Good morning and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Abbott’s Fourth Quarter 2013 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be able to listen-only until the question-and-answer portion of this call. (Operator Instructions) This call is being recorded by Abbott. With the exception of any participant’s questions asked during the question-and-answer session, the entire call including the question-and-answer session is material copyrighted by Abbott. It cannot be recorded or rebroadcast without Abbott’s expressed written permission. I would now like to introduce Mr. Brian Yoor, Vice President, Investor Relations.

Good morning and thank you for joining us. Joining me today on the call will be Miles White, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer and Tom Freyman, Executive Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer. Miles will provide opening remarks and Tom and I will discuss our performance in more detail. Following our comments, Miles, Tom and I will take your questions. Some statements made today maybe forward-looking for purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including the expected financial results for 2014. Abbott cautions that these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Economic, competitive, governmental, technological and other factors that may affect Abbott’s operations are discussed in Item 1A Risk Factors to our Annual Report on Securities and Exchange Commission Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2012. Abbott undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to forward-looking statements as a result of subsequent events or developments except as required by law. In today’s conference call, as in the past, non-GAAP financial measures will be used to help investors understand Abbott’s ongoing business performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are reconciled with the comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings release and regulatory filings from today, which will be available on our website at abbott.com. Our commentary on sales growth refers to operational sales growth, which exclude the impact of foreign exchange unless otherwise noted. I will now turn the call over to Miles.

Okay, thanks Brian. Good morning. This morning, I will review our 2013 results as well as our outlook for 2014. For the full year 2013, we achieved ongoing earnings per share of $2.01 representing double-digit growth over 2012. At the same time, we returned nearly $2.5 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases and announced a substantial increase in our dividend beginning this year. Strong performance across many of our businesses and operating margin expansion enabled us to deliver on our 2013 expectations despite a few challenges. Similar to other multinationals, we were impacted by a slowdown in several emerging economies as well as by foreign currency. Abbott was also impacted by a supplier recall in the International Nutrition. As I have discussed on our previous earnings calls, we were able to offset these impacts in 2013 in part through selective cost management. At the same time, we executed on our key priorities. We achieved high single-digit sales growth in Diagnostics, vision care and Nutrition, excluding the impact of the supplier recall as well as sequential improvements in our vascular business each quarter of last year. We increased total company emerging market sales by 11%. This was driven by double-digit growth in our Diagnostics, Medical Devices and Nutrition businesses. We completed two acquisitions in medical devices that brought us important best in class technologies to expand our presence in our endovascular and Vision Care businesses. We launched numerous new products including our MitraClip Structural Heart device in the U.S. Muliple innovations in our cataract lens business. They are driving share gains and nearly 70 product launches in nutrition and we expanded our margin significantly in nutrition and diagnostics. As we move into 2014 we will continue to appropriately invest in our businesses to execute on our…

Thanks Miles. Today, we reported ongoing diluted earnings per share for the fourth quarter of $0.58 in line with our previous guidance range and up more than 20% over the prior year. Sales for the quarter increased 3.3% on an operational basis that is excluding an unfavorable impact of nearly 3% from foreign exchange. As anticipated, fourth quarter sales growth was affected by the supplier recall in our International Nutrition business, which reduced operational sales growth by an estimated 1.5 percentage points in the fourth quarter. Operational sales growth was driven by high single-digit growth in Diagnostics and double-digit growth in vision care. Sales in emerging markets were up at 9% in the quarter on an operational basis. Reported sales which include the impact of exchange were up slightly in the quarter. The fourth quarter adjusted gross margin ratio was 55.4% in line with expectations and up 60 basis points versus the prior year despite a negative impact from exchange of 60 basis points. Ongoing SG&A expense was 28.5% of sales lower than expectations reflecting in part G&A expense reductions. Finally, our adjusted gross margin ratio improved by 160 basis points over the prior year in the quarter. Overall as we look at 2013, we delivered strong ongoing earnings per share growth in line with our initial guidance and up double-digits despite some challenges. We also achieved a number of financial objectives we set out a year ago. Our Diagnostics business expanded its operating margin by 300 basis points and continued to deliver strong top line growth. Our Nutrition business expanded its operating margin by nearly 300 basis points. And overall, we expanded adjusted gross operating – adjusted operating margin by more than 100 basis points. Turning to our outlook for the full year 2014, today, we issued full year…

Thanks Tom. This morning, I will provide a more detailed review of our fourth quarter performance and our 2014 sales outlook. As mentioned earlier, my comments will focus on operational sales growth. I will first discuss our Nutrition business, where global sales increased 1% in the fourth quarter and were impacted as expected by the supplier recall in International Nutrition. The sales disruption is estimated to have reduced global nutritional operational sales growth by approximately $90 million or somewhat more than 5% in the quarter. Global Pediatric Nutrition sales were down 2% in the quarter, including a 3% decline in International Pediatric Nutrition. Excluding the impact of the sales disruption, International Pediatric Nutrition sales would have increased strong double-digits driven by market uptake of new product innovations. While the U.S. Pediatric sales were relatively flat in the quarter, Abbott remains the market leader in the non-WIC segment of the U.S. infant formula market and continues to drive uptake of recent innovation launches. Global Adult Nutrition sales increased 5% in the quarter with international adult sales increasing 14% driven by strong growth of our Ensure and Glucerna brands along with execution of several market development initiatives. U.S. Adult Nutrition sales were down 5% impacted by the exit from certain non-core business lines as part of our margin improvement initiative as well as higher sales in 2012 from the timing of a new product launch. We continue to focus on innovation in our global nutrition business. In 2014, we anticipate several important programs to drive share gains in Pediatric Nutrition and category expansion in Adult Nutrition, where Abbott holds the global leadership position. This includes the recent launch of Similac’s Triple [ph] Pack in the online market segment in China, which brings Abbott’s best-in-class packaging solution to this large and rapidly growing…

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our first question today is from Mike Weinstein from JPMC.

Good morning. Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Okay perfect. Okay. Let me start with the combination repatriation and buyback. Tom, it looks like you are, if I am reading the press release correctly, you are repatriating $2 billion, there is going to be with a cash and non-cash costs doing so? And then we are using that to buy back stock, which are passing out the impact of repatriating from your earnings and your guidance for 2014? Is that right?

Just a few points, I don’t think you can directly link the two items, but certainly what this is about Mike is monetizing assets as early as we possibly can and providing strategic flexibility from a financing perspective across the company. We are in a position here where we have these deferred tax assets that as you know typically get realized over a long period of time in future tax returns. And this is an opportunity to immediately use them to help monetize and bring back only 2014 earnings. This has nothing to do with anything in the past and provide that cash here in the U.S. for strategic flexibility and the various things we would want to use it for. So since it is one-time in nature it’s going to be done only on 2014 earnings and this is a one-time opportunity to monetize these deferred assets. That’s why we are handling it as a specified item in 2014.

But you are repatriating $2 billion and you are using $2 billion to buy back stock, but you are backing out the – at least the cash impact you would think should go through the income statement?

But again, it’s one-time in nature, Mike. Our pattern in the past has been to reinvest our expectation as we go forward beyond 2014 is to reinvest these foreign earnings. And this is a one-time opportunity, where basically the focus is to monetize these assets as early as we possibly can and allow them to be redirected to whatever product of use whether its strategic initiatives, share buyback or whatever. And the other thing I had mentioned is in 2013, we bought back over $1.5 billion in shares though it’s not a – it’s difficult to directly link this planned action with share repurchase. But I think it’s a matter of just productively using these assets in the best way possible for shareholders overall and we think this is an opportunity we want to capitalize on in 2014.

Okay. It’s probably we are spending a few minutes on the first quarter guidance, because obviously there is a disconnect between the guidance in the industry. I’m kind of new industry [ph] this thing was aggressive but there is still even a wider disconnect than we were modeling. So maybe spend a minute on some of the different elements here. I think we’re aware that if that was the headwind but you talked about couple of other items an issue where you are breaking [ph] a plant down. Maybe you can just walk through and maybe try and help us bridge (indiscernible) is that and where you’re guys heading for the first part of the year?

Really Mike there are two big things are effects [ph] but obviously the nutrition supplier recall was well I mean you saw the impact on the third and fourth quarters of our 2013 results. As you know we managed through that quite well and delivered on expectations overall but that factor is tearing into the first half. As Miles mentioned we’re making good progress, recovering, we’re right on the path, we projected. But as we said from the very beginning when this occurred this is going to cause a very top first half comparison in 2014 and that’s what you’re seeing. You know there are at the business level other relatively smaller comparison issues but these really are the two big factors that are causing the first quarter to be tough. The last thing I would add is while you know exchange is a challenge for us in 2014 and the first half. The first quarter is particularly impacted in 2014 because as the exchange rates moved in 2013 some of those costs are an inventory as we close out 2013 and float through the P&L in the early part of the year in 2014. So the exchange impact is particularly acute in the first quarter and I think those two factors really are the main reasons for the forecast being a little bit different than what people are expecting.

Just on the early first quarter top line growth. It sounded like you were guiding to a constant currency that would be low single digit since you were anticipating a low single digit decline in recorded revenues. Just help us with from the fourth quarter to the first quarter what gets a little bit more difficult and then I will drop. Thanks.

It really has to do with trends in the businesses. Certainly as we talked about the growth rate in International Nutrition is being impacted by Fonterra by the recall. There are phasing as you know our established pharmaceuticals business is a business that changes from quarter-to-quarter. In the first quarter there is a plan to expand capacity for one of our key products as a result of that we’re, we have to shut down the plant in the quarter and that will draw down some of the sales until we can start the plant up again in the second quarter and get the growth rate going back up in that business. I would say those are the primary reasons. There is some timing effects in diagnostics as well but those were the main reasons why the first quarter is in the range that you described.

And our next question is from David Lewis from Morgan Stanley.

Tom you gave us some help on the first quarter gross margin number. I wonder if you could help us sort of into the second quarter on gross margins or just maybe more qualitatively first half versus second half, how GMs [ph] likely trend and what are the key headwinds and tailwinds there we should think about obviously FX being one of them.

Yeah I would say there are two things going on in gross margin as we look at 2014 are pretty much what I mentioned in my remarks. We’re just slightly down year-over-year and that’s really currency again being challenging and the competitive dynamics we talked about in diabetes care. I think as you look out into the second quarter the pattern or the expectation for the full year could be extrapolated into our expected gross margin progress in the second quarter of the year. So those are really the two main factors, it was not what I mentioned in my remarks and I think it does mask lot of good things happening underneath in the businesses particularly in nutrition and diagnostics but also on Vision Care in terms of expanding the gross margin before some of these exchange in fact hits the businesses.

Okay maybe just two more quick ones. Just one for Tom and one maybe for Miles but in terms of the buyback you’re very clear on how you’re funding the buyback this year but Tom could you give us a sense of free cash in ’14 and how we should think about funding dividends or buybacks you know either through using debt or patronization going forward.

Yeah I mean as we look at free cash flow capital expenditures and dividends. And as you know, we are stepping up the dividend in 2014. I would say in the $1.7 billion to $1.8 billion range was something we would expect. And that leaves a lot of strategic flexibility for whatever might occur or opportunities that might pop up during the year. So as you know, we had some anomalies in our cash flow in 2013 relative to the carryover effect of separation, but we should be back into that pretty strong operating cash flow level and strong free cash flow to support the strategic objectives of the business.

Okay. And then Miles, you made some commentary in your remarks about the going after costs and Tom talked about the leverage we are going to see in ‘14 I mean, the company since the spin as talked about on a per segment basis achieve very strong margins, obviously Nutritionals comes to light, but do you see further opportunities for going after corporate costs post the spin and is it likely that those type of initiatives are more ratable or is there a possibility for more decisive action? Thank you.

Well, I think the answer – the simple answer to your question is yes, it is a focus for us not just related to the spin, but in general, related to the shape of the business. A lot of our business is outside the U.S. and so there is an opportunity to structure ourselves from a support standpoint little differently. And we definitely were addressing that. We are putting a fair amount yet. As you know, we put a lot of attention on gross margin above the line there, but we are also putting a fair amount of attention on general and administrative costs across the corporation not only at the corporate level, but in the divisions in support and overhead costs. So I do think there is opportunity there. By its very nature some of it can be more immediate, but then some of it is more ratable, because in some cases you got to replace old processes with new processes or old systems with newer ones, etcetera. So I think it’s a combination of both, David. Although I like to push hard for sooner rather than later, I think this is one of those areas where chronic dissatisfaction or inpatients is a good thing. And so we push on that. You are always trying to balance disruption to the organization or to the business versus the ongoing operation, but yes, there is an opportunity. We are on it. We are paying attention to it. And it is a combination of frankly both immediate and more ratable.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question is from David Roman from Goldman Sachs.

Thank you and good morning. I wanted to touch a couple of business specific dynamics and then one strategic question. I guess maybe we can start with EPD and Miles I can certainly appreciate your comments that it may take time for a new management team to get in place and affect their impact on the business, but maybe you could go into a little bit more specifics about what the path is for that franchise. So I look at the non-key emerging market segment that has been a business that’s been deteriorating, I think each of the past several quarters and it doesn’t – it’s sort of I think a little bit unclear given how this business works what exactly turns this around. So maybe you could just provide a little bit more color on what steps the new management team is taking and then how we would see those flow through into reported numbers?

Well, I think we got two very different stories here. And as I have said in the past, you’ve got very much an emerging market story and a developed market story and then within those, some segmentation. I would tell you that in the emerging markets, there are many that are very attractive, some that are less so, because they may be more commodity oriented than brand oriented. We tend to be focused on the ones where it’s advantageous for us to be very brand-oriented and the markets are very attractive and profitable. As much as the growth rates may look modest or lacking, the profit profile of this business is quite attractive. Gross margins in this business are above 60%. It’s a very well-run business. It’s a very attractive profitable business. If it was an unprofitable business, it would be a whole different story, but this is actually a very attractive business. And the question is getting the segments right in terms of the attractive markets and those that are less attractive. So we put our focus on emerging markets that are sizable, where we have got critical mass and are attractive. And our main focus there is two things. One, expanding the breadth of the therapeutic categories and the product lines that we are offering and frankly improving our branding and consumer skills as an adjunct to that business, because in any given country how we reach the consumer whether through the physician on hospital or direct to the consumer and so forth does make a difference. So in the emerging markets I think that’s the focus and it’s getting a lot of attention. It’s a lot of blocking and tackling and smaller things but frankly it's working. We saw in the fourth quarter a returned double digit…

And maybe switching to diagnostics in the U.S. specifically, can you comment on the molecular business? I mean you’ve pretty strong trends in point of care as well as the Core Lab segment and I would have thought there will be some potential to sort of cross sell or leverage to different platforms but it was a pretty tough quarter in the U.S. in the molecular segment. Any further detail you can provide on market dynamics or company specific factors?

David this is Brian I will kick it off and if Miles can add more color. In the U.S. you know first of all when we say our underlying franchise of infectious disease is growing very strongly. It's doing very well. We did have some comparable’s with respect to how you realize kind of the companion diagnostics revenue. We had some revenue in 2012 in the quarter that did not repeat, this is kind of a little bit more choppy in that respect and also we just have a little bit of an impact from the timing of when we seize the distribution agreement but that doesn’t impact the underlying business. The underlying business is poised to continue to do well with the focus on infectious disease. I think to look at the full year it's probably more reflective of how to think about molecular in the U.S. and we do expect a step-up from that as we move into 2014 with our continued success and focus on infectious disease. I think it's really important to note in this business you know there are two that 60% of the sales are outside the U.S. and you can see the double digit growth there, we’re doing very well in the emerging markets, in our platforms, in infectious disease and so we like the growth rates that we see overall for molecular.

Okay and then maybe just last one strategic question. As I look at the evolution of the “new Abbott” story over the past 12 months. I think we started a year ago with sort of a growth company of mid to high single digit top line growth obviously it's a well-documented challenges that emerge over the course of 2013. You had a pretty obviously significant increase in the dividend in the third quarter of this year and it seems like we’re shifting from a growth company to a capital return company. How should we think about the strategic positioning of Abbott longer term and Miles where you’re taking the business, growth first capital return, M&A versus shareholder buybacks and things like that from a capital deployment standpoint?

Well I think we think about the company much as we described. It's definitely a growth platform with an intention of growth. You know the things that I would say probably disappointed me or set us back last year largely foreign exchange, which was a big deal. I mean, that hit the top line and the bottom line. And we were able to offset that, but that was one thing. And I think the recall we had in the Nutrition business was couple of $100 million. That’s a big hit. And that particular business is one of our big growth drivers. I would say strategically, I am pretty pleased with how the base core businesses are all performing, particularly relative to the nature of the geographies and economies and so forth out there. I think that’s all trending pretty well. The one business where it’s got a lot of my attention and focus as we just talked about is the branded generic pharmaceutical business, where I would say strategically I would like this one to be improving faster. And what I call your attention to is after we acquired AMO, I’d say analysts and some shareholders had a fair amount of skepticism about the performance of that business for some time. And admittedly, it took a few years to pick up momentum there, but today, that business is churning at a fairly steady double-digit growth rate. It’s gaining share. It’s doing quite well. My own impatience would have been that it do that much faster than it did and I am always pushing for faster progress or faster impact in the performance of the business, I guess, not just for your expectations but for my own. And yet, we got to where we wanted to be. We have seen –…

Okay, that’s helpful perspective. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is from Lawrence Biegelsen from Wells Fargo Securities.

Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Let me start on EPD, Miles, on the last call, you expressed your commitment to the business. I guess, I am wondering within EPD I mean you are obviously more excited about the emerging market opportunity. Do you need to have an EPD business in the developed market? That’s my first question.

Need? No. It depends; I think it depends on the dynamics in any given market. I don’t think any of us are pleased with the pressures or decline if you will of growth rates in say Europe but at the same time Larry it's extremely profitable business even with all the price pressure, utilization pressure and volume pressure. It's a very profitable business. So I think our challenge is it's always how long will these circumstances last. How long will these dynamics last? Is this a trend that doesn’t change? Is there a bottom? Is there a turn? Is there, how long does this endure? And what’s the best matter for us to drive best value for our owners, our investors, our shareholders in that time. You can get hung up on the optics of growth rate and say, Geez it's hurting, it's diluting my growth rate but at the same time I think the notion that it's making a fair amount of money and it's profitable and there is value in that. So I think our job is to figure out best way to optimally derive that value for our investor and that’s a trade-off between what we can do here over some duration of time relative to how long we expect market conditions to exist or you know what’s the best deployment of the asset value you know in the event we can drive the right value forward but when it's profitable as it is that’s a tough trade-off.

It's helpful and then on adult nutrition, can you talk about the impact of the divestures and any quantification when that lapse in the adult nutrition business in the U.S.? Thanks.

Larry this is Brian, you’re seeing in the fourth quarter on the adult segment in the U.S. around a 4 percentage point impact headwind and that also does spill into the first quarter as well. As we’re talking about you know some of the things impacting first quarter that will be one item that spills into the first quarter of 2014 as well for the U.S. adult segment and nutrition.

Thank you. Our next question is from Glenn Novarro from RBC Capital Markets.

Two questions first on the infant nutritional business, you mentioned on the call that the recovery in emerging markets China et cetera was on track. I was wondering if you could share with us some evidence that suggest that things are on track was December better than November, is there a script data that you’re tracking? Any color that would be helpful to give us confidence that the business recovers other than just from easy comps and then as a follow-up…

Go ahead Glenn I’m chuckling a little bit because I’m thinking no we just made this stuff up. Of course I will answer you in just a second, go ahead.

And then just second just on operating margin goals, it looks like you’re going to get to the nutritional operating margin goals sooner than expected and it looks like diagnostics we’re going to hit those goals quickly too. So, I’m wondering as we look at nutritionals is 25% a realistic new goal and with respect to diagnostics are we in the late innings or is there another opportunity for more expansion there? Just you know qualitatively if you can help us think about the longer term goals there. Thanks.

All right let me go back to the beginning. First of all evidence of recovery. You know there is three major geographies that we’re paying a lot of attention to in the recovery this recall that we experienced in nutrition. It's China, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia all of which are fairly important markets to us. We do get market share data; we get it from multiple sources in these countries. We get off take data meaning what leaves the shelf we get a fair amount of actually measured data. We get it from multiple sources and then we get a fair amount of anecdotal data as well. And we do track it, it is numerical, it is measurable. We’re seeing sequential month to month, in fact we got a fairly I would say robust model that’s been pretty accurate for us that’s predictive, that takes into account holidays, buying patterns, consumer patterns all that stuff. Believe it or not in all these markets so we can do that. And there is a bit of a lag maybe a month or month and a half in some cases but and it varies by geography but we’re able to measure our progress. We’re ahead of our progress in China, our model; we’re ahead of our expectation. We’re ahead of our expectation. We are ahead of our expectation in Vietnam and we are a little behind in Saudi Arabia. And so we are able to measure that. We are able to see sequential evidence. We have got enough data points now that we can trust our forecasting, trust our model, trust our data, trust our feedback. Early, mid and late fall, we didn’t have enough data points yet to be confident of the kind of trends we were seeing, because there is some,…

Alright, great. Thanks for the color, Miles.

Thank you. Our next question is from Rick Wise from Stifel.

Good morning everybody. Tom, if I could ask you again on gross margin. So the 55% gross margin guidance you said included 90 basis points of negative FX, the diabetes and other offsets. Was that I assume that plant shut down is reflected in that as well. Can you break that portion out just more specifically?

The plant shut down I referred to is just a timing issue that’s effecting the gaining of sales that I want in particular business between the quarters. So that is really I mean certainly there is a little bit of startup and alike but it's not meaningful to the overall corporation but that really is not related. It's really the two big factors that we cited as lot of good things as Miles mentioned going on within the business is underlying and being a little bit offset, they are largely offset by those two factors.

Okay (indiscernible) it's part of the gross margin headwinds when I call temporary excess capacity from the three new nutritional facilities, is that a big factor?

No there is a little bit of a startup there as well but again I don’t think that’s overall meaningful to the overall comparison year-over-year for the entire corporation. Certainly there is some cost in there but they have a lot of other good things going on in terms of their margin improvement programs that overall are driving an improvement in the nutrition gross margin in 2014.

And one last quick one, the buyback, is that gets you to the middle of your guidance range or the high end? How do we think about that and maybe you can kind of whether you do an accelerated share repurchase. Thanks so much.

The guidance is the guidance, it's the range and obviously our baseline expectation is to be within the range and if the year goes well it will be in the high end and it's the challenges we’re going to work not to be the low, the middle. So that’s the way we think about the guidance and what I would say is what is a definite part of the plan is to buy back shares roughly in the range we talked about today and certainly that’s the baseline you can count on as you build your model for 2014 and there is no plan at this time to do an accelerated structure but that’s something we would look at and we will think about.

Thank you. My next question is from Josh Jennings from Cowen and Company. Josh your line is open please check your mute feature. And we’re sorry we’re getting no response we will move on to the next question. Our next question today is from Kristen Stewart from Deutsche Bank.

Just focusing on the vascular business. I know you had commented on strong growth in MitraClip I was wondering if you would be willing just to provide a baseline number of where it ended this year with European sales and then just thoughts around it as you’re rolling this out in the U.S. just the strategy given the reimbursement environment.

MitraClip had strong growth in Europe. I think it ended the year approximately around a $130 million. We expect some additional approvals in certain countries there to continue our growth in Europe so we expect another year of strong growth with MitraClip in Europe region in 2014. Now I will say with respect to the U.S. we were very pleased with the decision that was made by the panel last year to receive the approval that we have for the degenerative mitral regurgitation patient in the U.S. at high risk. It's a pretty I will say modest way to think about but we’re going to take it the right way in terms of how we approach our centers and those large cardiac specialty centers that are capable and have the expertise to work with the MitraClip. Again another year of strong growth I think we can think about probably approaching close to 200 million as we move into 2014 but clearly between the Europe side and the U.S. side a nice contributor to our overall vascular growth. We continue to work towards also the reimbursements and improving our reimbursements there I think we have discussed before that we ultimately foresee this coming more in line with the (indiscernible) line of reimbursement in the U.S. and again I know that (indiscernible) have submitted for the national coverage as well we also submitted for what you know what would also be a special add on technology indication but we will have more color to provide for you on both of those in the later part of 2014.

And then I got just more broadly just in structural heart, how do you just kind of see MitraClip fit again? Do you need to surround it with additional programs to really have that platform be competitive or do you think looking ahead just having a transcatheter mitral valve repair product alone will be successful within Abbott?

Kristen, this is Miles. I think it could standalone quite easily, but I think we are always looking for more innovation, the more opportunity to expand our position in a given treatment segment. So I would put up more in the desire rather than need. I think it’s given the lack of therapies out there to treat patients, it clearly can standalone, but to the extent that other therapies evolve over time here, it’s certainly to the benefit of the patient and the business to expand the offering.

Right. And then just on the stent business, I was wondering if you could offer any additional commentary just on the Absorb product, the one you are seeing in terms of market share positioning in the accounts in which you are in? And then just to remind on the timing to the U.S., I think you had mentioned that you expected to complete enrollment in the U.S. study this year. Just wanted to confirm that?

Let me address share and then I will hand it to Brian to talk about U.S. First of all, I am very pleased with how the overall shares of the stent business have evolved. We have grown share in all of our geographies. We hold the number one position in stents across Europe, the U.S., Japan etcetera. We have not only held share, but gained share. I think that’s been gratifying for the breadth and the strength and the quality of the product line. I think it’s been a challenging environment to some degree from a competitive or pricing standpoint. I think I expect that to mitigate some here going into this year and we are seeing that as we see sequential improvement in growth at least in our own business. And as regards to Absorb, I think the acceptance, the use of Absorb continues to improve, but share continues to improve and continues to grow in many accounts. And then I would have to note that while the trend has been a fair amount of price degradation in this segment, Absorb is selling at a premium to metal drug-eluting stents etcetera. So it continues to gain share. It continues to gain a share of procedures in accounts where it’s being used. It continues to grow very nicely and do so at some premium to what are truly good quality stents out there in the metal drug-eluding stent category. So with that let me give you to Brian to talk about the U.S.

Yes. So Kristen, obviously Absorb had a great contribution as Miles had mentioned to Europe and our share gains there year-over-year. In the U.S. as we are expecting to complete the enrollment in 2014 and that also goes for China as well. We just completed enrollment for Japan. I think the way to think about this too is we are only in half of the market, the worldwide market today if you think about it in terms of being in Europe, but we still have another half of the world to go here. And so by completing the enrollments, we set ourselves out there to be the only one in this kind of technology with the opportunity to continue to penetrate and achieve the workforce status we expected to. We have left time for one more question.

Thank you. Our final question today is from Jason Bedford from Raymond James.

Good morning. Thanks for squeezing me in. Just wanted to revisit an earlier question on EPD, still unclear as to the source of the sluggishness in developed markets, is it increased competition, is it a demand issue, is it price? And then just as a follow-up, can you kind of give us the estimated market growth rates in EPD and if it’s easier you can split it between emerging markets and developed markets?

In the developed markets, it’s a little bit of the items you discussed. I mean, price as we have talked about the couple of years, it’s probably been running at a rate twice what it had been prior to maybe 2012 and it has been very low single-digits and has probably doubled for a period of time that seems to be mitigating a little bit as we go forward. And I would say, the balance is basically either austerity in some of the countries, where scripts are actually down or in some cases in our portfolio, a few of our products have, were at the end of lives in Europe. We did have a few of those. We had a few patented products and some of those went off patent. And each one is relatively minor, but that’s been part of what’s going on in the developed world. I would say in terms of market growth rates it depends on markets obviously you know India for us is a key market and while it's slowed probably into the mid-single digit range in 2013, IMS forecast it will be back into that double digit range in 2014 which is a positive for us. I would say overall in the key emerging markets you know we’re seeing basic market growth probably in that mid-single range maybe even a little bit better in a country like Russia for example and I think most investors are familiar that Europe has been a pretty sluggish market overall from a volume perspective and that’s carried over into our business as well.

And then just lastly for me, getting back to the discussion on cash repatriation. Do you anticipate that you will be more active with M&A in ’14 than you were in ’13?

I think it all depends on the opportunities out there. I don’t feel cash constrained about any of that. I feel more constrained by what I view as a not terribly robust set of opportunities or valuations. I’m always vigilant for opportunities for the company but they got to be good fits strategically and they got to be good valuations.

Okay thanks Jason and thank you operator and thank you for all your questions. And that concludes the Abbott Conference Call. A replay of this call will be available after 11 am Central Time today on Abbott's Investor Relations website at www.abbotinvestor.com and after 11 am Central Time via telephone at 203-369-3270, passcode 4627. The audio replay will be available until 4 pm Central Time on Wednesday, February 5th. Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect at this time.