Johnson & Johnson $JNJ reported second-quarter sales of $25.31 billion on Wednesday, up 6.6% from a year earlier, as strong demand for drugs in its Innovative Medicine segment helped the company top expectations and lift its full-year guidance.
On a per-share basis, adjusted earnings were $2.90, a 4.7% improvement over the year-ago quarter, clearing the consensus estimate of $2.85, with revenue also surpassing the projected $25.05 billion, according to Reuters.
The Innovative Medicine unit, which houses the company's pharmaceutical products, generated $16.38 billion in quarterly sales, a 7.8% increase from a year earlier. Growth was driven by cancer treatments Darzalex and Carvykti, as well as immunology drugs Tremfya and others in that category, and neuroscience products Spravato and Caplyta, the company said. Tremfya, which targets psoriasis and inflammatory bowel disease, brought in $2 billion for the quarter, representing a 72.5% surge over the same period last year. Sales of Darzalex, a blood cancer treatment, reached $4.2 billion.
Those gains were partially offset by declining revenue from older products, including Stelara, which lost patent protection, and Remicade, the company said.
The MedTech unit recorded $8.93 billion in quarterly sales, up 4.5% from a year earlier, missing the $8.97 billion that analysts had anticipated, according to Reuters. Chief Financial Officer Joseph Wolk told Reuters that Abiomed sales declined 2% in the quarter, a reversal he attributed to a U.K. study that cast doubt on the suitability of Impella pumps for certain high-risk coronary interventions. That contrasts with the 14% expansion Abiomed delivered in the first quarter. Wolk expressed confidence the business would recover as J&J publishes additional clinical data supporting the pumps' effectiveness.
Johnson & Johnson lifted its full-year revenue outlook, setting a new midpoint target of $101.1 billion compared with the $100.8 billion it had forecast in April, the company said. The updated guidance would mark the first time in the company's history that annual revenue exceeded $100 billion, according to Chief Executive Officer Joaquin Duato. The company's updated adjusted earnings per share guidance similarly moved higher, to $11.68 at the midpoint from the prior figure of $11.55.
Johnson & Johnson stock fell 1.5% in premarket trading on Wednesday.