Drugmaker Lilly's 3Q profit more than doubles

(Reuters) - Eli Lilly and Co <LLY.N> topped Wall Street estimates for third-quarter profit on Tuesday and raised its yearly earnings target, led by stronger demand for its newer drugs such as diabetes treatment Trulicity and psoriasis medicine Taltz.

Trulicity, which overtook diabetes drug Humalog as Lilly's best-selling medicine earlier this year, had revenue of $816.2 million in the three months ended September, up about 55 percent from a year earlier.

The result also exceeded a Wall Street consensus estimate of $801 million, according to brokerage SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.

Meanwhile, sales of Humalog dipped 4.5 percent and fell short of expectations.

Lilly is a leading developer of diabetes treatments, but its older drugs such as Humalog have faced rising competition, forcing the Indiana-headquartered company to invest in newer diabetes drugs like Trulicity.

Taltz made sales of $263.9 million, above the $252 million expected by analysts on average.

Lilly raised its 2018 adjusted earnings forecast to between $5.55 and $5.60 per share, from $5.40 to $5.50 per share.

Net income more than doubled to $1.15 billion.

Excluding one-time items, Lilly earned $1.39 per share, above analysts' average estimate of $1.35 per share, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Revenue rose about 7 percent to $6.06 billion, edging past analysts' expectations of $6.05 billion.

(Reporting by Aakash Jagadeesh Babu and Tamara Mathias in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar)