Investors reacted to lowered sales expectations from St. Jude Medical (NYSE:STJ) by sending shares down nearly 2% today on Wall Street.
The St. Paul-based medical device company yesterday posted increased profits during the 1st quarter despite reporting lower sales, reporting profits for the 3 months ended March 30 of $223 million, or 78¢ per share, on sales of $1.34 billion. That’s a 5.2% bottom-line gain compared with Q1 2012, but a 4.1% top-line reduction.
Adjusted to exclude 1-time items, earnings per share were 92¢. Analysts on Wall Street were looking for adjusted EPS of 91¢ per share.
St. Jude cut its sales outlook for the rest of the year by roughly $107 million, to $5.36 billion to $5.48 billion, based on "a combination of changes in our currency assumptions and a slightly more cautious outlook in our cardiovascular business," CFO John Heinmiller told analysts during a conference call yesterday.
That amounts to currency-neutral sales growth "in the range of down 1% to up 2%," Heinmiller said.
St. Jude forecast earnings per share of 93¢-95¢ for the 2nd quarter and EPS of $3.68 to $3.73 for the full year.
St. Jude’s cardiac rhythm management numbers were down, with pacemakers leading the decline at a 12% clip, to $251 million; implantable cardiac defibrillator revenues were down 5% to 427 million. That made for an overall CRM decline of 8%, to $678 million.
"We are pleased with our track record of delivering strong earnings-per-share growth while we continue to invest in our diversified product portfolio. We expect sales growth to accelerate as we launch more than 20 new products to the market in 2013," chairman, president & CEO Daniel Starks said in prepared remarks.
STJ shares were down 1.9% to $41.03 as of about noon today.
