Johnson & Johnson suspended full-year guidance for sales of its Covid-19 vaccine, citing a global surplus of doses and uncertainty over how the course of the pandemic will affect demand.
The healthcare-products company said Tuesday that Covid-19 shots helped left overall sales in its most recent quarter. Johnson & Johnson sold $457 million of the vaccine in its most recent quarter, with international buyers accounting for most of those sales. In the same period a year earlier, shortly after the shot had been authorized in the U.S., the company’s Covid-19 vaccine sales were $100 million, exclusively in the U.S. In the previous quarter, the company’s global Covid-19 vaccine sales came in at $1.62 billion.
J&J had predicted Covid-19 vaccine sales of $3 billion to $3.5 billion for full-year 2022. J&J may still continue to generate vaccine sales, but a surplus of doses and uncertain demand make it tougher to predict, J&J Chief Financial Officer Joseph Wolk said in an interview Tuesday.
“The demand outlook has become cloudy, I think, in the first quarter," Mr. Wolk said.
Other companies, too, are trying to predict future demand for products that became essential pandemic-fighting tools. Abbott Laboratories ramped up production early this year of the BinaxNow Covid-19 tests that became the most familiar brand to many consumers. Testing rates have since dropped from the huge peak driven by the Omicron variant. 3M Co. said in January that it expected demand for its N95 masks to fall as the year progresses.
J&J and other vaccine makers have made many doses of Covid-19 vaccine, but there are limitations in the logistics of getting those shots to people in developing countries, leading to a backlog, Mr. Wolk said. He also cited vaccine hesitancy, particularly as the Omicron surge has receded, as a reason that demand has cooled.
The shot is one of three for Covid-19 authorized or approved in the U.S., but its use in the U.S. has lagged behind that of vaccines developed by other manufacturers. U.S. health regulators briefly paused the use of the vaccine in April of last year as they investigated rare blood-clotting conditions.
The company cut its full-year sales guidance from between $95.9 billion and $96.9 billion to between $94.8 billion and $95.8 billion. The company also slashed its adjusted earnings outlook from between $10.40 a share and $10.60 a share to between $10.15 a share and $10.35 a share.
About 16.9 million Americans have been vaccinated with J&J’s single-dose shot, a fraction of the number who have been immunized with shots made by Moderna Inc. and by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those companies’ booster shots have also seen far more use in the U.S. than J&J’s.
Overall, higher sales from J&J’s pharmaceuticals and medical-devices segments contributed to a 5% rise in revenue. Sales in the consumer business fell slightly from a year earlier.
In the first quarter, J&J posted overall sales of $23.43 billion, compared with $22.32 billion a year earlier. Analysts surveyed by FactSet were expecting quarterly sales of $23.62 billion.
Profit was $5.15 billion, or $1.93 a share, down from $6.19 billion, or $2.32 a share, a year earlier. Adjusted for one-time items, J&J’s per-share profit was $2.67. Wall Street analysts had been forecasting an adjusted profit of $2.58, according to FactSet.
In the consumer business, sales were hampered by supply constraints that mostly held back the company’s skin-care and beauty products. The segment’s adjusted operational sales, which exclude the impact of divestitures and translational currency, rose 1.6%, driven by sales of over-the-counter products, including Tylenol, Motrin and Imodium.
Pharmaceutical sales rose 6.3% to $12.87 billion, helped by sales of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine, as well as other products, including Darzalex, a treatment of multiple myeloma, and Stelara, a treatment of a number of immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, as well as other products.
The results come as the company prepares to separate its consumer-health division from its prescription-drug and medical-device units. That split will likely come in 2023, at the earliest.
This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text
