What's Backing Abbott's Established Pharmaceuticals Division Growth

Abbott Laboratories’ ABT Established Pharmaceuticals Division (“EPD”) continues to be a solid growth contributor, supported by its broad portfolio of branded generic medicines and strong commercial presence across emerging markets. 

In the second quarter of 2026, EPD sales increased 8.4% on a reported basis and 8.7% on a comparable basis. Key Emerging Markets delivered 10.7% comparable sales growth, driven by double-digit growth in several countries across Latin America and Asia Pacific. The strong performance highlights the benefits of EPD’s diversified geographic footprint and its ability to capitalize on growing healthcare demand across emerging markets.

The EPD business continues to benefit from favorable structural trends, including expanding access to healthcare, aging populations and increasing treatment needs for both acute and chronic conditions. These trends are expanding the addressable patient population and supporting sustained demand for established pharmaceutical therapies.

Meanwhile, Abbott is expanding its biosimilar pipeline, which should broaden EPD’s product portfolio and create additional growth opportunities across key markets. The combination of a broad product portfolio, expanding pipeline, strong brand equity and disciplined commercial execution positions EPD to sustain high-single-digit sales growth over the long term.

Peer Update

Boston Scientific’s BSX international operations continue to support its growth profile, benefiting from a broad geographic presence across developed and emerging markets. In the second quarter of 2026, operational sales increased 4.2% in EMEA, 11.2% in APAC and 16.2% in Latin America and Canada. 

Growth in APAC was particularly strong, with double-digit gains across Japan, China and Korea, supported by momentum in Interventional Cardiology, Electrophysiology and WATCHMAN. Looking ahead, continued expansion of the FARAPULSE ecosystem, OPAL mapping platform and WATCHMAN FLX Pro should strengthen the company’s presence and support further penetration across key international markets. 

Medtronic MDT also maintains a significant international presence, supported by broad-based demand for its medical technologies across multiple therapeutic areas. In fiscal 2026, international revenues totaled $18.26 billion and increased 6.2% organically, outpacing the 5.4% organic growth recorded in the United States. 

International revenues maintained 6.2% organic growth in the fourth quarter, with Cardiovascular increasing 7.1%, Neuroscience growing 5.8% and Diabetes up 12.2%. Structural Heart also delivered stronger performance outside the United States, while Diabetes continued to benefit from product innovation and geographic expansion, including Simplera Sync and the EMEA launch of MiniMed Go Smart MDI with Simplera. 

ABT Price Performance

In the past year, Abbott shares have plunged 14.3% compared with the industry’s 22.7% decline. 

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ABT's Valuation

ABT currently trades at a forward 12-month Price-to-Sales (P/S) of 3.63X compared with the industry median of 2.81X.

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ABT Stock Estimate Trend

In the past 30 days, ABT’s EPS estimate for 2026 has moved north 0.2%.

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ABT stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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