Abbott & #039;s Growth is Impressive, but What about That Elephant?

 Abbott Laboratories has had another stellar year in terms of new product launches and strong growth drivers across the company. In fact, the company's pipeline may be the strongest its ever been, thanks to products like the FreeStyle Libre glucose monitoring system, the MitraClip, the HeartMate3, and the Alinity family of diagnostic products – just to name a few. "It's interesting, I've never in my career here seen such breadth across the company in new products, new product launches, market conditions, et cetera," CEO Miles White said during Abbott's third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. "I think the sustainability of the growth and the diversity of it is a huge plus. It's not like we're reliant on a single product or a single country. We're not highly indexed in China, and we're not over-dependent on a single product. There's just great diversity of growth opportunity across the board." White credited a lot of that pipeline strength to the products Abbott acquired from St. Jude Medical. "St. Jude, in the course of our acquisition negotiations with them, continued to talk to us about the [diversity] of their pipeline and how good it was. And to be honest, they were right. And that's proven." But like any multinational company, Abbott faces a currency headwind. "The little elephant in the room is just, clearly, exchange," White said. "I think all of us, all investors, all companies doing business in international mark...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: Business Source Type: news