From my colleague Janet Moore:

As always, Little Canada-based St. Jude Medical Inc. is the first of the "Big Three" med-tech companies to report results. And that means the company's Chief Financial Officer John Heinmiller patiently answers questions from the Fourth Estate. Here's an excerpt from a conversation Wednesday morning:

On St. Jude and the furious pace of acquisitions in med-tech: "For an acquisition to be successful, it has to show us it's going to improve our business. Is it worth doing in the context of the growth opportunities we're already managing? We hope to have our business in a position where we don't have to do any acquisitions. We want to have the ability to be picky and not really squander our cash and our resources on unproven technologies or transactions that would be significantly dilutive to our earnings-per-share guidance."

On lingering FDA warning letters in the neuromodulation and atrial fibrillation divisions: "It is preventing us from launching some new products in the United States. . .That's the impact of a warning letter. We do have some products that are awaiting approval in our [Atrial Fibrillation] division."

There's no set timeline for resolution? "That's correct."

Comments on a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) suggesting heart defibrillators are overused: "The JAMA article had published data that was presented in May of 2010 at the annual Heart Rhythm Society Scientific Session, so the publication itself really didn't offer anything new to the industry or to clinicians. The data [were] actually very limited. It raised questions, but it really didn't answer them. It caught the attention of the lay press with a number of analysts and other making comments about it."

Click here for the lay press' take on the JAMA article.