Is J&J a Buy After the Kenvue Separation?

You probably know Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) very well, thanks to the Band-Aid bandages and Tylenol that may be sitting in your medicine cabinet. But those products that made J&J famous actually are no longer part of the business. That's because J&J recently spun off its consumer health unit into a new company called Kenvue.

This leaves J&J with the two main businesses of pharmaceuticals and medtech. The transition prompted J&J to lower its sales and earnings per share guidance for the year to account for the lost consumer health earnings. There's been a lot of talk about buying J&J as it heads into a new era of growth -- but the revised earnings forecast may make you think twice. Is J&J really a buy after the Kenvue separation? Let's find out.

First, let's examine J&J's performance with the consumer health unit. Yes, that business is filled with star products that most of us use, but it has been a drag on J&J's annual growth. We'll take a look at last year's earnings as an example. While the pharmaceutical and medtech businesses each grew sales on an adjusted operational basis by more than 6%, consumer health sales rose less than 4%.

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Source Fool.com