Abbott (NYSE:ABT) recently announced third quarter 2014 financial results. The company's earnings excluding special items grew 12.7% to $0.62 per share in the quarter. Earnings were above the previous guidance range of $0.59 to $0.61 per share. Revenue in the quarter increased 5.8% on a reported basis to $5.1 billion. The pharma-major revised its adjusted EPS forecast from the range between $2.19 and $2.29 to the range between $2.25 and $2.27 for full-year 2014. I continue to remain mildly positive on Abbott. I'm not overly positive as its diagnostics revenue didn't quite pick up yet and medical device revenue grew negatively.
Abbott's worldwide sales increased due to strong growth in nutrition and vision care products, and moderate growth in diagnostics. However, its medical device products saw negative growth of 1% year-over-year. On a reported basis, worldwide nutrition product sales increased 9.3% in the third quarter, and worldwide diagnostics sales increased 4.9% in the quarter. In the original analysis I said that in the future Abbott is expected to expand its growth and margin significantly based on fresh capital deployment in sectors such as vision care and diagnostics. I expected Abbott's diagnostics segment to grow in high single-digits, which didn't quite happen. On the contrary, its nutrition products sales grew in high single-digits, which I didn't anticipate. The company's vision care or medical optics business was up 8.3% during the quarter, as I expected. Sales of cataract lenses, which contribute almost 70% to Abbott's total vision care sales, recorded double-digit growth led by new product launches, such as implantable Tecnis lenses, which I analyzed in this article.
However, as I said in the original article, since nutrition products are nothing but consumer staples, they're not considered as a catalyst for the company's stock despite growing at an impressive rate in the third quarter. Sales growth in the nutrition products segment during the quarter was led by launch of new infant formula products, such as Eleva and Similac QINTI, which were launched in China earlier this year. Strong growth of the company's Ensure adult nutrition product coupled with continued expansion of the adult nutrition category internationally fueled nutrition products sales. The growth in this segment is expected to taper off sooner rather than later, when the impact of new product launches will begin to fade.
