The Associated Press
A big jump in prescription drug sales boosted fourth-quarter sales at Johnson & Johnson, but profits dove 57% due to higher research spending and one-time charges totaling $2.4 billion.
It still beat Wall Street expectations, but shares slipped 3 cents to $81.12 in premarket trading Tuesday.
J&J’s report didn’t give any updates on its coronavirus research. However, Chief Executive Officer Alex Gorski said in a prepared statement that the company anticipates sharing details soon from its late-stage study of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine.
The vaccine could become the third to receive emergency use authorization in the U.S., likely in February, following Pfizer and BioNTech, who won the first Food and Drug Administration emergency clearance, and Moderna. Both of the vaccines, which use different technology than J&J, were granted emergency use authorization in December.
The world’s biggest maker of health care products had a net income of $1.74 billion, or 65 cents per share. That was down from $4.01 billion, or $1.50 per share, a year earlier.
Adjusted net income came to $4.97 billion, or $1.86 per share. That easily topped the $1.81 Wall Street was looking for, according to a survey of industry analysts by Zacks Investment Research.
Total revenue for the quarter totaled $22.48 billion, up 8.3% from $20.75 billion. Analysts had expected $21.62 billion.
The New Brunswick, New Jersey, company said that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic reduced sales for its prescription medicines and consumer health products, except for increased demand for oral care products.
Prescription drug sales jumped 16.3%, to $12.27 billion, led by immune disorder drugs to Stelara and cancer drugs Darzelex, Imbruvica and Erleada.
Sales of consumer health products such as Tylenol and Listerine edged up 1.4% to $3.62 billion. Meanwhile, sales for the medical devices and diagnostics unit dipped nearly 1%, to $6.59 billion.
J&J gave its first financial forecast for 2021, saying it expects sales of $90.5 billion to $91.7 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $9.40 to $9.60. Both were up 10 % or more from 2020.
For all of 2020, Johnson & Johnson reported revenue of $82.58 billion, up just 0.6% from 2019, and net income of $14.71 billion, which was 2.7% below 2019’s net income.
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Follow Linda A. Johnson at https://twitter.com/LindaJ_onPharma
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A portion of this story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on JNJ at https://www.zacks.com/ap/JNJFor all of 2020,
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