STJ ST. Jude Medical, Inc.

By Ezequiel Minaya 

St. Jude Medical Inc. cut its full-year earnings forecast and said sales and profit slid in its latest quarter as the medical-device maker faced currency headwinds.

While international sales declined 10% to $634 million, weighting on results, the St. Paul, Minn.-based company met Wall Street expectations for earnings while narrowly missing the mark for revenue.

Looking ahead, St. Jude reined in its full-year forecast for adjusted earnings per share, saying it expects $3.93 to $3.95, compared with its prior view of $3.96 to $4, a forecast it made in July. The company also projected fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of $1 to $1.02, below analysts' expectations of $1.07, according to Thomson Reuters.

St. Jude said it expects currency impact on revenue in the final quarter of the year to be between $75 and $85 million.

St. Jude also expects sales to decline 1% this year, an improvement over its previous forecast of a decline between 3% and 1%, helped in part by the completed acquisition in October of Thoratec Corp., a major player in the heart devices global market.

Overall, the company posted a profit of $215 million, or 75 cents a share, down from $238 million, or 82 cents, a year earlier. Excluding acquisition-related costs and other expenses, adjusted earnings were 97 cents a share, down from $1.02 a year earlier.

Revenue slipped 2.4% to $1.34 billion.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters forecast per-share earnings at 97 cents a share on revenue of $1.35 billion.

Along with competitors Medtronic and Boston Scientific Corp., St. Jude has been on the hunt for new markets as sales of its core business of pacemakers and implanted defibrillators, which represent nearly half of its total revenue, have declined or stagnated in recent years.

For the latest quarter, sales in the Cardiac Rhythm Management division, which includes pacemaker products, dipped 8% to $630 million. Pacemaker sales tumbled 10%. In the Cardiovascular segment, sale declined 2%. In the Atrial Fibrillation segment, product sales totaled $271 million, representing a 7% increase compared with a year ago.

Earlier this year, St. Jude agreed to pay $3.4 billion in cash to buy Thoratec, the leading maker of a promising type of heart pump. According to a recent client note by Wedbush analysts, Thoratec gave St. Jude an entry into the $750 million Left Ventricular Assist Device, or LVAD, market.

The analysts also added that St. Jude Medical "has several ongoing and near-term product launches that we believe should allow the company to fend off competitive pressures and outpace the market."

Shares of the company were inactive premarket.

Write to Ezequiel Minaya at ezequiel.minaya@wsj.com

Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 21, 2015 09:36 ET (13:36 GMT)

SJM (NYSE:STJ)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024

SJM (NYSE:STJ)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024