Lilly Endowment 2025Q4: A $99B Single-Stock Bet on LLY

Lilly Endowment Inc filed its 2025Q4 Form 13F-HR on January 23, 2026 reporting a single position: 92,190,516 shares of Eli Lilly and Company (LLY) with sole voting authority and a reported value of $99.08 billion. The filing covers one CUSIP (532457108), one line item, and one issuer. There is no second-place holding. There is no diversifying sleeve. The portfolio is, by design, the founder's company stock — and the quarter-over-quarter swings are pure share-price translation.

For most 13F filers, single-stock concentration would read as a governance red flag. Lilly Endowment is a deliberate exception. Chartered in 1937 by J.K. Lilly Sr. and his sons Eli and J.K. Jr., the endowment was funded with Eli Lilly and Company stock and instructed to hold that stock as the corpus of an Indiana-focused private foundation. Ninety years later, the 13F-HR still reflects that founding mandate.

What the 2025Q4 filing reports

The single line item on the December 31, 2025 13F:

• Issuer: Eli Lilly and Company (CUSIP 532457108)
• Class: Common
• Shares: 92,190,516
• Reported value: $99,075,303,735
• Voting authority: 92,190,516 sole / 0 shared / 0 none
• Portfolio percent: 100.0000%
• Filing date: January 23, 2026

The 2025Q4 value of $99.08 billion is the highest quarterly mark in the endowment's recent history. It is also the cleanest possible read on what LLY contributed to broad-market healthcare exposure last quarter: a single conviction-free, mandate-driven holder sat at $99 billion of reported value with every share carrying sole voting authority.

QoQ math is share-price math

The reported share count moved less than 0.3% from 2025Q3 to 2025Q4. The reported value moved by +36.0%. The two prints, taken together, define the entire quarter's narrative.

Reading the multi-year AUM history, the same pattern repeats every quarter. The endowment does not rebalance into and out of LLY. The share count drifts in narrow bands, with small reductions consistent with periodic distributions to fund the foundation's Indiana-focused grantmaking. The reported AUM swings are LLY-price translations, full stop:

• 2024Q4: $74.80B
• 2025Q1: $79.30B
• 2025Q2: $74.85B
• 2025Q3: $72.86B
• 2025Q4: $99.08B ← peak
• 2026Q1: $84.52B (subsequent filing)

The +36% Q3-to-Q4 print is the largest single-quarter AUM jump in the endowment's recent record. The mechanical interpretation: LLY common stock advanced sharply through October and November 2025 on commercial-stage GLP-1 franchise news, and the December 31 mark caught the peak.

Why this filing matters even though it never changes

The Lilly Endowment 13F is not an investment signal in the conventional sense. There is no trade to track, no QoQ rotation to compare against peers, no entry/exit signal. What the filing does provide is a clean reference reading on three structural questions.

1. Sole-voting authority concentration on LLY

The endowment votes 92.19 million LLY shares with sole authority. That places it among the largest single-name proxy voters in the U.S. healthcare sector. When LLY proxy questions hit the ballot — director elections, say-on-pay, equity-plan ratifications, drug-pricing transparency proposals — Lilly Endowment is the most consequential single voter on the register that is not the company itself.

2. Founding-family alignment

Single-stock endowments are rare among large U.S. private foundations precisely because most have diversified out of founder concentrations over the decades. The Lilly Endowment's continued 100% concentration is, in effect, a multi-generational alignment between the foundation's mission and the issuer's commercial outcome. The mission-funding budget moves directly with LLY's share price.

3. Indiana economic concentration

Eli Lilly and Company is headquartered in Indianapolis. The endowment's grantmaking is concentrated on Indiana-focused public benefits — community foundations, higher education, religious initiatives, urban development. The wealth concentration and the disbursement concentration map onto the same state. When LLY rallies, Indiana-focused philanthropic capacity expands; when LLY corrects, that capacity contracts. The 2025Q4 13F is the clean quarterly mark for that capacity.

Comparison: where the LLY tape sat at year-end

LLY closed 2025 at one of the highest quarterly marks in its history. The endowment's $99.08 billion AUM print effectively quantifies what that print meant for a single concentrated holder. By contrast, broad-market 13F filers — BlackRock, Fidelity, and the active healthcare-specialist mandates — diluted the LLY tape across hundreds of additional positions. The endowment did not.

The 2026Q1 follow-up

The most recently filed quarter, 2026Q1, reports AUM at $84.52 billion against share count 91,896,978. The share-count delta from 2025Q4 to 2026Q1 is approximately -294,000 shares, consistent with the modest periodic distributions visible elsewhere in the multi-year record. The AUM delta is -15%, again share-price translation.

For broader portfolio-level signal context across active managers, browse the aggregate insights feed or the learn library for context on how single-stock 13F filers fit into the institutional ownership picture.

FAQ

What does Lilly Endowment hold in its 13F portfolio?

The endowment's 2025Q4 13F-HR reports a single position: 92,190,516 shares of Eli Lilly and Company (CUSIP 532457108), with a reported value of $99.08 billion and 100% sole voting authority. There are no other positions.

Why does Lilly Endowment hold only LLY stock?

The endowment was chartered in 1937 and funded with Eli Lilly and Company stock by the founding family. Its single-stock structure reflects that founding mandate, not a contemporary investment view. The 13F has reported one position since the platform began collecting filings.

How did Lilly Endowment's AUM grow 36% in Q4 2025?

The share count moved less than 0.3%. The +36% AUM print reflects LLY common-stock price appreciation between September 30 and December 31, 2025. Q4 was the peak quarterly mark in the recent record at $99.08 billion before retracing in Q1 2026.