Johnson & Johnson reported orthopedics sales decreased 1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018 to $2.2 billion; for the full year, orthopedic sales dipped 1.9 percent to $8.8 billion.
Despite the flat sales, Chairman and CEO Alex Gorsky is optimistic about the orthopedics line going forward, given demand for implants and innovations coming down the pipeline. Mr. Gorsky and Executive Vice President and CFO Joseph Wolk spoke about orthopedics and spine during the 2018 earnings call yesterday.
Five quotes to know, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha:
Alex Gorsky on improving in orthopedics: "There are areas where we must and we will improve, specifically in orthopedics. We demonstrated positive progress throughout 2018 in our knees and spine businesses, and we believe this sets us up well for 2019 and beyond."
AG on future product launches: "There's a number of reasons why we believe we're going to see improving performance across [the orthopedic] platform and the continued launch of Attune Revision as well as cementless. We have several additional platforms that we're rolling out that we think will reinforce the profile not only here in North America [but worldwide]."
AG on spine: "In spine, we continue to focus on areas such as severe deformity, degeneration as well as others. We have a number of new launches that we have coming out including the interbody cage. Biomaterials is an area of interest to us as well."
Joseph Wolk on robotics: "If you look a little bit longer term out, we also are looking forward to the addition of robotic digital capabilities with our Orthotaxy platform in orthopedics."
AG on Johnson & Johnson's partnership with Apple: "We're very excited about the partnership we have with Apple in this arena, and we think it does represent what we've been talking about for a while in the next step to introducing digital adaptation at almost consumer level…We think this is likely the first of many steps that you'll see not only in our pharma space, but again, our device as well as consumer space in the years to come."