Miles White Claims 'We're Going to Continue to Surprise People'

Abbott CEO: 'We're Going to Continue to Surprise People'
Abbott enjoyed a strong finish to 2017 and, if the company's fourth-quarter earnings call is any indication, 2018 could be even better.


Amanda Pedersen
January 24, 2018
Medical Device Business
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Abbott Laboratories
Abbott truly showed the world what it was made of in 2017, but don't expect the company to sit on its laurels in 2018.

The company is forecasting between 6% and 7% growth this year, which may have raised a few eyebrows Tuesday. As J.P. Morgan's Mike Weinstein noted during the question and answer portion of Abbott's fourth-quarter earnings call, that forecast is at the upper end or better than most analysts were probably expecting. He asked CEO Miles White about his level of confidence in that forecast.

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"Yes, I'll tell you, look, the forecast we put out, it's a strong forecast. It just is," White said, according to Seeking Alpha transcripts of the call. "I mean relative to peer groups, competitors, segments, the whole thing, and even relative to us. To be honest, even looking at that, yes, I feel pretty confident about it."

Of course there are always going to be unknowns, such as what the currency exchange may or may not do over the course of the year, White said, but based on everything he knows at this point, 6% to 7% is an accurate growth forecast, "and probably closer to the high end of that."

Abbott launched more than 20 products last year, with one of the most successful launches being the FreeStyle Libre glucose monitoring system.

"I enjoy the fact that every time something is announced with Libre, it's a surprise to somebody because everybody seems to have such low expectations for it, and I think we're going to continue to surprise people in that category," White said. "We're investing several hundred million dollars in expansion. This is a big product."

White said Abbott is adding about 50,000 Libre customers per quarter, and that's primarily just in Europe.

"The growth rate of that product is just tremendous and we've got a series of enhancements and approvals and additions to it coming that only make it better," he said.

One of the interesting challenges that Libre has created for Abbott has to do with the fact that it is not a niche product, but a mass-market product, White said, and it's one he uses himself.

"Medical devices by nature are sort of niche therapies, this one is not, and it has a totally different rhythm to it, and the pace of scale and the magnitude of opportunity is more like tech than it is medtech," White said. "That's an interesting challenge for us ... as challenges go, that's a pretty nice set of challenges. You don't lose sleep on those."