How Abbott Proved Skeptics Wrong This Year

Abbott Laboratories has had quite a bit on its plate this year, especially in the past few months. From navigating through a fairly messy acquisition to scoring regulatory approvals for several key product launches – all while addressing manufacturing problems that came up in an FDA investigation – it's not surprising that a lot of people had doubts. "Over the course of the year there was a lot of skepticism on the part of analysts and/or investors on all the things that we had to get accomplished that was backend loaded, a lot of third-quarter and fourth-quarter things," CEO Miles White said Wednesday during the company's third-quarter earnings call. Analysts were particularly concerned earlier this year about projected product launches out of the company's Sylmar, CA facility (formerly run by St. Jude Medical), which was the center of an FDA investigation. There were questions in earlier earnings calls about whether or not the agency's investigation would delay certain product approvals, such as the Full MagLev HeartMate 3 device, White recalled. "But we stuck to our guns on what our projections were," he said. "The third quarter alone has been pretty gratifying in that we basically got every approval we forecasted within 30 days or so of when we forecasted it would happen." The company has launched more than 20 new products this year, including several in the third quarter. In addition to the HeartMate 3 approval in late August, FDA also approved Abbott's FreeStyle ...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: Medical Device Business Source Type: news