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Johnson&Johnson Shares fell on Tuesday after the company reported adjusted earnings and revenue that beat Wall Street expectations but lowered its sales guidance for its pharmaceuticals business.

J&J, whose financial results are a guide for many healthcare companies, said its sales for the quarter rose 5.6% from the year-ago quarter.

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The consumer goods giant reported a net loss of $68 million, or 3 cents a share, related to its talc baby powder debt and costs related to the upcoming spin-off of its consumer health business. This compares to net income of $5.2 billion, or $1.93 per share, for the same period a year ago. Excluding certain items, adjusted earnings per share were $2.68 for the period.

Here’s how J&J’s results compare to Wall Street expectations, based on a poll of analysts by Refinitiv:

• Earnings per share: Adjusted $2.68 versus $2.50 expected
• Revenue: $24.75 billion versus $23.67 billion expected

J&J slightly lowered its pharmaceutical sales target for 2025 to $57 million, down from the $60 million the company forecast two years ago. J&J executives cited currency dynamics in an earnings call, noting that currency headwinds had a negative impact of about $3 billion on the pharmaceutical business in 2022.

The stock closed nearly 3% lower on Tuesday. Shares are down more than 9% for the year to close, putting the company’s market value at about $420 billion.

J&J is now forecasting 2023 sales of $97.9 billion to $98.9 billion, about $1 billion more than the guidance given in January. The company raised its full-year adjusted earnings outlook to $10.60-$10.70 per share from a previous guidance of $10.45-$10.65.

CFO Joseph Wolk told CNBC on Tuesday that J&J raised its guidance due to strong growth in all three businesses — consumer health, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices.

“If you think about how we started the year and forecast in January, we were responsibly cautious,” he said on Squawk Box. “First quarter growth was much stronger than fourth quarter growth for all three businesses and our positions are changing to responsibly optimistic at this time. We feel very good for 2023.”

He added that data on J&J’s cancer drug was being produced Multiple myeloma and procedural data in its medical devices division gives the company “a very, very good sense of what lies beyond 2023.”

J&J reported pharmaceutical sales of $13.4 billion, up more than 4% from the year-ago quarter. The company said the surge was driven by sales of Darzalex, a biologic used to treat multiple myeloma, and blockbuster drug Stelara, used to treat a range of immune-mediated inflammatory diseases.

J&J will lose patent protection for Stelara later this year. During a conference call, Wolk said the company is “committed to growing through the loss.”

Revenue from the company’s medical device business rose to nearly $7.5 billion, up 7.3% from the first quarter of 2022. J&J said its December last year acquisition of Abiomed, a cardiovascular medical technology company, did that rise fueled.

J&J’s consumer health business, which will be spun off into a separate public company this year, reported sales of about $3.8 billion. That unit grew 7.4% compared to the prior-year period, driven primarily by over-the-counter products like Tylenol and skin health products under brands like Neutrogena and Aveeno.

Wolk told CNBC the company is making “great strides” in separating from its consumer health business. But J&J hasn’t been clear on exactly when the split will happen.

J&J also announced that its board of directors approved a 5.3% quarterly dividend increase to $1.19 per share based on the company’s strong performance in 2022.

The New Brunswick, NJ-based company entered this earnings season with rising shares after offering more clarity on the long-running legal battle surrounding its talc-based baby powder products. Earlier this month, J&J proposed paying nearly $9 billion over the next 25 years to settle thousands of allegations that its baby powder and other talc products caused cancer.

J&J’s subsidiary, LTL Management, also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this month after its first attempt was thwarted.

Wolk said during a conference call the company will take the proposed reorganization plan to bankruptcy court in mid-May. He expressed confidence that applicants will vote to approve the plan, noting that 60,000 applicants have already committed to it.

The company expects to win a small but “vocal minority” of plaintiff attorneys opposed to the plan, added J&J’s assistant general counsel Andrew White.

Wolk continued to deny the Talk allegations, calling it “regrettable” that J&J “has to invest dollars in quite frankly unsubstantiated scientific claims.”

Lawsuits allege that the company’s talc products were contaminated with the carcinogen asbestos, which caused ovarian cancer in thousands of people. Some suits link multiple deaths to J&J talc products.

Read J&J’s full earnings report.

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shares of Modern fell on Monday as Wall Street munched over new trial results on the personalized cancer vaccine it is developing note.

Merck shares were essentially flat.

The experimental mRNA vaccine, when combined with Merck’s blockbuster drug Keytruda, reduces the risk of skin cancer-melanoma recurrence by 44% compared to Keytruda alone, the companies said on Sunday in their first detailed presentation of results from a key Phase 2 Study.

Almost 80% of participants who received both the vaccine and Keytruda remained cancer-free at 18 months, compared with 62% of participants who received only Keytruda, the companies said. They added that the vaccine’s side effects were generally mild, with fatigue being the most common.

These results, presented at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Florida, add to initial results on the treatment combination published in December.

The results suggest that the vaccine, when combined with Keytruda, “could be a novel means of potentially prolonging the lives of patients with high-risk melanoma,” said Dr. Kyle Holen, director of development, therapeutics and oncology at Moderna, in a press release. Moderna and Merck said they will initiate a Phase 3 trial in 2023 and will “rapidly expand” their research to look at the treatment’s effect on additional tumor types, including an important type of lung cancer.

Wall Street greeted the news with a mixture of cautious optimism and doubt.

Analysts from SVB Securities said the results suggest the personalized cancer vaccine shows promise. But they also wrote in a Sunday note that the treatment’s path to approval is new and untested, adding that the company doesn’t see accelerated approval as an option.

The Food and Drug Administration’s Accelerated Approval designation is intended to allow faster approval of medicines for serious conditions that address an unmet medical need.

A Monday note from Wolfe Research analyst Tim Anderson said many Moderna and Merck stakeholders remain “cautiously optimistic at best” about the possibilities of the cancer vaccine-Keytruda combination.

He said expectations for the treatment combination were quite high at the start of the weekend, but noted there are still many skeptics about cancer vaccines due to a “long history of failures in this area”.

Wells Fargo analyst Mohit Bansal also said he expressed “cautious optimism” about the treatment combination. In a Sunday note, Bansal pointed to “trial imbalances” that may have led to more favorable outcomes for the personalized cancer vaccine.

He said these imbalances warrant waiting for more data on the treatment.

A US district judge in Washington state said Thursday access to the abortion pill mifepristone was unaffected by a federal appeals court ruling that imposed restrictions on the drug this week.

Judge Thomas Rice of the state’s US Eastern District last Friday ordered the Food and Drug Administration to gain access to mifepristone in 17 states and the District of Columbia, which requested protection of the drug in those jurisdictions.

Rice reiterated in a court order Thursday that the FDA cannot reverse access to the drug, despite a decision this week by the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that imposed restrictions on how the drug is dispensed and used by patients.

“No judge in Texas or the 5th Circuit can overrule a decision of a federal judge in Washington state,” Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson told CNBC on Thursday. Ferguson led the lawsuit to protect access in the 17 states and the district.

Rice’s Thursday order underscores the chaotic legal landscape that has emerged after dueling court decisions over the drug’s legal status. The U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to rule on the future of mifepristone — and possibly soon.

Rice’s order applies to Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Washington and the District of Columbia.

Rice’s order maintains FDA’s current regulatory framework in those jurisdictions. These include sending the abortion pill by mail, allowing pharmacies to dispense it if they are certified to do so, and administering mifepristone up to 10 weeks’ gestation.

“We have a crystal clear ruling, and we expect the FDA will respect it,” Ferguson said earlier Thursday.

Rice’s decision last Friday came just 20 minutes after US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the US Northern District of Texas unilaterally stayed the FDA’s more than two-decade-old approval of mifepristone and all subsequent regulatory actions the agency has taken since has taken.

The Justice Department appealed Kacsmaryk’s decision to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday.

A three-judge panel Wednesday voted 2-1 to block Kacsmaryk’s attempt to suspend the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. But it also imposed tighter restrictions on the drug, limiting access.

Judges Kurt Engelhardt and Andrew Oldham, appointed by former President Donald Trump, voted to temporarily block mail delivery of the abortion pill and reintroduce visits to the doctor to obtain the drug. The decision also shortened the period that mifepristone can be administered down to the seventh week of pregnancy. The 5th circle will hold oral hearings in the case at the earliest possible date.

The DOJ earlier this week asked Rice to clarify what legal obligations the government has under his order by Friday, as it sees “significant” tensions with Kacsmaryk’s decision. Rice said Thursday that Kacsmaryk’s order and the 5th Circuit Court ruling will not affect access to mifepristone in the 17 states and DC

“I don’t see a world where the FDA decides for Washington and the states that have joined our coalition that they are going to withdraw access in the way the 5th Circuit envisions,” Ferguson said earlier Thursday.

The Biden administration is appealing the 5th Circuit Court decision to the Supreme Court. US Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday the DOJ “strongly disagrees” with the appeals court and will seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court to “protect Americans’ access to safe and effective reproductive care.”

Glenn Cohen, a former DOJ attorney, said the FDA had an even stronger case for the court to step in after Rice upheld its order to maintain access in response to the government’s request for clarification.

“The need to go to the Supreme Court in the meantime is becoming more compelling — and the FDA has a stronger case for a judicial review since two courts are telling it to do conflicting things,” said Cohen, a health law expert Harvard Law School CNBC in an email ahead of Rice’s clarification on Thursday.