Johnson & Johnson Q3 2026 earnings: adjusted profit on target, legal charge hits reported EPS

October 13, 2026

J&J's adjusted profit matched estimates and sales grew nearly 6%, but a big one-time talc-litigation charge pulled reported earnings far below expectations.

Key takeaways

• Adjusted earnings per share of $2.59 came in essentially in line with Wall Street’s $2.59 estimate, and revenue of $25.4 billion grew 5.9% from a year earlier — even though it landed slightly below the roughly $25.6 billion analysts had expected.
• The reported (GAAP) profit figure looked far weaker — just $0.09 per share — because J&J booked a large one-time charge tied to its proposed settlement of talc-related lawsuits, plus costs from its Firefly Bio acquisition and Sail Biomedicines collaboration; none of that reflects how the underlying business is actually performing.
• Pharmaceuticals, which J&J calls Innovative Medicine, did the heavy lifting with sales up about 7.7% to $16.8 billion, while the MedTech device business grew a slower 2.5% to $8.6 billion.
• J&J raised its full-year 2026 outlook, now guiding to roughly $101.2 billion in sales and adjusted earnings of about $11.10 per share (up 6 cents from its prior forecast), signaling management expects the growth pace to hold through year-end.
• CEO Joaquin Duato pointed to what he called accelerating momentum in the company’s more focused portfolio since splitting off its consumer-health unit, highlighting the newly launched OTTAVA surgical robot and positive late-stage trial results in multiple myeloma as giving clearer visibility toward double-digit growth by decade’s end.
• Trailing-twelve-month profitability stayed strong underneath the litigation noise: gross margin near 68% and operating margin near 26% show the core business converts most sales into profit, and a roughly 26% return on equity suggests shareholders’ capital is still being put to solid use.
• The trailing year’s EPS actually fell about 8% versus the prior twelve months, a decline largely explained by the recurring hit from talc-litigation charges rather than weaker underlying sales, which instead kept growing.

Q3 2026 in context

Figures for the quarter ended Sep 2026 and the quarter ended Sep 2025, as reported to the SEC.

How the stock took it

Johnson & Johnson closed at $263.73 on Oct 12, 2026, the last session before the report, and at $253.91 on Oct 14, 2026, the first session after it — -3.7% across the report.

Closes from the market's daily record. Each figure spans the report date — from the last session that closed before it to the first that closed after — because a company may report before the open or after the close.

Fundamentals

Financial history →

Sources: company report · earnings call