Legal uncertainty outweighs positives from J&J results

The share price of Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), the first of the pharma majors to report this quarter's financials, was down by more than 1% at lunchtime on Tuesday after the US healthcare giant announced its financial results for the second quarter of 2019.

Better-than-anticipated earnings and the issuing of improved sales guidance for 2019 might have been expected to deliver a stock market boost, but the volume of lawsuits involving alleged cancer-causing talcum powder and J&J’s marketing of opioids continue to cause uncertainty.

Sales across the group were $2.06 billion during the quarter, down 1.3% on the same period in 2018, though they were up 4% when excluding acquisitions and divestitures on an operational basis.