Abbott CEO fields familiar questions about newly acquired St. Jude

The name may be new, but the challenges are familiar.

Little Canada-based cardiac device maker St. Jude Medical became a part of Abbott Laboratories in Illinois earlier this month. But in the first earnings call since the deal, Abbott Labs CEO Miles White had to repeatedly address concerns about St. Jude's continuing lack of pacemakers and implantable defibrillators that can be safely used with magnetic-resonance imaging (MRI) scanners.

"CRM (cardiac rhythm management) I think has continued to struggle," White said Wednesday. "I mean, we can see that in the sales and the [market] share and so forth. I expect that to be rectified imminently here, shortly."

In 2016, St. Jude lost U.S. market share in sales of pacemakers and defibrillators to competitors like Medtronic and Boston Scientific, which have MRI-compatible devices.

St. Jude's U.S. sales of the two types of devices declined 17 percent in the three months ended Oct. 1.

The earnings figures released by Abbott Wednesday did not explicitly spell out St. Jude's CRM-device sales during its last quarter.

Like St. Jude executives last year, White projected a quick turnaround of the situation once the Food and Drug Administration grants MRI compatibility.

Those goals were more conservative than previously announced.

Former St. Jude CEO Michael Rousseau told investors last October that the FDA may approve the MRI pacemaker before the end of 2016, and MRI defibrillators in the first half of 2017.

Second-half 2016 sales of the St. Jude heart devices were also affected by a worldwide product advisory on a rare-but-serious flaw in older St. Jude implantable defibrillator batteries, and allegations — now verified by the FDA — that some St. Jude heart devices are vulnerable to computer hacking because of cybersecurity issues in the devices used to program them. St. Jude is releasing a software patch to address the hacking issue, and it changed its battery design back in 2015.

On Wednesday, White told investors that Abbott plans to de-emphasize its mergers-and-acquisitions activity as it focuses on paying down debt and successfully integrating St. Jude into Abbott's medical-device division.

CFRA Research analyst Jeffrey Loo noted that Abbott is not backing away from cost-cutting and revenue-growth targets that it announced last April, which are expected to create a combined $500 million in annual pretax "synergies" by 2020.

Loo said it's too early to judge whether Abbott's financial assumptions of the St. Jude deal will be borne out in the long run. "We need to wait several quarters or, as ABT would argue, years, to determine if STJ's growth rate could justify ABT's purchase," Loo said via e-mail, using the stock-ticker abbreviations for Abbott and St. Jude Medical.

Abbott has projected that the acquisition of St. Jude will add 21 cents to adjusted earnings per share in 2017.

On Wednesday, Abbott announced 2017 full-year adjusted diluted earnings per share guidance for the entire company of $2.40 to $2.50, implying double-digit growth at the midpoint of the range. In 2016, Abbott had earnings per share of $2.20.

"2016 was a year in which ABT dramatically reshaped the portfolio by shedding slower-growth, lower-margin businesses and acquiring higher-growth businesses," analysts with Leerink Research wrote in a note to investors. "Ultimately, we think these strategic initiatives will pay dividends and could drive accelerating top- and bottom-line growth."

Leerink's optimism was based on assumptions about the successful integration of St. Jude and the timing of key product approvals from the FDA, including the MRI pacemakers and defibrillators.

On Jan. 4, Abbott acquired St. Jude in a cash-and-stock deal valued at about $23.6 billion plus assumption of about $5 billion in St. Jude debt. St. Jude had revenue growth of about 2.5 percent in its final quarter, excluding divested businesses.

Abbott stock climbed about 1 percent Wednesday, closing at $40.31 a share.