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The transfusion division of health care giant Abbott screens about half of the U.S. blood supply, so the nationwide decline in blood donations since the COVID pandemic has been not only a public health problem but, for Abbott, a business problem. The company tackled the dilemma by appealing to college students’ competitive streak: Last year, it launched the “We Give Blood” campaign among students at schools in the Big Ten conference, coinciding with the college football season. 

The 2024 initiative resulted in nearly 20,000 donations, enough to save up to 60,000 lives. First-time donors represented 69% of We Give Blood participants. In and around the University of Nebraska—the school that won the competition—local blood centers saw a 27% increase in young donors (ages 16 to 24) versus the previous year. Season two kicked off this September, and is attracting donors at an even faster rate: It neared 20,000 donations in just the first four weeks of the drive.

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CTW-2023-Abbott-Graduation-F2S1

Student debt is a massive burden in the U.S. There are more than 43 million borrowers carrying a combined $1.8 trillion in obligations. Debtors often have to choose between paying off their student loans or saving for retirement. That’s why Abbott developed Freedom 2 Save. F2S is a benefit program in which enrolled employees who put 2% of their pay toward their student loans get a corporate match of 5% into their 401(k)s—keeping them from having to sacrifice their future to pay off their past. The health care company’s innovative offering required special permission from the IRS before it could launch in 2018. To date, Abbott has contributed more than $5.5 million to over 2,500 of its employees, including $1.7 million in 2022 alone. Beginning in 2024, all U.S. employers will be able to offer a similar benefit through a provision of the SECURE 2.0 Act—inspired by Abbott’s offering—which will enable employers to match employees’ student loan payments with 401(k) contributions.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

F500-2023-099-Abbott Labortories

Riding the tail end of a sales boom in COVID-19 tests, the medical device and health care products firm dropped 13 spots on the Fortune 500 in 2022, with revenue increasing only 1.3% and profits down 2%. 
<ul> 
 	<li>COVID-19 test revenue accounted for one-fifth of Abbott’s bottom line in 2022, jumping to $8.4 billion from $7.7 billion in 2021. At the end of the first quarter of 2023, the firm projected test sales to drop to $1.5 billion for the year.</li> 
 	<li>Abbott fed some of its COVID-19 test proceeds into research and development, investing an additional $2 billion in 2022.</li> 
 	<li>The Department of Justice is investigating Abbott’s infant formula plant in Michigan, which shut down from February to June 2022 owing to contamination, setting off a nationwide shortage.</li> 
</ul>

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Aggregate sales hit $37.8 trillion last year—an increase of 19%, the highest annual growth rate in the list’s history.

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GPTW Health Care Large 2022-Abbott Laboratories_1000884-3 copy

Employees say: 
 
“I have never worked at a company that has put so much effort into making sure that their employees are taken care of. Abbott seems to go to great lengths to help employees, their family and the community.”

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F500-2022-086-Abbott Laboratories

COVID-19 testing continued to drive revenue growth for Abbott Labs in 2021: As of January 2022, the company had distributed about 1.4 billion tests, and those generated $7.7 billion in sales in 2021. Medical devices and nutrition products like Similac and Ensure together account for about two-thirds of Abbott’s revenue. The nutrition division endured a setback in early 2022, however, when Abbott issued a voluntary recall of powdered infant formula manufactured in one of its facilities in Michigan after the plant was linked to a bacterial-infection outbreak; the shutdown contributed to a nationwide formula shortage.

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WMAC 2021-42-Abbott Laboratories

Total revenue for the world’s biggest companies fell 4.8% to $31.7 trillion this year—the first decline in half a decade.

<span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Abbott Laboratories leveled up on this year’s Fortune 500 list, leaping from last year’s rank of 104 to No. 89. Why? COVID testing. Abbott was one of the first to jump into the testing market, and that alacrity has paid off; the company’s diagnostics unit, which also houses its COVID test arm, raked in more than $4 billion in sales during the first quarter of 2021 alone. Abbott, though, isn’t putting all its eggs in one basket. As life starts returning to normal, the company believes its diabetes care and glucose monitoring products will continue to fuel growth. &quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:12673,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Calibri, Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:11}" data-sheets-textstyleruns="{&quot;1&quot;:0}{&quot;1&quot;:46,&quot;2&quot;:{&quot;6&quot;:1}}{&quot;1&quot;:53}">Abbott Laboratories leveled up on this year’s Global 500 list, leaping from last year’s rank of 393 to No. 350. Why? COVID testing. Abbott was one of the first to jump into the testing market, and that alacrity has paid off; the company’s diagnostics unit, which also houses its COVID test arm, raked in more than $4 billion in sales during the first quarter of 2021 alone. Abbott, though, isn’t putting all its eggs in one basket. As life starts returning to normal, the company believes its diabetes care and glucose monitoring products will continue to fuel growth.

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Best Workplaces Healthcare Large 2021-Abbott Laboratories

Employees say: 
“It's really amazing to be part of a team where everyone does their best to help and assist on various projects in addition to their responsibilities.” 
Read Great Place to Work review .

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F500-2021-89-Abbott Laboratories

<span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Abbott Laboratories leveled up on this year’s Fortune 500 list, leaping from last year’s rank of 104 to No. 89. Why? COVID testing. Abbott was one of the first to jump into the testing market, and that alacrity has paid off; the company’s diagnostics unit, which also houses its COVID test arm, raked in more than $4 billion in sales during the first quarter of 2021 alone. Abbott, though, isn’t putting all its eggs in one basket. As life starts returning to normal, the company believes its diabetes care and glucose monitoring products will continue to fuel growth. &quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:12673,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Calibri, Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:11}" data-sheets-textstyleruns="{&quot;1&quot;:0}{&quot;1&quot;:46,&quot;2&quot;:{&quot;6&quot;:1}}{&quot;1&quot;:53}">Abbott Laboratories leveled up on this year’s Fortune 500 list, leaping from last year’s rank of 104 to No. 89. Why? COVID testing. Abbott was one of the first to jump into the testing market, and that alacrity has paid off; the company’s diagnostics unit, which also houses its COVID test arm, raked in more than $4 billion in sales during the first quarter of 2021 alone. Abbott, though, isn’t putting all its eggs in one basket. As life starts returning to normal, the company believes its diabetes care and glucose monitoring products will continue to fuel growth.

For an astounding 13th straight year, Apple claims the top spot in Fortune’s annual ranking of corporate reputation, based on a survey of almost 3,800 executives, directors, and analysts.

This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $33.3 trillion in revenues and $2.1 trillion in profits.

G500-2020-393-Abbott-Laboratories

Health care company Abbott Labs manufactures medical devices, diagnostic tools, and nutritional products like Ensure. While the pandemic has depressed some aspects of Abbott's business, demand for COVID-19 testing has buoyed its diagnostic arm.

The best workplaces in health care and biopharma make their employees feel valued while the health care industry continues to undergo rapid technological changes.

Best Workplaces in Health Care and Biopharma-2020-Abbott Laboratories

Employees say: 
“People aren't just here to earn their paychecks, but to make high quality products for the people that depend on them. The people also really care about each other here and go out of their way to ensure that everyone is comfortable.” 
Read Great Place to Work review .

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500-2020-104-Abbott-Laboratories

Health care company Abbott Labs manufactures medical devices, diagnostic tools, and nutritional products like Ensure.

As we face unprecedented collective challenges, cooperation has become a business superpower.

24.CTW20.Abbott

Health care access is a challenge in Rwanda, which makes one diagnostic innovation by Abbott Labs particularly valuable. Abbott’s prenatal panel tests simultaneously for syphilis, malaria, HIV, and hepatitis B, using only one finger-stick of blood, with results in the same visit. For expectant mothers who may have time or resources for only one trip to the clinic, that means better care; the test has also enabled a tripling of malaria case detections. 
 
At press time, health care providers were just beginning to deploy another potentially crucial Abbott diagnostic product: An “antigen” test for COVID-19 that yields results in 15 minutes and costs $5.

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Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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Abbott Laboratories is a global health care company. Founded in 1888, the company operates in four main segments: established pharmaceutical products, diagnostic products, nutritional products—including infant formula—and medical devices. As of 2024, Abbott’s medical devices segment was its largest and fastest-growing, accounting for about 45% of revenue. That segment includes devices for monitoring cardiovascular health, glucose monitoring systems for diabetes care, and neuromodulation devices for chronic pain and movement disorders.

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Abbott Laboratories (ABT): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Abbott Laboratories

abbott laboratories

Good morning, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Abbott's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be able to listen only until the question-and-answer portion of this call. During the question-and-answer session, you will be able to ask your question by pressing the star one one keys on your touchtone phone. This call is being recorded by Abbott. With the exception of any participant's questions asked during the question-and-answer session, the entire call, including the question-and-answer session, is material copyrighted by Abbott. It cannot be recorded or rebroadcast without Abbott's express written permission. I would now like to introduce Mr. Michael Comilla, Vice President, Investor Relations.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. With me today are Robert Ford, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Phil Boudreau, Executive Vice President, Finance, and Chief Financial Officer. Robert and Phil will provide opening remarks. Following their comments, we'll take your questions. Before we get started, some statements made today may be forward-looking for purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including the expected financial results for 2026. Abbott cautions that these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Economic, competitive, governmental, technological, and other factors that may affect Abbott's operations are discussed in Item 1A Risk Factors to our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2025.

Abbott undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to forward-looking statements as a result of subsequent events or developments, except as required by law. On today's conference call, as in the past, non-GAAP financial measures will be used to help investors understand Abbott's ongoing business performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are reconciled with the comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings news release and regulatory filings from today, which are available on our website at abbott.com. Note that Abbott has not provided the related GAAP financial measures on a forward-looking basis for the non-GAAP financial measures for which it is providing guidance, because the company is unable to predict with reasonable certainty and without unreasonable effort the timing and impact of certain items which could significantly impact Abbott's results in accordance with GAAP.

Unless otherwise noted, our commentary on sales growth refers to comparable sales growth, which includes the prior and current year sales of Exact Sciences, a cancer diagnostics company that Abbott acquired on March 23rd, 2026. Our definition of comparable sales growth can be found on page two of our press release issued earlier today, and a reconciliation table that contains data needed to calculate comparable sales growth can be found on page 13. With that, I will now turn the call over to Robert.

Thanks, Michael. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Our results in the first quarter were aligned with our expectations for the start of the year. That included delivering adjusted earnings per share of $1.15, consistent with our guidance, despite absorbing the impact of earlier than planned financing costs related to our acquisition of Exact Sciences and a weaker than expected respiratory season. This quarter also marked an important strategic milestone for Abbott with the completion of our acquisition of Exact Sciences. This acquisition adds a new high-growth business to the Abbott portfolio, further strengthening our leadership position in diagnostics and expanding our presence into one of the fastest-growing areas of healthcare, cancer diagnostics. As we communicated at the time of the acquisition announcement, we forecast the addition of Exact Sciences to add approximately $3 billion of incremental sales in 2026 and accelerate Abbott's long-term sales growth rate.

Before I summarize our first quarter results, I wanted to highlight a few pipeline achievements in our medical device business, and those include an earlier than planned approval and launch of two new PFA catheters, completion of patient enrollment in our CATALYST left atrial appendage device trial, initiation of development activities to bring an implantable extravascular ICD product to market, and the announcement of positive results from our randomized controlled trial, which demonstrated that people with type 2 diabetes on basal insulin therapy benefited from using Libre, including seeing reductions in HbA1c and increased time spent in healthy glucose range. In addition to these achievements, our teams are preparing to initiate patient enrollment in several important clinical trials in the second half of this year. These trials represent a unique opportunity that can position Abbott to bring a new wave of highly differentiated technologies to the market.

This pipeline of new technologies includes a balloon expandable TAVR valve, a leadless conduction system pacing device that utilizes our revolutionary AVEIR leadless pacemaker, a mitral replacement valve developed following our acquisition of Cephea Valve Technologies, a peripheral IVL device developed following our acquisition of CSI, and a wearable continuous lactate monitoring sensor that will monitor sepsis following discharge from hospital. I'll now summarize our first quarter results before I turn the call over to Phil, and I'll start with diagnostics, where sales increased 2% on a comparable basis in Core Lab Diagnostics. Growth of 3% was driven by growth in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America.

Sales of Core Lab diagnostic tests, which exclude capital equipment and digital health solutions, increased on both a year-over-year and sequential basis, and this is a trend that we expect to continue and drive higher growth in the second half of the year compared to the first half. In our rapid and molecular diagnostics business, sales declined 10%, reflecting lower demand for respiratory virus testing due to a much weaker respiratory season compared to last year. In cancer diagnostics, sales grew 13% on a comparable basis, driven by mid-teens growth of Cologuard and high teens growth in international markets. Moving to nutrition, where sales finished slightly ahead of our expectations for the quarter.

As discussed on our January earnings call, results in the quarter reflect the impact of lower sales volumes compared to the prior year and the effect of strategic pricing actions implemented in the fourth quarter of 2025, with an objective of re-accelerating volume growth. While we are still early in the transition back toward a more sustainable balance between price and volume-driven growth, I am encouraged by the progress we're making. Early data indicates we are seeing the intended effect, with volume growth beginning to follow our pricing actions. We continue to expect that these pricing actions, combined with the launch of several new products, will result in growth improving over the course of the year. Turning to EPD, our pharmaceutical business, where sales increased 9% in the quarter.

Growth was broad-based across the markets we serve, which included double-digit growth in several countries across Latin America and Asia Pacific regions. Demand in these markets continues to be supported by favorable long-term healthcare, economic, and demographic trends. With a broad product offering across five therapeutic areas and an expanding biosimilars portfolio, which includes several market-leading oncology therapies, we are well-positioned to serve the growing customer base in these markets. I'll wrap up with medical devices, where sales grew 8.5%. Growth was led by strong performance in our cardiovascular device businesses. This included double-digit growth in electrophysiology, heart failure, and rhythm management. In electrophysiology, growth of 13% included contributions from two pulsed field ablation catheter launches in the quarter. The launch of our Volt PFA catheter contributed to a growth of 14% in the U.S., and the launch of our TactiFlex Duo Catheter helped drive mid-teens growth in Europe.

As we broaden the launch of both catheters, we expect growth in our electrophysiology business to accelerate. In rhythm management, sales grew 13%, making the third consecutive quarter that we have delivered double-digit growth and continued our track record of significantly outperforming the market. In heart failure, growth of 12% was driven by our market-leading portfolio of heart assist devices, which offer treatment for chronic and temporary conditions. In diabetes care, continuous glucose monitoring sales were $2 billion and grew 7.5%. Growth in the quarter reflects an impact from a delay in the renewal process related to an international tender. We also saw the expected impact from a challenging comparison to last year. This comparison relates to shelf restocking dynamics that occurred in the first half of 2025, a topic that we discussed on an earnings call last year.

As we look forward to the second quarter, we expect CGM to return to double-digit growth. In summary, our results in the quarter were in line with our expectations to start the year. We remain confident in our expectation for an acceleration in growth in the second half of the year. We have clear visibility to the key drivers of that acceleration and are highly focused on executing on them. Those drivers include, first, executing our growth strategy in nutrition, which is underway and on track with our expectations. Second, we see a clear path to accelerating growth in both electrophysiology and Core Lab diagnostics, supported by best-in-class portfolios, new product launches, and improving market conditions. Third, we will continue our proven track record of delivering strong, sustainable performance in EPD and across our medical devices portfolio.

Finally, we are successfully integrating Exact Sciences, which adds a compelling high-growth business to the Abbott portfolio for strengthening our ability to deliver long-term sustainable growth. Now I'll turn over the call to Phil.

Thanks, Robert. As a result of the March 23rd close of our acquisition of Exact Sciences, our first quarter financial results include the results of the Exact Sciences business from the close date through the end of the quarter. As Michael mentioned, our press release issued this morning provides sales growth in the quarter on a comparable basis, which includes the full quarter sales of Exact Sciences in both the prior and current year. To align with our reporting of comparable sales growth, our full year 2026 sales growth outlook of 6.5%-7.5% is now on a comparable basis as well. The sales growth outlook includes the full year sales of Exact Sciences in both the prior and current year.

Compared to our previous full year adjusted earnings per share guidance range midpoint of $5.68, our new guidance range midpoint of $5.48 reflects $0.20 of dilution related to the Exact Sciences acquisition, consistent with our assumption at the time of the announced transaction.

Turning to our first quarter results, sales increased 3.7% on a comparable basis, and adjusted earnings per share of $1.15 grew 6% compared to the prior year. Foreign exchange had a favorable year-over-year impact of 4% on first quarter sales. Earlier this quarter, we saw the U.S. dollar weaken, which resulted in a favorable impact on sales compared to exchange rates at the time of our earnings call in January. Regarding other aspects of the P&L, the adjusted gross margin profile was 56.3% of sales. Adjusted R&D was 6.7% of sales, and adjusted SG&A was 29.3% of sales. Based on current rates, we expect exchange to have a favorable impact of approximately 1% on full year reported sales. For the second quarter, we expect exchange to have relatively neutral impact on sales. For the second quarter, we forecast adjusted earnings per share of $1.25-$1.31. With that, we'll now open the call for questions.

Thank you. At this time we will conduct a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising you that your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. For optimal sound quality, we kindly ask that you use your handset instead of your speakerphone when asking your question. Again, that's star one one to ask a question, and please stand by while we compile our Q and A roster. Our first question will come from David Roman from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe I'll start with just the updated guidance, and I know you touched on some of this during the call, but maybe you could just go into some further detail on, firstly, maybe your guidance philosophy and your just thought process in establishing the revised outlook. Secondly, just the extent to which the outlook is, in your mind, sort of fully de-risks and captures upside potential, but also contemplates any downside unforeseen risks here.

Yeah, sure. I think the philosophy here, David, is I think that maybe there's a portion there that is we've included Exact Sciences into the history, and our philosophy there has always been to ensure that our investors have clear, transparent, detailed kind of breakdown of our performance. We did that during COVID. If you remember, we always split out the COVID sales. We got feedback that they really wanted to understand the underlying part of the business and the COVID part of the business. When we did the acquisition of St. Jude, the acquisition closed in the first quarter, and so we did the same approach there, to fold in St. Jude into a kind of more comparable basis.

We just think it provides the investors really the most relevant growth rate, a growth rate that is of the new Abbott portfolio on a very kind of clean apples-to-apples basis. I think that's the philosophy there. As it relates to the guidance, I think maybe the view there was just maybe take a little bit of a conservative side here on some aspects that we felt in the first quarter. For example, if you look at the respiratory season, we forecasted Q1 to be a relatively weak season compared to other seasons that we had seen in the past. Then that was even weaker than what we had forecasted. I think as we've looked at other comparable healthcare businesses that we look at, like for example, like OTC meds, which is a very good kind of triangulation there.

We're seeing also those types of businesses have this year-over-year effect there. One of the ways to think about it is like, okay, you have two parts in the year where you're going to have this effect. You have it at the beginning of the year, and you have it at the end of the year. One of the ways to think about it is, okay, we're going to make that lower respiratory season at the back end of the year, and then we would have to assume that you would have an above average respiratory season, at least from a testing perspective. I'm only going to find that out just before Thanksgiving.

I just thought it was prudent to say, you know what, we're not going to be able to make up or I'll put it this way, I'm not going to forecast that we're going to make it up in Q4, this respiratory aspect. That doesn't mean we won't be ready. Obviously, you know our portfolio, and we know we've got the manufacturing capabilities and the distribution to be able to do that. I just decided that I didn't think it was prudent to bake that into the forecast. The rest of the areas of the business, the sales growth out was very much in line with our January outlook.

If I go back to the way I described our year and the year progression, the couple of key kind of blocks that really drive our growth throughout the year, I'd say the first block here is just, as I said in my comments, sustaining the growth of our med tech business and our pharma business. Med tech business, low double digits, our pharma business above 7%. These are businesses that have consistently and reliably delivered this type of performance. Whether it's market conditions or new product launches in these businesses, we feel very good about our ability to be able to sustain that kind of performance. The other bucket, I would say, the second bucket would probably be more, okay, trajectory-changing businesses. I would put diagnostics, especially our Core Laboratory business and nutrition into those buckets. I think they're a little bit different though, David.

I would say on our core lab business, and we talked about this last year, the impacts of China and the VBP, and obviously COVID, that was about a billion-dollar headwind that we faced last year. Other parts of the business, geography, other parts of the platforms, doing very well growth, and we continue to see that. What I've seen over the last six months really gives me confidence that we're actually on very much either on track or slightly ahead of that recovery in our diagnostics and that growth trajectory change. I think the teams there have done an incredible job in China, and especially here in the U.S. too. I think the teams have done really good in terms of being able to capture market share.

The nutrition transition, I think, is a little bit earlier on in that stage, but I still feel that what we're seeing right now, the decisions that we took, the timely decisions that we took in the middle of Q4, I think we're starting to see some of that activity right now in terms of being able to drive volume growth. It's still early. I can't declare like, "Yes, it's done." We're starting to see really good indications that the actions that we took, and then combined with the new product launches, that we're going to see that recovery. The third bucket I would put on that list is just the integration of Exact Sciences, which adds a high growth business to the portfolio. It's been performing very well. I'm sure we'll talk about that also.

I'd say those are the three kind of big drivers of our sales forecast. Those really haven't changed. The real thing here was just, I'm not going to try and call what type of flu season we're going to have starting before Thanksgiving. If the flu season is as aggressive as we've seen in other years, then we have the manufacturing, we have the distribution, we have the sales force, all of that in place to be able to do that. Hopefully that answers your question.

Thank you. Our next question will come from Robbie Marcus from JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Oh, great. Good morning, and thanks for taking the question. Robert, maybe to follow up on David's question. I appreciate that comparable growth is a much more helpful metric, especially if we're looking out to the future and what the new Abbott will be doing on an underlying basis. When I look at organic growth, which I think is what a lot of people pay attention to in the health of the Abbott business coming into the year before the acquisition, it looks to me like growth is moving from the 6.5%-7.5% guide on the fourth quarter call to something more like 5.75%-6.75% if we adjust out Exact Sciences and the lost royalty revenue. It does look like there's a bit of deceleration in the prior organic Abbott business. How are you thinking about managing that? How much is one time versus sustainable? Where do you see sort of the biggest pressure points and how you're addressing it? Appreciate it.

Yeah, I'm not sure I follow those numbers though, Robbie, but I think what you're trying to get to is, hey, by putting Exact Sciences into a comparable basis, are there parts of the non-exact business that are underperforming? I'm assuming that's what you're trying to hint around. I would say, as I said to David, I think that if. I'll put it this way, if the business acquisition had closed after this call, let's call it Q2, sometime in Q2, I think we probably would have done, I think, what you in the med tech space would usually expect, is that you kind of keep it separate and then you kind of lap it a year. But then what you'll then ask me to do is to always every quarter reconcile between what the acquisition did to the organic growth rate.

I just felt that because it was early in the Q1 before this call, that we could roll it in on a comparable basis, and that would give our investors full visibility to the new Abbott with this addition of Exact Sciences. I know that might involve a little bit more work for some of you guys in terms of your modeling, all of that. I think we try to make it very easy for you as part of our disclosures. Parts of the business that we're focusing on, I think I went through that in a fair amount of detail here. If you want to go to specific parts of the portfolio, we could do, but I think I described that to David pretty clear here. I'll repeat it if necessary.

The device portfolio, the pharma portfolio, we still feel very strong about those growth rates. We're not backing off of those. Obviously, there's opportunities to outperform in some of them. There are some more kind of challenging areas in others, whether it's market, whether it's competition. Overall, that combination, we feel very good about sustaining that. These trajectory-changing businesses like we've discussed in diagnostics and core nutrition, I think we know what the issues were. We know what we're working on, and we're really focused on executing that. If I take a step back here, I think ultimately, the way our business is, we're a very diversified company. We lay out all of the different businesses. We break out even within sectors, we break them out and be able to show the performance in that.

My view here is that, yeah, it would be great to have every single business beating all of the street expectations. Unfortunately, sometimes you're not going to have that. I'm not going to say that never happens because it's happened before, but sometimes it doesn't happen. I think the important thing there, Robbie, is that you have a collection of businesses that we feel are very attractive, and that the combination, the sum of them, are able to hit our commitments and deliver on our financial commitments. I take a view of, I look at each business individually, but we also look at it as a whole. I think as a whole, the company's well set up for this year.

Thank you. Our next question will come from Larry Biegelsen from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Robert, I wanted to ask about CGM. We heard your comments about the CGM market or your business in Q1 and the expected acceleration in Q2. The CGM prescription trends in the U.S. look weak. Can you talk about what's happening in the CGM market? There's a concern that the current indications are saturated, and how are you thinking about Libre growth the rest of the year and longer term? Just lastly, remind us of the timing for type 2 non-insulin and the dual ketone sensor and the lactate sensor you mentioned. Thank you.

Sure. Listen, I think it's always important to look at weekly prescription data in one country. It's an important country. The weekly prescription data is obviously great early indicators for the market. Even though that auditing channel, that you guys rely on to look at weekly prescription data doesn't capture the entire market. It's very different from pharma where you've got a lot of other segments of the market that are performing. I think using TRX data to ultimately look at how the market is evolving, and only using that is, I would say, I'd caution, I think it's a little bit myopic. Let me take a kind of a bigger view here, okay, Larry, in terms of how I think about the market, what's going on in the market, and the opportunities we have there. I'm very bullish on this market.

If I look at the big picture here, I'm very bullish on the CGM market. As you know, Larry, I've always been, and I continue to be. If I look at our assessment of the amount of people that should be on a CGM on a global basis, we estimate between 70-80 million people on CGMs should be. Obviously, there are different types of patients in that number, but overall, 70-80 million people. I think the market today is around 10-12. So 10-12 million people. Again, you might think 78 is a lot, but there's about 500 million people with diabetes, so I felt that I've kind of narrowed it down quite a bit already. Even in that narrowed down world, we're still very under-penetrated. I think if you look back to.

I'll speak for our growth trajectory, because we've looked at this, and we continue to look at it. I go back, like, 15 years. I look at quarterly revenue over 15 years. So let's call it, whatever, 60 data points there. It's never always up to the right on a perfect 45-degree, okay? I know we love businesses that are like that, but it never is. There are periods, if you look, at least for us, there are periods where there's a little bit of modest growth. Modest growth I'd call, like, whatever is 8%-10%. Then it's followed by very long periods of strong acceleration, teens, 20% kind of growth. If you look at those acceleration periods, they're typically driven by different types of catalysts. Either a reimbursement catalyst, a geographic expansion catalyst, a new product launch catalyst.

As I look at this market, and I look at our position, I see a lot of catalysts still ahead of us in this market. If I think about reimbursement as a strong catalyst. You just mentioned one, CGM type 2 non-insulin coverage. I expect proposed language of that coming soon. I can't tell you the exact month, Larry, and I'm not going to try and forecast what it is, when it is, but I know it's going to happen. I know that it's going to add close to 10 million people that don't have coverage now that now will be able to have coverage. That's obviously going to accelerate commercial coverage, too. I think that's one that we've talked about.

I have not included in my guidance, but it is a sweet spot for us in terms of our channel strength, our promotional strength, our reimbursement coverage there. So I think that's a catalyst that's on the horizon here for us. Internationally, I know we like to focus a lot on the U.S., but internationally, out of the top 10 markets in the world, only four have actually gone full-blown basal coverage. So there are another six very large markets that are still in the process of not evaluating, but going through the budget process, the criteria process, et cetera. What we've tried to do is obviously build evidence to be able to support that movement, not only from a physician side, but also from a patient advocacy.

We showed an RCT I talked about in my opening comments at ATTD conference later this year, which showed again in a randomized control trial, not just using real world evidence, but randomized control trial that patients on basal do better with Libre. I look at those, and there is so much opportunity still internationally and even in the U.S. I don't think that the patient TAM is tapped or anything like that. You're just going to have these little moments where growth modulates a little bit, and then these next catalysts come in, and they continue to drop. You have to look at the bigger picture, which is you've got 70-80 million people that can be on this product.

Even if you look at a yearly revenue number that's lower than what we're seeing today, because you've got different types of patient groups in that number, you're looking at a $30-$35 billion TAM here that's available to us, and we're focused on that, Larry. We're focused on building competitive advantage to be able to be a leader in that space, whether it's product technology advantage, cost advantage, scale advantage, and we do very well there. If you think about innovation as another catalyst, we have a couple that are on our way also for us too. We're still committed to an expected approval of our dual analyte system in the second half of this year. That's going to open up about a million patients that we previously had very little access to on the pump side.

You're going to have about 5 million SGLT2 users that aren't using the product, which will now have the benefit of having continuous ketone monitoring. We're working on a Libre 5. I'm not going to get ahead of myself here, but our view here is always, okay, how do we continue to sustain our competitive advantage? You do that through cost advantage, and you do that through product innovation. I still feel very good about this market. I'm looking at it from a much bigger picture than just weekly TRXs, which don't get me wrong, we look at it also. We can see the trends too, and there are obviously areas that we can do better, and we're working on that too. The bigger picture here is that we're very well positioned for what I believe is a very large kind of market.

Thank you. Our next question will come from Vijay Kumar from Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Hi, Robert. Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. I guess maybe I'll stick to Exact, given that the deal is closed. This is an asset which has done phenomenally well over the years during mid-teens kind of growth. Just talk about your plans for sustaining strong growth of Cologuard. Is there an international angle here for Cologuard? Sort of related to that, when I look at the guidance, comparable growth is now 6.5%-7.5%, and we know Exact is growing faster. Is there some consolidation that's perhaps being baked in the guidance? Could there be upside given Exact is growing faster? Thank you.

Sure. Listen, I think the integration is going very well. I think it starts with that, right? We've named Jake Orville as our new leader in that business. He previously led the screening business or the Cologuard business, and he's reporting directly to me. It's reported in our Diagnostics kind of Q, but it's operating standalone and it reports straight to me. I think right now, we're very excited, and I know that the team is also very excited. I've had opportunities to field travel with reps. I've had opportunities to talk to physicians. I'd say I'm very bullish about the ability to really accelerate this business.

Sustaining Cologuard growth, I'll answer that, but let me just say, when we looked at this strategically, Vijay, we really wanted to think about this not as a one product kind of deal, but more as an opportunity to enter a space that is extremely exciting and very high growth. Not just screening with Cologuard, but therapy selection and MRD testing. These are obviously areas that I know you know very well, and they have great opportunities here. Our goal in doing this is to actually be a leader across the entire cancer diagnostic span, and we believe that Exact was definitely a kind of a beachhead building block for us to do that. Within that, obviously, Cologuard is the key growth driver there. I would say, I think it's a very sustainable growth here for us for a couple reasons.

One, the demand is high, and it's continuing to increase, right? Right now, if you look at it's very under-penetrated right now. You've got 50 million Americans that are not up to date with their CRC screening. There's an opportunity here in the U.S., but internationally also, this is very under-penetrated, Vijay. One of the things that we bring is established regulatory KOL healthcare system distribution relationships across a lot of markets. We've already set aside a group that's really going to focus on how do we develop the screening and the cancer testing market in these international markets. If you look at screening guidelines, the age in 2021 was lowered from 50 to 45. That added a lot of new patients.

What I'm seeing, and I think it's more than anecdotal, I've seen studies now that we're seeing people at 30 and 35 be diagnosed with stage three. That's not good, obviously. Could I eventually see that being lowered from 45 down to 40? I think I can see that happening because there is a medical need for that, and that would add another 20 million people just in the U.S. I think the demand is there. The piece of the Cologuard, which is an incredible value proposition, is that with this increasing demand for screening, there's only a fixed amount of colonoscopy capacity, at least in this country. It really hasn't changed. It's been 6 million per year pretty consistently. If you factor in that there, if you look at gastroenterologists and look at the enrollment rates in medical schools, they're coming down.

You can see a world where you're going to have increased demand for screening and less supply to be able to do that from a colonoscopy perspective. Cologuard does really well here. Not only is it convenient at home, but its sensitivity at 95% is equivalent to colonoscopy. I think the combination of the increased demand followed by this bottleneck if you look right now. I think in the U.S., I was talking to the team, average wait time for colonoscopy is between three to nine months, depending on the state. There's already a backlog. I think the demand and the value proposition of Cologuard is very strong. If I add a third part there, I think what the team at Exact Sciences has built is pretty unique.

You've got 1,000-person sales force calling on primary care reps, and it takes time to build that. It's not an easy thing. You've got 200,000 healthcare professionals prescribing every quarter Cologuard, and they have this incredible system where everything is integrated. It's integrated into the healthcare records. It's integrated into your phone. It's a very seamless experience. I think that's pretty unique. I think the other part that is unique to us is that rescreens are becoming a very strong growth contributor. 25% of our tests today are rescreens, and you're eligible for a rescreen every three years. When you've got all the data, you can obviously interact with your customers to remind them. What I saw in the data was that you've got a very high rescreen rate, and it gets even higher as the rescreens kind of progress.

I think right now we're seeing about 500,000 patients per year just for rescreen. I think that's something that's very unique to this business for us because they've been doing it for 10 years, so you've got this rescreen business that keeps on growing. The third thing, which I think is also very unique to us and what's been built is these care gap programs, which I know you know very well also. CRC screening is one of the quality metrics that CMS uses for star ratings. Payers and providers, they get three times this quality score for Cologuard versus a fit test. We're seeing a lot of interest from healthcare systems and providers to stay ahead and ensure that they're scoring their quality metric points.

I think those three things are pretty unique, and I add that with a combination of the demand, the opportunity internationally. I feel very good about our ability to kind of sustain this growth. Now, internationally, is it going to be Cologuard? It could be in some markets. It could be other tests for other markets, but there's clearly a need here. I've traveled to Asia, I traveled to Europe this first quarter, and I spoke to health ministers, and top three things that we walked away from was they want to get cancer screening up and going in their countries. They see it as a problem, and they see Abbott as one of those solutions. I feel very good about this business. The integration is going very well. I couldn't have asked for a better integration. Culturally, I think both companies are very compatible, very focused on the patient and on innovation and driving growth. I feel good about it.

Thank you. Our next question will come from Matthew Taylor from Jefferies. Your line is open.

Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I was hoping that you could talk a little bit about the trends in structural heart and maybe within that, just address what's going on in left atrial appendage closure. Not only do you have programs, including the Amulet 360, which I think people are excited about, but I was hoping you could comment on what you think the impact could be from the CHAMPION-AF study from your competitor, and you have a similar study, CATALYST, that'll read out here in a year or two. Would love kind of an overview of structural heart and LAAC.

Yeah. I think that's an interesting question because I think historically what we've done is we've had a left atrial appendage closure device within our Structural Heart business. What we decided to do is to move it outside of our Structural Heart business and put it into our electrophysiology business. We did that in end of last year and starting in January 1st where we moved the sales force, clinical teams, and eventually moved manufacturing, et cetera, over. We did that just because we felt that this would be beneficial for our electrophysiology business. Quite frankly, it would be more beneficial for our Structural Heart business. I'll focus on the Structural Heart business and the trends there. Listen, I think we've been doing pretty well with this business.

When you look at the, I think in our Q, we've got a reconciliation of the impact of moving those sales out of structural heart into EP. That's a big contributor to the disconnection between the street model and what we delivered. On top of that, we have seen some competitive intensity increase here in the mitral space as one of our main competitors kind of expanded their portfolio. Yeah, I think my team can do a better job there. They know that also. We need to improve our execution in the U.S. We've done some changes to leadership. I'm expecting our U.S. commercial team here to respond to the challenge. Internationally, growth continues to be very, very strong across the entire portfolio. We're delivering double-digit growth in mitral, in TriClip, in our structural interventions business. I think that's going very well.

While there's going to be some geographic differences there, Matt, I think that geographic difference might persist for a little bit. I continue to expect our structural heart growth here to be high single-digit% for the full year. I feel good about the structural heart portfolio. There are areas that we got to do better in. I kind of highlighted the product and the geography, and I'm expecting the team to really respond here. I think the business is doing very well. As I said in my opening comments, we've got a couple trial readouts. As you mentioned, we've completed enrollment in our Catalyst. I don't have a big reaction to my competitor's trial. I'm going to let them, as I'm assuming they probably have done, talk about it. I'm going to wait until ours comes out and then I'll comment on ours.

I think it's a high growth, attractive business. I think you mentioned our next generation product. I think it is very exciting product for us. That's why we thought that moving it over to our EP business would actually provide a better acceleration for that product per se, and then actually allow our structural heart team to be more focused on kind of valvular products and selling, and keep them more focused so.

Thank you. Our next question will come from Travis Steed from BofA Securities. Your line is open.

Hey, everybody. I wanted to ask on the nutrition item business, and I heard you mention that volume is starting to recover a bit. If any other color you can give on giving confidence in that business returning to growth in the back half and volume picking up, and then how you're thinking about ongoing portfolio management and value creation and how Nutrition fits in that strategic thinking.

Yeah, sure. Like I said in my comments and in a couple of the early questions, I think we're starting to see that impact. We did a pretty comprehensive price assessment, not just at a product level, but a geographic level. We evaluated our gaps versus our competition. We didn't reduce prices just basically uniformly across the portfolio, Travis. We kept it very focused on the products that we believed, and based on our experience, would demonstrate this positive volume response to a reduced price. When the price is passed on to the consumer, we're seeing this kind of immediate effect. It takes time for some of that price to get passed on to the consumer, right? Because you've got inventory in the channel, et cetera.

That price reset to the consumer doesn't happen overnight, which is why, because we know that we wanted to get ahead of it as quickly as possible, which is why we did it in Q4 of last year. When you see the lower prices get passed through to the consumer, you're seeing the intended effect. If you look, for example, at our U.S. adult nutrition business, specifically on Ensure, that was a product that we knew had some elasticity in its price, just based on our experience. We've seen volume grow across all the retailers that have actually passed that on here in the U.S., pass that on to the consumer. You're seeing that increase in volume, and we kind of use the 2025 as kind of the baseline. Obviously not Q4, but at least the first half of the year as the baseline.

We're tracking this on a monthly basis. I know my team looks at this on a weekly basis with the data that's available. I feel good about where we are right now. I'm not going to say right now that it's all done and let's just let time pass and it'll all come through. There's work we've got to do. There are product launches that also allow us to gain distribution. There's work that we need to do in terms of expanding distribution into the distribution channel. There's a lot of work going on right now, but the team is incredibly focused, and I think this is a team that's been pretty resilient, Travis, and does pretty well. At least has shown to do pretty well when it encounters some of these challenges. They're able to bounce back pretty quickly.

Right now, I'd say on track, encouraging early signs, but still work to do. As it relates to the portfolio, listen, I like the diversity of our business model and the diversity not just across business segments, it's across products. It's the diversity in our geography, it's diversity in our customer base, and different payer types and different innovation cycles. We don't want to be so heavily weighted on one or two products that the company's kind of driven there. I think that diversity really provides us a pretty unique perspective on the global healthcare system. That being said, Travis, we're constantly looking at our portfolio, we're constantly looking at, is the market still attractive? How's our competitive position? So that we can determine, do we expand? Do we maintain? Do you potentially reduce?

Abbott Laboratories (ABT) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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