Johnson & Johnson Q3 FY2026: sales up 5.9%, talc charge guts GAAP EPS
Johnson & Johnson's third quarter told two stories at once: sales rose 5.9% to $25.40 billion and management raised full-year guidance, while GAAP EPS collapsed to $0.09 on a one-time talc litigation charge. Read the adjusted numbers for the operating business and the GAAP numbers for the legal bill. The gap between those two stories is what this analysis unpacks.
1 · Expected vs. Actual
Free preview belowGAAP EPS of $0.09 looks catastrophic next to $2.12 a year ago, but the gap is a one-time special charge for the proposed talc litigation resolution plus the Firefly Bio and Sail Biomedicines deals. Adjusted EPS of $2.59 beat the $2.5631 consensus by roughly $0.03, yet still fell 7.5% from $2.80. Adjusted net earnings of $6.34 billion were down 6.8%, so these deals are diluting, not merely distorting.
Revenue of $25.40 billion rose 5.9% from $23.99 billion a year earlier, and 6.0% once currency is stripped out. Innovative Medicine did the heavy lifting at 7.7% reported growth, while MedTech managed just 2.5%. This was also the third straight quarter of sequential growth, from $24.06 billion in Q1 to $25.31 billion in Q2 to $25.40 billion now.
Management lifted the reported sales midpoint to $101.2 billion, or 7.4% growth, from $101.1 billion in July, within a $101.0-$101.4 billion range. Adjusted EPS guidance went to $11.10 from $11.04, a raise of $0.06, alongside adjusted operational EPS of $11.00. The direction is right, but the size is small: about $0.1 billion of sales and roughly half a percent of EPS.
Log in to read 35 analyses a week for free
Create a free account to read 35 full earnings analyses each week — all five steps: expected vs. actual, guidance tracker, money flow, balance sheet and risks. Members get unlimited access.
Figures on this page come from the company's original SEC filings. The analysis is generated automatically and checked against validation rules, but may still contain errors or omissions. Not investment advice. · Generated 2026-11-03
Answers are based on the earnings release and the analysis above. Free accounts get 3 questions a week; members get 30 a day.