As a consequence of Johnson and Johnson’s decline in value, the company is now worth $70 billion — still a substantial amount, but the change is reflective of volatility in the medical devices market.
The primary reason for the decline relates to a division of Johnson and Johnson called Janssen. In 2013, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., (JPI) of Titusville, New Jersey, was fined $1.6 billion for selling a misbranded drug called Risperdal (generic name risperidone).
The Janssen group’s pharmaceutical sales stood at $31.4 billion for 2015. This represented a fall of 2.7 percent compared with the previous year. There were also declines in the company’s medical device division.
Despite the decline, a spokesperson from Johnson and Johnson told PharmaFile that the future looks bright: “excluding the net impact of acquisitions, divestitures and hepatitis C sales, on an operational basis, worldwide sales increased 11 percent, domestic sales increased 18.1 percent and international sales increased 3.3 percent.”
The reference to hepatitis C treatment concerns a shift in the market and increased completion, with new products coming onto the market. The more intensive price competition from Gilead, AbbVie and Bristol Myers Squibb, has put pressure on Johnson and Johnson’s own product called Olysio (generic name simeprevir.)
The products that Johnson and Johnson expects to sell well next year include blood cancer medication and a treatment for prostate cancer, plus a new product for adolescents with HIV.
As Digital Journal reported earlier, the decline in share value has led to a series of job losses being announced, with up to 3,000 staff set to go over a two year period (starting in 2016.) The job losses related mostly to medical devices and they will be mainly from the U.S.
