Abbott shares slipped in pre-market trading today after the company narrowed its earnings outlook for the rest of the year, after just meeting both its own forecast and the consensus Wall Street outlook.
The Chicago-area healthcare giant’s profits for the three months ended Sept. 30 were off -6.6% at $563 million, or 32¢ per share, despite sales growth of 12.1% to $7.66 billion compared with Q3 2017.
Adjusted to exclude one-time items, earnings per share were 75¢, dead even with the top end of Abbott’s guidance and the average on The Street, where analysts were looking for sales of $7.65 billion.
“We achieved another quarter of strong growth and our new product pipeline continues to be highly productive,” chairman & CEO Miles White said in prepared remarks. “In spite of increasing currency headwinds, we’re well-positioned to achieve the upper end of our initial full-year guidance.”
Abbott also narrowed its earnings outlook for the full year, saying it now expects to report adjusted EPS of $2.87 to $2.89, compared with $2.85 to $2.91 previously. Fourth-quarter adjusted EPS are pegged at 80¢ to 82¢, the company said.
The news sent ABT shares down -1.7% to $69.78 apiece today in pre-market trading, after closing up 3.3% at $70.95 yesterday.
Diabetes, electrophysiology drive medical device division’s gains
Sales for Abbott’s medical device division were up 8.4% to $2.82 billion, driven by double-digit gains for its diabetes and electrophysiology businesses.
Diabetes revenues grew 37.4% to $512 million and EP sales of $406 million were up 18.5%. Abbott credited “rapid market uptake” of its FreeStyle Libre continuous glucose monitoring system and its mapping and ablation catheters, the Confirm Rx insertable cardiac monitor and its MitraClip annuloplasty device for the segments’ strong showing.
Also on the plus side of the ledger, structural heart sales were up 13.6% to $305 million and neuromodulation revenues of $212 million rose 2.3%. But vascular and rhythm management sales dipped -0.7%, to $720 million and $508 million, respectively. And heart failure sales dropped -9.9% to $152 million.
