Dominic Caruso
Analyst · JP Morgan
Thanks, Joe and good morning everyone. Well we carried last year’s momentum into 2018 and were off to a strong start this year. We are very pleased with the results generated in the first quarter, with underlying operational sales growth consistent with quarter four of 2017. Both our sales and earnings were above analyst estimates and we continue to make very good progress on our near-term product priorities as well as our long-term growth drivers which we discussed during our call with you in January, and we remain confident in the strength of our business. In our pharmaceutical business, our strong performance from 2017 continued into the first quarter with underlying operational growth at 7.5%. First-quarter underlying operational sales growth for consumer increased 2%, which is an acceleration over the fourth quarter of 2017. As with pharmaceutical and consumer, in medical devices, we are also above consensus. We continue to have areas of strength behind new products and our vision business continued growth within electrophysiology as well as our advanced surgery business particularly with the endocutters and bio surgery platforms and in our trauma business. We remain focused on making improvements across our medical device businesses and we will discuss this in greater detail on May 16 at our consumer and medical device business review day. Additionally, as part of our ongoing portfolio management, we announced a binding offer for Platinum Equity, a private investment firm to acquire our LifeScan business for approximately $2.1 billion subject to customary closing adjustments. As noted in this morning’s press release, we announced that we plan to implement a series of actions across our global supply chain that are intended to focus our resources and increase investments in critical capabilities, technologies and solutions necessary to manufacture and supply our product portfolio. This will enable us to better meet patient and customer needs, make us more agile in a rapidly evolving healthcare landscape and drive business growth. We expect our supply chain actions will include expanding our use of strategic collaborations and bolstering our initiatives to reduce complexity, improve cost competitiveness, enhance capabilities and optimize our network. Discussions regarding specific future actions are ongoing and are subject to all relevant consultation requirements before they are finalized. In total, we expect these actions to generate approximately $600 million to $800 million in annual pretax cost savings that will be substantially delivered by 2022. Further, we expect to record pretax restructuring charges of approximately $1.9 million to $2.3 billion over the 4 to 5 year period of this activity which we will treat us special items. And as we discussed in January, the new U.S. tax legislation creates greater flexibility and opportunity to capitalize on our investments in innovation and R&D. Infact, we intend to invest more than $30 billion in the U.S. with capital investments in R&D between 2018 and 2021 representing an increase over the prior four years of more than 15%. Since Joe walked you through the sale results for each segment, I would like to add some overall commentary on those results, our operating performance and what we expect for the balance of the year. I will now turn to our consolidated statement of earnings for the first quarter of 2018. As we have mentioned our operational sales growth this quarter was 8.4% and excluding the impact of acquisitions and divestitures, growth was 4.3%. If you will direct your attention to the box section of the schedule, you will see we have provided our adjusted earnings to exclude intangible amortization expense and special items. As referenced in the table of non-GAAP measures, the 2018 first quarter net earnings were adjusted to exclude intangible amortization expense and special items of $1.3 billion on an after-tax basis, which consisted primarily of the following; intangible asset amortization expense of approximately $1 billion, a charge for the continuing restructuring of our hospital medical device businesses of approximately 100 million, Actelion acquisition related cost of approximately $100 million and a refinement of tax legislation and other cost of approximately $100 million. Our adjusted earnings per share is therefore $2.06 exceeding the mean of the analyst estimates. This is an increase in adjusted EPS of 12.6% versus the prior year. Adjusted EPS on a constant currency basis was $1.93 up 5.5% over the prior year. Now let’s take a moment to talk about the other items on the statement of earnings. Cost of goods sold excluding the impact of intangible amortization and acquisition related cost actually decreased by 140 basis points, primarily due to favorable product mix. Selling, marketing and administrative expenses were 26.3% of sales were 50 basis points lower as compared to the first quarter of 2017 due to lower cost relative to sales growth in the pharmaceutical business partially offset by investments in recent acquisitions and new product launches in the medical device business. Our investment in research and development as a percent of sales was 12% which was a 16% increase versus the prior year as we continue to advance our promising product pipelines. Interest expense net of interest income was higher than last year due to higher average debt levels and lower average balances of cash and cash equivalents. Other income and expense was a net expense of $60 million in the quarter, compared to a net gain of $219 million in the same period last year. Excluding the special items recorded in this line, current year was a net gain of approximately $77 million compared to a net gain of $320 million in the same period last year. The prior year had higher level of gains from our investment portfolio. Excluding special items, the effective tax rate was 17.8% compared to 17.5% in the same period last year. This rate is consistent with our expectations as a component of the full year effective tax rate. The 17.8 rate for the first quarter is a result of current interpretation of certain provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act related to foreign tax credits and expense allocations. We expect the treasury to issue updated guidance later this year. This expected update is reflected in our guidance which I will provide later. Turning to the next slide, I will now review adjusted income before tax by segment. In the first quarter of 2018, our adjusted income before tax margin for the enterprise was relatively flat versus the first quarter of 2017, driven by higher levels of operating profit offset by lower levels of other income and expense. Looking at the adjusted pretax income by segment, medical devices at 29.3% is lower than the previous year primarily due to investments in recent acquisitions and new product launches. Pharmaceutical margins improved from the prior year by 150 basis points to 46.5% primarily driven by favorable product mix and cost of products sold, and slower increases in expenses relative to the increase in sales. Consumer margins declined by 220 basis points to 18% due to an increase in brand marketing expenses supporting the launch of new products. Now I will provide some guidance for you to consider as you refine your models for 2018. At the end of the quarter, we had approximately $17 billion of net debt which consist of approximately $15 billion of cash and marketable securities and approximately $32 billion of debt. For purposes of your models and assuming no major acquisitions or other major uses of cash, I suggest you consider modeling net interest expense between $600 million and $700 million. This is slightly lower than previous guidance due to changes in average debt levels and changes in rates. 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 or investments by our development corporation, divestitures, asset sales and write offs. We would be comfortable with your models for 2018 reflecting net other income and expense excluding special items as a net gain ranging from approximately $1.5 billion to $1.7 billion, which is lower than our previous guidance due to the anticipated timing of the activities recorded in this account. This lower level of earnings contribution from these activities will be fully offset by the stronger performance in our business as reflected in our first quarter results. Infact, we now expect pretax operating margin improvement of approximately 150 basis points as compared to 100 basis points in our previous guidance. And now for a word on taxes. Our effective tax rate guidance for 2018 excluding special items is approximate 16.5% to 18% and that’s no change from our prior guidance. Now turning to sales and earnings; our sales guidance for 2018 includes the impact of generics for PROCRIT and TRACLEER as well as REMICADE biosimilars. However, we do not anticipate any impact from generic competition this year for ZYTIGA, RISPERDAL CONSTA, PREZISTA and 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 we believe this provides a good understanding of the underlying performance of our business. We will also provide an estimate of our sales and EPS results for 2018 with the impact that current exchange rates could have on the translation of those results. So for the full year of 2018, we would be comfortable with your models reflecting an operational sales increase of 4% to 5% for the year. This would result in sales for 2018 on a constant currency basis of approximately $79.5 billion to $80.3 billion. This is higher than our January guidance based on strong Q1 performance. We now expect that operational sales growth excluding the impact of acquisition and divestitures will be between 3% and 4% for the year which is also higher than our previous estimate. And although we’re not predicting the impact of currency movements using the euro as an example which last week was at a $1.23, the positive impact of foreign currency translation would still be approximately 2%. Thus under this scenario we expect reported sales to reflect the change in the range of 6% to 7% or total expected level reported sales of approximately $81 billion to $81.8 billion which is higher than our previous guidance. And now, turning to earnings; considering all the factors I just noted, we would be comfortable with adjusted EPS guidance in the range of $7.80 to $8 per share on a constant currency basis reflecting operational or constant currency growth of approximately 6.8% to 9.6% which is consistent with our previous guidance. And again we’re not predicting the impact of currency movements, but just to give you an idea of the potential impact on the EPS with the euro at a $1.23, a reported EPS would be positively impacted by approximately $0.20 per share. Therefore, our reported adjusted EPS would range from between $8 and $8.20 per share reflecting growth of approximately 11% at the midpoint of that range and this is consistent with our previous guidance. While it still early in the year, we would be comfortable with your models reflecting the midpoint of this range. So in summary, as you update your models for the guidance I just provided, I’d like to make a few key points. We expect our operational sales growth to range between 4% and 5% and our underlying growth excluding the impact of acquisitions [ph] and divestitures to be approximately 3% to 4% which is an acceleration from 2017. With regard to expected EPS growth on an operational adjusted basis, our guidance is strong in the range of 6.8% to 9.6% consistent with our objective of growing earnings faster than sales on a constant currency basis. While we expect the lower level of other income as I noted earlier, we now expect to improve our pretax operating margins by approximately 150 basis points. Now, before I turn things back to Joe to open up the Q&A portion of the call, I’d like to make a few brief comments regarding my retirement and the great news that Joe will assume the role of Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Johnson & Johnson on July 1. Joe has been with Johnson & Johnson for the past 19 years and has served on my finance leadership team, reporting to me and we worked together for many, many years. Joe is a strong, collaborative credo-based leader who has a long track record of success most recently in his current role, and as you know him the Head of our Investor Relations Group. I'm confident that Johnson & Johnson will be in great hands and we can expect significant contributions under Joe's financial leadership. Now regarding my retirement, let me start by saying that having been a CFO for almost 12 years and part of Johnson & Johnson for a total of 19 years I have tremendous pride, respect and appreciation for my Johnson & Johnson colleagues, the healthcare industry, our patients and consumers, partners, financial community, media and all the entities that I've had the privilege to work with during my tenure. I’m also very appreciative of the phenomenal experiences that I've been afforded and the positive impact both internal and external that this role and its responsibilities has enabled me to make. Some of the J&J successes that I'm very proud to have been associated with in partnership with my finance team and J&J colleagues include a consistent capital allocation strategy, where after investing in our business at competitive levels, we allocate capital first by paying dividends to our shareholders, then deploying capital for value creating acquisitions and finally using any excess cash to further return capital to shareholders such as through share repurchases. We've exceeded our competitor composite as well as most major indices for total shareholder returns over the last three, five, 10 and 20-year periods. And we returned two times more value to shareholders than compared our closest competitor over the last five years. And we’re only one of seven mega cap companies to increase its market cap by more than $175 billion over the last 5.5 years. Finally, I'm proud to be associated with an incredible legacy of exceptional financial performance as reflected in our 34 consecutive years of adjusted earnings increases and our incredible 55 negative years of increasing our dividend to shareholders. And I know that the key to our success as an enterprise and therefore to my success has always been our credo, our purpose and our people as we've all united around the singular focus of changing the trajectory of health for humanity, a bold but inspiring purpose. I've been inspired every day since I began my career journey at Johnson & Johnson back in 1999 when I joined this great company as a result of the Centocor [ph] acquisition. I quickly realized that I joined a fantastic organization of incredibly dedicated, remarkably intelligent and really passionate people. As Alex Gorsky often says, our work in healthcare is not a job, it's a calling. Alex Gorsky, our CEO is truly inspirational committed and passionate leader. He has set a high standard for excellence in execution, but I want to sincerely thank Alex for his unwavering support through the years and for being my manager, colleague, partner and my very good friend. I also want to acknowledge the incredible management committee that I've had the pleasure to work with for many years. They are group of passionate and inspiring leaders. I’m also very pleased to have one very important member here with us today, Joaquin Duato, and I’d like to recognize and thank Joaquin for his bold and visionary leadership which has been integral in our pharmaceutical business delivering outstanding and sustained performance and growth. My time here at Johnson & Johnson has been without a doubt a humbling and amazing experience for almost two decades and I've had the honor of working alongside people, doing important and outstanding things that positively impact this world. I've enjoyed every minute of my stewardship of Johnson & Johnson's business as CFO and working with all of you. Thank you for your engagement, exchanges and partnership. And although Joe assumes his new role in July, I’ll still be around for another couple months so we can work to closely ensure seamless transition. And you’ll hear it from me again along with Alex at our May 16th Medical Device and Consumer Business review day. And I'm looking forward to seeing and talking personally with you then. Let me now turn things back over to Joe to open up the Q&A portion of the call. Joe?