Dominic Caruso
Analyst · JP Morgan
Thanks, Joe and good morning everyone. We are very pleased with our strong third quarter results. The performance highlights the many areas of strength in our business that have given us the confidence to stay throughout the year that we would accelerate sales growth in the second half of 2017. That was exactly what we delivered in the third quarter. We experienced organic growth acceleration most significantly in the Pharmaceutical segment as oncology and immunology products continued to grow at robust levels. The Consumer segment, which declined modestly in the first half of 2017 grew in the third quarter, while Medical Devices was relatively stable, but as Joe noted, experienced a minor negative impact to growth due to hurricanes in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. In addition, we are very pleased with the performance from our recent acquisitions Actelion and Medical Optics which will continue to fuel our growth. And so, overall sales beat analyst estimates by approximately 2% or $350 million and adjusted earnings beat analyst estimates by $0.10 per share. I know for many of you there are questions regarding the impact of the unprecedented storms that occurred in the quarter. I want to take a moment to acknowledge the courage and resilience of all those who have been directly impacted by these storms. It’s really been incredible. The response of the global business community has also been impressive and I am especially proud of the role Johnson & Johnson has played. Our desire to improve lives is a foundational element in our credo and it is times like these when the character of our people who have been working on the ground side-by-side with relief organizations, and united effort to help their communities really shines proved. In terms of sales, the limited impact we experienced in the third quarter is not the result of any supply disruption, but rather lost surgery days in those areas affected by the storms. It remains to be seen whether volumes associated with those lost surgeries will be recouped in future quarters, however, in terms of future supply, we are very well positioned. We have six manufacturing sites on the island of Puerto Rico and considering the magnitude of the storm, our facilities fared well. All of our sites are open with reliable generator power operating in various stages of capacity while the work continues to ramp up to full operations in Puerto Rico. To ensure critical patient needs are met, we are closely monitoring inventories across our global manufacturing network prioritizing option of essential products and have already begun shipping newly manufactured goods from the island. While we cannot rule out the potential for intermittent shortages of certain product formats, many of our products have dual production sites and back-up supply outside of Puerto Rico to help meet demand. Based on what we know today, we do not foresee any material impact to future results. I will now turn to our consolidated statement of earnings for the third quarter of 2017. As you heard, our operational sales growth this quarter was 9.5% and excluding the impact of acquisitions and divestitures, operational growth was 3.8%. If you will direct your attention to the box section of the schedule you will see we have provided our earnings adjusted to exclude intangible amortization expense and special items. As referenced in the table of non-GAAP measures to 2017 third quarter net earnings were adjusted to exclude intangible amortization expense and special items of $1.4 billion on an after-tax basis, which consisted primarily of the following. Intangible amortization expense of approximately $933 million, primarily from the recent acquisition of Actelion, litigation expenses of approximately $100 million, acquisition-related cost of approximately $280 million and a charge for the continuing restructuring of our Hospital Medical Device business of approximately $140 million. Our adjusted earnings per share is therefore $1.90, up 13% and adjusted EPS on a constant currency basis was $1.85 or up 10% over the prior year. Now let’s take a few moments to talk about the other items on the statement of earnings. Cost of goods increased by 430 basis points, primarily due to the inclusion of the amortization expense and charges for inventory step-up from our recent acquisitions. Excluding the impact of these types of expenses in both periods, cost of goods sold was 27.8% or 120 basis points lower than the prior year, mostly due to favorable product mix. Selling, marketing and administrative expenses were up 70 basis points as compared to the second quarter of 2017, largely through the investment of new products in our Consumer segment. Our investment in research and development as a percent of sales was 13.1%, up 90 basis points compared to the prior year as we continue to advance our robust pipeline of pharmaceutical products. And interest expense, net of interest income was a net expense of $155 million, slightly higher than last year. Other income and expense was a net gain of $236 million in the quarter compared to a net gain of $54 million in the same period last year. Excluding special items that are recorded in this line, other income and expense was a net gain of $517 million, compared to a net gain of $220 million in the prior year period reflecting completion of certain asset sales which were included in our annual guidance. I’ll provide an update on this activity during my guidance comments. Excluding special items, the effective tax rate was 20.8% compared to the 19.7% in the same period last year. This rate is consistent with our expectations as a component of the full year effective tax rate. I’ll also provide an update on tax during my guidance comments. Turning to the next slide, I will now review adjusted income before tax by segment. In the third quarter of 2017, our adjusted income before tax for the enterprise improved 80 basis points versus the third quarter of 2016 driven by favorability in other income and expense line partially offset by the additional investments I mentioned earlier. Looking at the adjusted pre-tax income by segment, Medical Devices at 30.1% is lower than the prior year primarily due to higher investment spend to support new product launches. Pharmaceutical margins improved 110 basis points to 41% driven by favorable product mix. Consumer margins improved to 28% primarily due to the divestiture gains, partially offset by increased advertising and promotional spending. Now I will provide some guidance for you to consider as you refine your models for 2017. At the end of the quarter, we had $19 billion of net debt, which consisted of approximately $16 billion of cash and marketable securities and approximately $35 billion of total debt. Therefore, for purposes of your models and assuming no other significant uses of cash, I suggest you consider modeling net interest expense of $600 million and $700 million which is consistent with our previous guidance. Regarding other income and expense, as a reminder this is the account where we record royalty income as well as gains and losses arising from such items as litigation, investments by our Development Corporation, divestitures, asset sales and write-offs. As you know, one of our business priorities is to actively manage our portfolio to maximize value creation with the intention of redeploying most of those gains back into the business to enhance our long-term growth prospects. Consistent with our previous guidance, we are still comfortable with your models for 2017 reflecting net other income and expense excluding special items as a net gain, ranging from approximately $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion. This includes the gain associated with the sale of the Codman neurosurgery business which we closed subsequent to the third quarter. Regarding pretax operating margin, we expect that investment levels will increase and therefore we maintain our guidance that we will be flat to slightly decrease from 2016 level. This is of course offset by the divestiture gains I just mentioned. And now a word on taxes. As the Chief Financial Officer of one of the largest U.S. based multinational companies, I am often asked these days about perspective on tax reform. In fact, it is a topic I have been actively engaged in for more than ten years with legislators, as well as my peers across many industries. While our guidance today does not include any assumptions about potential tax reform measures, there are some points I’d like to share as I do believe we now have momentum to attain meaningful and impactful business tax reform in the very near future. First, we commend our leaders in Washington for taking steps to address business tax reform and we see the united framework as a thoughtful approach to jumpstarting the U.S. economy, fueling U.S. jobs and U.S. investment one that will improve the ability of U.S. multinational companies to compete more effectively. The current tax system has not kept pace with modern innovation-driven global economy which results in an increasingly difficult business environment for U.S. based companies that do compete globally. To level the playing field with other industrialized countries, tax reforms should include three fundamental elements, a lower corporate income tax rate in line with other industrialized countries, the adoption of a modern, globally competitive International tax system allowing U.S. companies to manage their cash without tax penalty and of course greater incentives for innovation in the U.S. The framework addresses each of these elements and while clarity and additional detail are still needed in some elements, it is important that Washington and the business community unite now behind a tax reform bill that will have a positive impact on domestic jobs and on economic growth. Having said all that and still remaining optimistic that something on this front can get done, we are not assuming reform in our 2017 guidance. Excluding special items, our guidance is 19% to 19.5% as at effective tax rate and this is a slight tightening of the range from our previous guidance. Now turning to sales and earnings. Our sales guidance for 2017 does not anticipate any impact from generic competition this year for ZYTIGA, RISPERDAL CONSTA, PROCRIT, PREZISTA or INVEGA SUSTENNA. As we've done for several years, our guidance will be based first on a constant currency basis, reflecting our results from operations. This is the way we manage our business and provides a good understanding of the underlying performance of our business. We will of course also provide an estimate of our sales and EPS results for 2017 with the impact that current exchange rates could have on the translation of those results. As I mentioned earlier, we expect to maintain the acceleration of our underlying sales growth for the balance of the year, and our major acquisitions of Actelion and Medical Optics completed earlier this year remain on track. As this is in line with our previous expectations, we are maintaining our operational sales guidance for the year in the range of 5.5% to 6%. This translates the sales for 2017 of approximately $75.9 billion to $76.2 billion on a constant currency basis. We are not predicting the impact of currency movements, but to give you an idea of the impact on sales, if currency exchange rates were to remain where they were as at last week with the euro for example at $1.18 for the balance of the year our sales growth rate would increase by 60 basis points versus our previous guidance. Thus, under this scenario, we expect reported sales growth in the range of 6% to 6.5% for a total expected level of reported sales of approximately $76.2 billion to $76.5 billion which is higher than our previous guidance. And now turning to earnings. As I noted earlier, we plan to continue to invest in our growth opportunities and those plans are already in place. In the fourth quarter, as we did in the third, we will see an elevated level of R&D investment as well as additional investments in marketing programs behind the launches of several new products. Therefore, we continue to expect our pretax operating margins will decline somewhat from the prior year consistent with our previous guidance. We expect adjusted EPS to be in the range of between $7.22 and $7.27 per share on a constant currency basis reflecting an operational constant currency growth rate of between 7% and 8%. This is a tightening of the range and an increase of about $0.02 over the July adjusted EPS guidance. If currency exchange rates for all of 2017 were to remain where they were as of last week that our reported adjusted EPS would be favorably impacted by $0.03 due to currency movements and this is an improvement from the negative impact of $0.05 in our previous guidance. Therefore, we would be comfortable with our reported adjusted EPS ranging from $7.25 to $7.30 per share, an increase of $0.10 from our prior guidance and a growth rate of between 7.7% and 8.4%. So in closing, we are extremely pleased with the sales and earnings performance in the third quarter and our higher EPS guidance for 2017. In summary, we are maintaining our operational sales growth of 5.5% to 6% for the year, consistent with our goal of growing earnings faster than sales, our guidance for operational adjusted EPS growth remains strong in the range of 7% to 8% and our businesses continue to invest for the long-term while also delivering on near term priorities. So now I’d like to turn things back to Joe to begin the Q&A portion of the call while I am delighted to be joined by Joaquin, Jorge and Sandy to address your questions. Joe?