Yahoo Finance

Shares of Abbott laboratories are rising after a largely positive first quarter earnings report. For more, we've got Yahoo Finance Senior Health reporter Anjalee Khemlani. Take a look at the shares. They're moving higher by about 4% right now. Take us into the report though.

That is. I mean, it's a good news because we we know we saw Johnson and Johnson yesterday, also a medical device maker, not do so well with different pressures on that company. But Abbott coming out the door with some good earnings, uh, beating on earnings per share, little flat, uh, but you know, nearly in line on revenues for the company. We're looking at a lot of different things for this company right now. Of course, earnings looking good, but also that's still with a drop in COVID-19 testing. We know that's one of the biggest, uh, products for this company, and it seems like even with the drop off, a really significant $204 million last year's quarter compared to just $84, I believe, this year. So that's a really major difference. And that is something, uh, to take a look at. It's a low margin product for the company, so even with that drop off still in line, still doing good, maintaining guidance despite what we've seen, you know, across different sectors because of the tariff for. And so, you know, big elephant in the room there, we're going to address that right now. Heard on the call from Abbott CEO Rob Ford, that quote, right now, we estimate the tariff impact in 2025 to be a few hundred million dollars. He stopped short of giving an actual number like we saw yesterday with J&J, and he said that that's a half year impact because they don't see any impact now and in Q2, but we they might start seeing that in Q3, and that's of course because of roll outs of products in the different markets that are going to be impacted. China in particular, a focus there for the company. So that's where things stand for Abbott right now.

We got about a minute left, Anjalee, but want to talk to you about the Trump administration's push to change up a Biden era law on Medicare drug prices. Is this change going to be good or bad for consumers?

It's looking to be good for consumers and for the companies. Also, we taking a look really quickly at what that executive order was that was signed yesterday by President Trump, looking to rework the pill, uh, the the timeline for pills. Essentially, now pills get off of patent around nine years, and then more complex biologics in 13 years. So they're looking to to put those on the same bar essentially. And which way it goes is still remains to be seen. That's the thing that needs to be settled by Congress. But we get some analyst reactions since yesterday saying that seeing the potential extension of time is addressing one of the major overhangs for these companies broadly in the sector, and this could be partially offset by higher discounts for those drugs. And so again, all that trickling down to potentially being net positive for industry and individuals.