Abbott Laboratories raised its full-year profit guidance Thursday after posting stronger-than-expected second-quarter results, with shares up 4.2% in morning trading as sales grew across nearly every part of the business except one. Adjusted diluted earnings came in at $1.31 per share, up from $1.26 a year earlier and topping the Wall Street estimate of $1.28, while net sales reached $12.59 billion, a 13% increase on a reported basis and 4.8% on a comparable basis. KeyToFinancialTrends reads the gap between that 13% reported growth and 4.8% comparable growth as the detail worth isolating first: a meaningful chunk of Abbott's headline sales increase this quarter came from acquired revenue rather than organic growth, a distinction that matters for anyone trying to gauge the underlying health of the business independent of dealmaking.
The acquisition doing most of that work was Abbott's purchase of cancer-screening company Exact Sciences, completed March 23, which shows up most clearly in the diagnostics segment: reported sales there rose 42.3%, but the comparable growth rate was just 2.9% once the Exact Sciences acquisition is factored into prior-year figures. Within that segment, cancer diagnostics posted comparable growth of 13.3%, with the Cologuard colorectal cancer screening test delivering mid-teens gains as it continued attracting both first-time and returning customers. KeyToFinancialTrends treats Cologuard's continued momentum as the more durable story inside the diagnostics number than the acquisition math surrounding it: a screening test that keeps drawing repeat customers is building the kind of recurring revenue base that matters more to Abbott's multi-year trajectory than the one-time boost from folding Exact Sciences' reported sales into this year's comparisons.
Abbott's largest segment, medical devices, delivered the quarter's most broadly distributed strength, posting 8.4% comparable sales growth led by a 13.4% increase in electrophysiology alongside high-single-digit gains in rhythm management, diabetes care, and heart failure. Within diabetes care specifically, continuous glucose monitor sales grew 9.5% on a comparable basis, while established pharmaceuticals grew 8.7% comparably, led by double-digit growth across key emerging markets in Latin America and Asia Pacific. Key To Financial Trends frames that device-segment breadth, five separate product categories all posting solid growth simultaneously, as the number CEO Robert Ford was almost certainly referencing when he said the results "reflect the momentum we are building" heading into an accelerating back half of the year.
Nutrition was the lone weak spot, with sales falling 3.1% on a reported basis as the segment continued working through headwinds from reduced volumes and pricing changes made in the fourth quarter of 2025, though nutrition sales did climb $127 million sequentially from the first quarter. KeyToFinancialTrends reads that sequential improvement, even within an overall declining segment, as tentative evidence the nutrition business may be stabilizing rather than continuing to deteriorate, a distinction that matters for Abbott's full-year guidance: the company lifted its 2026 adjusted earnings outlook to $5.45–$5.60 per share from a prior $5.38–$5.58 range and reaffirmed comparable sales growth guidance of 6.5% to 7.5%, targets that would be considerably harder to hit if nutrition's decline were still accelerating rather than leveling off. Abbott returned $2.1 billion to shareholders during the quarter through dividends and buybacks, underscoring management's confidence in the guidance it just raised.
