J&J Reports Lowered Earnings

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) on Tuesday reported a fall in its earnings, despite a rise of 6.3 percent in the sales figures.

The fall in earnings was caused because of the write downs that were related to the acquisition of Synthes Inc., the health care products company. For the full year Johnson & Johnson has forecasted an increase of a nicker per share on the previously announced figures, i.e from $4.95 to $5.

The Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of J&J said that the results were a an indication of the success of many of the recently unveiled products. The health care giant has been hit with numerous product recalls and lawsuits, which have hurt its quarterly results. The company is hoping to put behind all the product recalls that were caused by manufacturing issues.

J&J had to recall millions of units of Tylenol drug from the market which led to the company restructuring its consumer health care business unit. The company is also facing hundreds of lawsuits over failure of its artificial Hip implants, which the company recalled in August this year.

J&J recently acquired the manufacturer of digestive drug bands such as Mylicon, Mylanta and Pepcid from  Merck & Co. However the acquired unit is hit with numerous manufacturing quality issues that have led to losses. The acquisition of Synthes has helped boost the company’s medical devices business,  which is considered to be a fast growing market. The completion of the acquisition is still pending approval.

The United State’s largest health care product’s manufacturer reported profits of $3.2 billion or around $1.15 per share. This is lesser that the $3.42 billion reported by J&J last year. The per share earnigns excluding all items and also mark to mark adjustments was $1.24 per share. These exceeded analyst’s forecasts by a slim margin.

The pharmaceutical unit reported an increase of 8.9 percent globally. The U.S. sales however were down by 6.1 percent because of generic competition for Levaquin. However the sales picked because of the sales of the newly launched products such as Zytiga, the prostate cancer drug and also Remicade, which J&J is co-distributing along with Merck. The International sales were 4.9 percent higher than last quarter, mostly because of the increase in the value of dollar.

The share of the health products manufacturer fell by 0.42 percent by 10:45 a.m. on the New York Stock exchange after the announcement of the result.

Post Written By: Ed Liston Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.