Investors in St. Jude Medical Inc. sent the company's stock higher Wednesday despite a dip in quarterly sales and a lowered earnings outlook that reflects increased currency head winds.

St. Jude's stock jumped 6 percent to $73.55 based on stable sales of its core heart devices like pacemakers and the future growth potential for devices that treat a fluttering heart condition called atrial fibrillation (AF) and those that deliver direct electric stimulation to the body's nervous system.

The Little Canada-based company also turned in strong numbers for its CardioMEMS implantable blood-pressure monitor — a new device that company executives hope to turn into a billion-dollar market in coming years.

"We've delivered on our promise to accelerate our sales growth," Chief Financial Officer Donald Zurbay said in an interview Wednesday. "We are really off to a good start to accelerate both our sales in 2015 and continue to supply leverage on our [earnings per share]. And all of that is being driven by the good results in our AF business, our neuromodulation business, and CardioMEMS."

Yet St. Jude lowered its adjusted earnings per share outlook for 2015 by 3 cents, to a range of $3.92 to $3.97 per share. Factors in the lowered outlook include its acquisition of California-based Spinal Modulation and currency-exchange challenges.

"Due to the strength of our overall business, disciplined management of our operations, and the contribution from our new [currency] hedging program, we intend to almost entirely offset these negative factors," St. Jude CEO Dan Starks told investors in a conference call.

Starks

For the quarter that ended April 4, St. Jude reported net sales of $1.35 billion, a 1 percent decline from the year-ago quarter. Adjusting for the effect of a stronger dollar, St. Jude said sales increased by about 5 percent compared with the same quarter last year. Its earnings per share grew by 6 percent under the same modeling.

That underlying performance, combined with stable cardiac device sales and upbeat prospects in smaller device categories, explains why the stock moved higher Wednesday.

"Investors typically don't really penalize companies for FX head winds, if you will," said Sterne Agee CRT senior analyst Shagun Singh Chadha, using the abbreviation for foreign currency exchange. "I think they really focus on underlying growth, which was 5 percent … [and] important growth drivers."

First-quarter results reinforced expectations that sales of its core heart rhythm devices like pacemakers and defibrillators will be essentially flat but stable for the rest of 2015. Analysts had feared that increased competition from Medtronic PLC would depress the division's sales.

Meanwhile, the company is counting on strong sales of newly approved ablation catheters for atrial fibrillation therapies and a reinvigorated neuromodulation-device division to drive it toward its overall goal of 5 percent to 6 percent revenue growth for the year on a constant-currency basis. And particular attention is being focused on CardioMEMS.

The company has said it expects $70 million in sales of the real-time blood-pressure monitoring device in 2015 to control heart failure, and the $17 million in revenue booked in the first quarter combined with expected growth this year are likely to send the company well past its sales goal, though Starks declined to name a specific figure because the device is so new.

"It is easy to see how revenue from CardioMEMS products can evolve into a multibillion-dollar business once the market has been fully developed," Starks said.

St. Jude reported adjusted earnings of 93 cents per share for the first quarter, 2 cents better than analysts expected. The results are a 3 percent decline from the same quarter last year, and it includes the impact of a federal research credit that Congress has not yet passed for 2015.

For the second quarter, St. Jude said it expects to increase revenue between 4 and 5 percent. The company is planning for adjusted net earnings of between 99 cents and $1.01 per share for the second quarter, in line with the same quarter last year.

Joe Carlson • 612-673-4779

Twitter: @_JoeCarlson