Pharma segment grew 7.7% while MedTech posted 2.5% advance
Johnson & Johnson’s third-quarter results split cleanly between its two largest businesses on Tuesday, with medical devices underperforming Wall Street expectations and pharmaceuticals beating them. The company said higher overall sales led it to raise its full-year outlook for adjusted earnings per share, without specifying the new range in the market-talk dispatches.
MedTech revenue advanced 2.5% to $8.64 billion in the quarter, short of the $8.74 billion consensus of analysts polled by FactSet. The drugmaker’s pharmaceutical business, by contrast, posted a 7.7% sales increase that exceeded Wall Street estimates, according to Dow Jones Newswires. The pharmaceutical segment’s beat offset the MedTech miss in driving the company’s decision to raise its adjusted EPS outlook.
Growth in the quarter was concentrated in the Western Hemisphere. U.S. sales rose 9.1%, driving the majority of revenue growth across both J&J’s pharmaceutical and medical-device segments. Sales in the rest of the Western Hemisphere climbed nearly 13%. Outside the Americas, demand was softer: European revenue declined just under 1%, while sales in the Asia-Pacific and Africa region edged up 1%.
J&J’s medical-device business underperformed across each of its four subsegments. Cardiovascular, orthopaedics, surgery and vision all came in below Wall Street projections. Worldwide sales rose between 3% and 4.5% in three of those businesses — cardiovascular, orthopaedics and vision.
The surgery business was the only subsegment to log a worldwide sales decline, falling 0.6% as international revenue dropped. The decline made surgery the weakest of the four MedTech businesses in the quarter.
The figures were reported by Katherine Hamilton of Dow Jones Newswires and released in market-talk dispatches published Tuesday.