Abbott Reports
As we noted yesterday the blood glucose monitoring business is getting just a little boring. This boredom continued today when Abbott (NYSE:ABT) reported their results. Looking over their diabetes care unit results showed further declines and the outlook for the future isn’t much better. Based on comments made by the company it’s apparent they have come to realize that there really isn’t much they can do to improve results and it’s time to concentrate on controlling costs.
It’s interesting to note the company hasn’t mentioned the Navigator product in some time nor have they provided any updates on new products in the pipeline. Again this isn’t all the surprising given current market dynamics.
Based on what Diabetic Investor is seeing it’s time to start looking at this market from a different perspective. Given that the market is barley growing and in many areas contracting, it’s time to figure out who’s going to cry uncle first. The reality is costs can only be cut so far and at some point companies in the market will have to start thinking about getting out of the market or buying additional market share.
From a selfish perspective Diabetic Investor would like the industry to get on with the next phase of consolidation as its getting pretty hard to stay awake during these conference calls. We knew this was coming but never realized just how boring it would be when it got here.
