2. Johnson & Johnson
New Brunswick, N.J.
2018 revenue: $27,000,000,000
R&D spend: $1,764,000,000
Fiscal year ending: Dec. 31, 2018
Last year’s rank: 2
Key Personnel:
Alex Gorsky, chairman & CEO; Joaquin Duato, vice chairman; Peter Fasolo, EVP, chief HR officer; Ashley McEvoy, EVP, chairwoman, medical devices; Thibaut Mongon, EVP, chairman, consumer; Michael Sneed, EVP, global corporate affairs & chief communications officer, Paul Stoffels, vice chairman, chief scientific officer; Jennifer Taubert, EVP, chairwoman, pharmaceuticals; Michael Ullmann, EVP, GC; Kathy Wengel, EVP & chief global supply chain officer; Joseph Wolk, EVP, CFO.
Description:
Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) made inroads into one of medtech’s hottest areas during the year, spending $3.4 billion on Auris Health and its Monarch robot-assisted bronchoscopy platform in a move to complement the robot-assisted general surgery program it has with Verb Surgical and the Orthotaxy orthopedic platform it acquired. And it went after robotics pioneer Intuitive Surgical, with the U.S. International Trade Commission agreeing to examine its complaint that Intuitive’s imported surgical stapler cartridges infringe a quintet of J&J patents. J&J continued its restructuring of the medical device segment with a pair of divestitures: the sale of its Advanced Sterilization Products biz to Fortive for $2.8 billion and the $2.1 billion deal for its LifeScan blood glucose monitoring subsidiary with Platinum Equity. In legal news, the first lawsuit filed by a state attorney general over pelvic mesh products went to trial, alleging that subsidiary Ethicon concealed the potential risks of mesh from the public and physicians. In April J&J settled a similar case in Washington for $10 million; Kentucky is also suing Ethicon. And most of the remaining metal-on-metal hip cases facing its DePuy Synthes subsidiary could be settled for about $1 billion. Full-year profits were $15.30 billion on sales of $81.58 billion, beating the consensus on Wall Street. – BP