Abbott 2Q26: EPS beat and raise on in-line sales, and a vehement defense of medtech market health

Research evidence excerpt

Abbott 2Q26: EPS beat and raise on in-line sales, and a vehement defense of medtech market health

Medicaid that is a driver of medtech surgical

procedures in the U.S. It's actually Medicare. Medicare is by far the largest U.S. payer as it relates to devices.

For us, it's over two-thirds of our U.S. cardio business. I think that's one reason. The other reason that I believe it's not a

concern, at least right now we're not seeing it, is that not all healthcare products are the same here. Demand for high

acuity life-saving products is very inelastic. In the U.S., we treat people with serious acute medical conditions, and

the system doesn't save lives of only those people with insurance. That's why we didn't see the impact of expansion

of ACA and Medicaid into the business, because those patients were already being treated. If you look at our portfolio,

it's really tied, and maybe this is a little bit more of an Abbott side, we're really tied to a lot of major chronic conditions like

diabetes, cardiovascular, cancer, and this is less likely to forego insurance. I think that's one reason.”

Dx as a barometer. Management positioned Abbott’s Diagnostics business as a forward-looking barometer for procedural

demand, emphasizing that in their Hospital Labs business—which focuses on instruments and reagents for hospital and in-

hospital testing—management saw strong growth of 13%, indicating strong future demand.

“...our diagnostic business [...] provides us, I think, a forward-looking into the healthcare environment and the healthcare

system. Our instruments are located across the world, across the country, all in the States here in the U.S. Testing

volumes in the U.S. have held up very well. Not seeing a decline, including in the States that we've seen the