveness of treatments for the condition. 
In both sub-studies, Zepbound was superior to the placebo in reducing AHI, which was the main goal of the trials.

Cherrybeans | Istock | Getty Images

The first study evaluated the drug in adults with moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea and obesity who were not on PAP therapy.
People who took Zepbound had an average of 27.4 fewer AHI events per hour at 52 weeks, compared with an average reduction of 4.8 events per hour for the placebo, according to the results. 
Zepbound also met the trial’s second goal, leading to an overall AHI reduction of 55% compared with a decrease of 5% for the placebo, the results say.
The second study tested Zepbound in adults with the same conditions, but those patients were on and planned on continuing PAP therapy.
People who took Zepbound had an average of 30.4 fewer AHI events per hour at 52 weeks, compared with an average reduction of 6 events per hour for the placebo. 
Zepbound led to an overall AHI reduction of nearly 63%, compared with a decrease of more than 6% for the placebo.
The results blew past Wall Street’s expectations. Investors largely deemed a 50% reduction as the threshold to consider Eli Lilly’s trials a success. The roughly 60% improvement shows “outsized benefits,” Deutsche Bank analyst James Shin wrote in a note Wednesday.
Across the two studies, Zepbound helped patients lose around 20% of their weight. But Eli Lilly noted that men are known to achieve less weight loss than women with therapies like Zepbound.
In a note on Wednesday, Morgan Stanley analyst Terence Flynn called that weight reduction encouraging and said the firm expected 15% to 18% weight loss in the trial. Morgan Stanley views “this as another positive data point supporting the efficacy profile of tirzepatide,” Flynn said. More

A Boeing whistleblower, who alleged that the manufacturer cut corners on its 787s and 777s, is testifying.
Boeing has denied the whistleblower’s allegations, calling them “inaccurate.”
The company is under fire after a door plug panel blew out of an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 in January.

US Senator Richard Blumenthal (L) greets Boeing engineer Sam Salehpour as he arrives to testify before the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Investigations during a hearing on “Examining Boeing’s Broken Safety Culture: Firsthand Accounts,” at Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on April 17, 2024. 
Drew Angerer | Afp | Getty Images

Boeing’s safety and quality were under fire again in two Senate hearings Wednesday as the manufacturer faces mounting scrutiny after a midair door blowout and near catastrophe on one of its planes in January.
A Boeing engineer-turned-whistleblower testified before a Senate panel, reiterating his allegations that the plane maker cut corners to move wide-body jets through the production line, despite flaws. Sam Salehpour alleged that the company failed to adequately shim tiny gaps at meeting points on the 787 Dreamliner’s fuselage, and that that could “ultimately cause a premature fatigue failure without any warning,” according to his testimony. A shim is a thin piece of material used to fill tiny gaps.

“I believe that Boeing can do better and that the public’s trust in Boeing can be restored,” he said in prepared remarks to a subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security Committee ahead of the hearing “Examining Boeing’s Broken Safety Culture: Firsthand Accounts.”
Boeing has denied the allegations, calling them inaccurate, and has defended the aircraft and its testing. On Monday, it gave reporters a roughly two-hour briefing about what it described as exhaustive fatigue testing on the 787 and 777 aircraft, saying it did not find safety risks.
Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines, a major Dreamliner operator, brushed off concerns about the plane on Wednesday.
“I am totally confident that the 787 is a safe airplane,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Still, the Jan. 5 blowout of a door panel on a Boeing 737 Max 9 plane when an Alaska Airlines flight was at 16,000 feet has again thrust Boeing’s safety culture into the spotlight and caused a crisis at the manufacturer. New plane deliveries from Boeing have slowed as the Federal Aviation Administration ramps up its scrutiny of the company’s production lines.

Boeing’s CEO, Dave Calhoun, last month said he would step down by year’s end, while the company replaced its head of its commercial airplane unit and its board chair.
A separate hearing, by the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday, addressed Boeing’s safety culture after a report issued earlier this year from an expert panel ordered by Congress found a “disconnect” between Boeing’s senior management and other members of the organization on safety culture.

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Most doses of Eli Lilly’s highly popular weight loss drug Zepbound and diabetes counterpart Mounjaro will be in short supply through the second quarter of this year due to increased demand, according to an update on the Food and Drug Administration’s drug shortage database.
A previous update said some doses of both treatments would have limited availability through April.
The new update suggests that the insatiable demand for a buzzy class of weight loss and diabetes drugs is still trouncing supply, even as Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk work to increase production of those treatments. 

An injection pen of Zepbound, Eli Lilly’s weight loss drug, is displayed in New York City, U.S., December 11, 2023. 
Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Most doses of Eli Lilly’s highly popular weight loss drug Zepbound and diabetes counterpart Mounjaro will be in short supply through the second quarter of this year as demand jumps, according to an update on the Food and Drug Administration’s drug shortage database on Wednesday. 
All doses of Zepbound and Mounjaro besides the 2.5-milligram versions of both treatments are in a shortage. A previous update said some doses of both drugs would have limited availability through April.

The new update suggests that the insatiable demand for a buzzy class of weight loss and diabetes drugs is still trouncing supply, even as Eli Lilly and its main rival, Novo Nordisk, work to increase production of those treatments. 
Many patients are struggling to find the injectable treatments, which have soared in demand for helping them shed significant pounds over time. Those treatments are sometimes known as incretin drugs, which mimic gut hormones to suppress appetite and regulate blood sugar.
“We recognize this situation may cause a disruption in peoples’ treatment regimens and areworking with purpose and urgency to help meet the surge in demand,” an Eli Lilly spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC. The company expects its investments in manufacturing and supply capacity “to progressively increase production of our medicines throughout 2024 and beyond,” they added.

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Eli Lilly in February said it has achieved its goal of doubling production capacity for such incretin drugs by the end of 2023. The company said it will expand production with “equal urgency” this year, with the most significant increases occurring in the second half of the year. 
By that point in the year, the company expects its production of sellable doses of incretin drugs to be at least 1.5 times higher than it was in the second half of 2023.

Eli Lilly has also said that a new plant in Concord, North Carolina, will start production of incretin drugs as early as the end of the year, with products available to ship in 2025. The company also will build a handful of other facilities over the next few years, including a site in Germany and two new plants in its home state of Indiana. 
Novo Nordisk has announced similar efforts. Some doses of its weight loss drug Wegovy and diabetes counterpart Ozempic are also in short supply, according to the FDA’s website.

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