Earnings call

Johnson & Johnson Johnson & Johnson · Q2 2026 call

Call heldJul 15, 2026
Time8:30 a.m. Eastern
CEOJoaquin Duato

What the CEO argued

Duato's argument was that Johnson & Johnson has already stopped being a STELARA story. He led on the quarter's beat and the raised guidance, then anchored the year on a single number — sales above $25 billion put the company on track for its first $100 billion year in a 140-year history — and framed the base under it as 28 separate platforms each above $1 billion in annual sales, no one of which the company depends on. That framing did the work when the call turned to the quarter's visible weak spot: heart recovery, where a neutral UK trial slowed Impella use, was placed as one of those 28 and declared temporary, fully addressable and irrelevant to the growth trajectory. What he asked investors to carry away was not the second quarter but the shape of the decade — a stronger second half, momentum into 2027, and double-digit growth by 2030, which he called one of the most compelling and transparent growth stories in health care.

More from Joaquin Duato

What they said

What the quarter looks like once STELARA is set aside
We have the strongest portfolio and pipeline in our 140-year history with 28 products and platforms that each deliver more than $1 billion in annual sales. In Q2, we reported operational sales growth of 5.6%. Excluding STELARA, we grew double digits in the quarter.
Joaquin Duato · Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Johnson & Johnson
The $100 billion year, said out loud
With sales in the quarter of more than $25 billion, we are on track to meet our 2026 target of more than $100 billion in annual revenue for the first time in our company's 140-year history.
Joaquin Duato · Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Johnson & Johnson
How a quarter with a visible miss still bought a guidance raise
Even with a notable headwind, we still delivered performance that exceeded your expectations and enabled us to confidently raise our full year 2026 financial outlook. We are not dependent on one or two products.
Joseph Wolk · Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Johnson & Johnson
The balance sheet, stated plainly
We ended the second quarter with approximately $21 billion of cash and marketable securities and approximately $49 billion of debt for a net debt position of approximately $28 billion.
Joseph Wolk · Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Johnson & Johnson
The cash-flow catch-up after a light first quarter
You may recall in Q1 that free cash flow is light, but as expected, we had significant improvement in the second quarter with year-to-date totaling approximately $8.7 billion and are on track for our full year free cash flow outlook approaching $21 billion.
Joseph Wolk · Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Johnson & Johnson
The arithmetic that makes the biosimilar cliff look survivable
So over $16 billion in sales, our first $16 billion quarter, 6.8% operational growth, and it's also worth noting STELARA was only 4% of our Innovative Medicine business in the second quarter. […] And if you exclude that, the 96% of our business, 96% actually grew over 14%.
Jennifer Taubert · Executive Vice President, Worldwide Chairman, Innovative Medicine, Johnson & Johnson
Three of four MedTech businesses accelerated; the fourth is the story
And to be clear, Larry, three of our four businesses, Surgery, Vision and Orthopaedics all accelerated in the quarter and performed above expectations. […] And let me first acknowledge that our Q2 growth is not where you wanted it. And frankly, it's not where we wanted it.
Tim Schmid · Executive Vice President, Worldwide Chairman, MedTech, Johnson & Johnson
The 400 basis points that were inventory, not demand
However, we did have an inventory dynamic in China, which impacted our growth by about 400 basis points that would have taken global growth up to north of 7%.
Tim Schmid · Executive Vice President, Worldwide Chairman, MedTech, Johnson & Johnson
Robotics as a growth line, not a science project
We see our robotics platform both OTTAVA and MONARCH being a meaningful contributor to MedTech growth by the end of the decade.
Joaquin Duato · Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Johnson & Johnson
The evidence base he is putting against one 300-patient study
I do think it's also worth mentioning that Impella has supported more than 400,000 patients and appears in almost 2,600 peer review publications and also, I think specific to the study in the UK, which covered only 300 patients, we have studied more than 40,000 high-risk PCI patients
Tim Schmid · Executive Vice President, Worldwide Chairman, MedTech, Johnson & Johnson
Why the heart-recovery stumble does not move the thesis
heart recovery is 1 of 28 platforms of more than $1 billion that we have within Johnson & Johnson. And while we see this situation that Tim described as temporary and fully addressable, I have to be clear. It does not affect in any shape or fashion our growth trajectory, as we have described.
Joaquin Duato · Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Johnson & Johnson
What TREMFYA is meant to inherit
So TREMFYA sales for the quarter were $2 billion, our first $2 billion quarter and over 70% growth which we're really proud of. […] And as a reminder, back when we had really STELARA here over 75% of STELARA sales were actually in IBD. There is absolutely no reason why TREMFYA can't do that or even more.
Jennifer Taubert · Executive Vice President, Worldwide Chairman, Innovative Medicine, Johnson & Johnson
The claim he wants investors to leave the call with
I see Johnson & Johnson when I consider those factors as one of the most compelling and transparent growth stories in health care today.
Joaquin Duato · Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Johnson & Johnson

In the order they were said. Pick a name to read only that speaker.

On the call

  • Operator
  • Ryan Koors — Vice President, Investor Relations, Johnson & Johnson
  • Joaquin Duato — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Johnson & Johnson
  • Joseph Wolk — Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Johnson & Johnson
  • Christopher Schott — Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
  • Asad Haider — Analyst, Goldman Sachs
  • Jennifer Taubert — Executive Vice President, Worldwide Chairman, Innovative Medicine, Johnson & Johnson
  • John Reed — Executive Vice President, Innovative Medicine R&D, Johnson & Johnson
  • Lawrence Biegelsen — Analyst, Wells Fargo Securities
  • Tim Schmid — Executive Vice President, Worldwide Chairman, MedTech, Johnson & Johnson
  • Terence Flynn — Analyst, Morgan Stanley
  • Joanne Wuensch — Analyst, Citi
  • Vamil Divan — Analyst, Guggenheim Securities
  • Alexandria Hammond — Analyst, Wolfe Research
  • Jayson Bedford — Analyst, Raymond James
  • Michael Nedelcovych — Analyst, TD Cowen

About these quotes

Every passage above is quoted verbatim from Johnson & Johnson's Q2 2026 earnings call of Jul 15, 2026, checked against the recording's transcription word for word. Johnson & Johnson holds the rights to its second-quarter 2026 earnings call. The text checked against here is the edited LSEG StreetEvents transcript that Johnson & Johnson itself publishes in the investor relations section of its site. This page therefore quotes passages from the call rather than reproducing it: every quote below was matched word for word against that transcript before it was published, and nothing else from the call is shown. The company's own webcast replay is on its investor relations site, and the figures management cites are the ones in the second-quarter 2026 earnings release. Figures spoken on a call are management's own and are checked against the release before they are used anywhere else on this site.

WebcastListen to the call at Johnson & Johnson investor relationsThe company's own replay — the authoritative record ReleaseQ2 2026 results press releaseWhere every figure quoted here is verified NumbersQ2 2026 earnings pageThe reported figure set, Rule of 40 score and consensus comparison