Johnson & Johnson Earnings Makes Dollars and Stents

Shares of Dow component Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) are continuing their post-crash resurgence. They were up about seven bucks on Monday and today they're among the leaders of the Dow 30. Part of that is due to an earnings beat and and a guidance boost by JNJ this morning.

But as the drug, device and consumer products giant points out in the first paragraph of its earnings it had a whopping 6.6 percent "positive currency impact" in the third quarter. And sales in its highly profitable stent unit fell 26 percent in the U.S. from the same quarter a year ago. Stents are the expensive little wire mesh tubes that prop open clogged arteries.

A big reason for that decline is that last year at this time J & J and Boston Scientific (BSX) had a drug-coated stent duopoly. (Pricier stents that are coated with drugs are supposed to cut the chances of reclogging.)

Today there are four players on the American drug-coated stent market: Johnson & Johnson, Boston Scientific, Medtronic (MDT), and Abbott Labs (ABT). ABT is out with earnings tomorrow (Wednesday) morning, so investors will soon get a clearer picture of how well the latest entrant and apparent new market leader is doing. Coincidentally, this information is coming out as the world's biggest gathering of interventional cardiologists is taking place in Washington, DC. Interventional cardiologists are the docs who put in stents.

It's been a busy morning for the corporate communications folks at BSX. They've put out back-to-back-to-back press releases so far today. Late this morning, BSX issued one press release  at the scientific conference about a big study comparing stents to bypass surgery, but earlier it put out a release  about its cash and debt and before that a release about its stent market share. The company says its drug-coated stents now command 45 percent of the market. BSX sells ABT's new stent, but under a different brand name.

In a research note to clients this morning from the cardiologists meeting, Leerink Swann medical device analyst Rick Wise observes, "After several years of hysteria around drug eluting stent safety and efficacy, this year's meeting was much calmer as fears seem to have largely subsided." He's referring to recent concerns about blood clots forming months or years after patients received drug-coated stents and a study that showed cheaper, older heart drugs might work just as well or better than stents. As a result of the change in sentiment, Wise is forecasting seven percent sales growth in the U.S. next year for drug-coated stents and two percent increase worldwide.

The subsiding stent safety controversy and the lack of potentially game-changing new study results are also the reason I'm not reporting from the cardiologists meeting this year. Well, that and the overshadowing, ongoing economic/financial bailout story, of course.