As drug classes go, growth rates in anti-psychotics are actually quite healthy. But it's fairly well penetrated. It gets harder to grow as [the industry] gets bigger. |
Can we think of this as a 10 or 11 percent top-line story again? That's unclear. |
It looks like they kind of scraped by. Earnings were in line. Sales were a bit light, mostly on the drug side of the business. It's nothing to jump up and down about. |
It wasn't a great quarter, but the expectations have gotten so low on J&J that a real ho-hum quarter is actually not a bad thing. |
It's a classic situation of expectations getting ahead of the story. |
It's more than fairly priced given the lack of visibility and a more constrained hospital (spending) environment. |
Most people in cardiology would say that more is better. If Abbott does acquire the Guidant business, there's very little overlap. There's probably not a lot of restructuring to come. |
That is always the elephant in the room with J&J. Everyone wants to know what is going on in M&A, and they're not saying. |
They have been talking about streamlining operations and making their manufacturing more efficient. It's part of that story. |