By Bhanvi Satija and Patrick Wingrove

(Reuters) -Eli Lilly's high profile weight-loss and diabetes drugs fell short of Wall Street sales estimates on Wednesday as supplies sat in warehouses, a 180-degree turn for the company after long struggling to meet outsized demand.

Lilly shares were off 8%, wiping out nearly $70 billion from the Indianapolis-based drugmaker's market value.

Both its weight-loss drug Zepbound and diabetes treatment Mounjaro have been contending with high demand that has led to shortages, but last quarter Lilly said it had ramped up manufacturing and was able to fill back orders at wholesalers. Now Lilly's drugs are no longer in shortage and distributors are working through the supplies, it said.

Drug wholesalers, or distributors, purchase medicines like Zepbound from manufacturers and sell them to hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and other healthcare providers.

Lilly CEO David Ricks said during an investor call that a factor in the sales miss was customers of wholesalers and resellers choosing how many doses to stock based on their own physical and financial constraints. The drugs must be refrigerated during transport and storage.

Ricks told CNBC there was excess supply of the drugs but that the company had not yet started advertising Zepbound and had held back on international launches to focus on increasing U.S. inventory.

"We haven't been stimulating demand the way we had originally planned," Ricks said.

Sales of Mounjaro were $3.11 billion, while Zepbound brought in $1.26 billion. Analysts were looking for Mounjaro sales of $4.20 billion and $1.69 billion for Zepbound for the quarter, according to LSEG data. They expect the drugs to make a combined $19 billion this year.

The miss comes despite prescriptions of Zepbound and Mounjaro continuing to increase in the U.S. Lilly filled an average of around 140,000 Zepbound prescriptions per week this quarter, compared to just over 93,000 per week last quarter, according to IQVIA data shared by an analyst.

J.P. Morgan analyst Chris Schott said the results suggested wholesalers had utilized their existing inventories without placing additional new orders as analysts had expected.

Lilly's shares had been up 55% so far this year, making it the world's most valuable healthcare company, as investors bet on the success of the weight-loss drug.

Mounjaro and Zepbound compete with Novo Nordisk's popular Ozempic and Wegovy. Novo, whose U.S. listed shares were down almost 1%, has been aggressively marketing Wegovy on U.S. television.