Pharmaceutical Products : An American Pharmaceuticals And Health Care Products Company

Abbott is protecting itself from the cyclical nature of the pharmaceutical industry through diversification. The company is placing increasing emphasis on non pharmaceutical products, and perhaps even shifting their main focus to medical devices in order reduce their reliance on the riskier pharmaceutical drug R&D process. Abbott is seeing sales growth in all three of its major segments, and positive net income. However, two of the segments, Pharmaceuticals and Diagnostics, are in industries where the growth rates are lower than they were ten years ago. Therefore, this shift towards medical devices is well timed. Recommendations that Abbott continue to build up its medical device practice, but not allow it to drain R&D expenditures away from the Pharmaceutical segment. The nutritional industry has seen flat sales in all areas except the consumer products sector. This is where Abbott’s Healthy Living products are located, consisting primarily of EAS and ZonePerfect. These are more like consumer products than medical products, which explains why Abbott recently put the former head of Wrigley in charge of Ross Products. Abbott must give increased priority to the importance of the Healthy Living division within Ross Nutritionals and expand these products offerings. This trend must continue,