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Text: Factors, to our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020.
On today's conference call, as in the past, non-GAAP financial measures will be used to help investors understand Abbott's ongoing business performance.
These non-GAAP financial measures are reconciled with the comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings news release and regulatory findings from today, which are available on our website at abbott.com.
Today, we reported results of another very strong quarter.
Ongoing earnings per share were $1.40, reflecting nearly 45% growth compared to last year and sales increased more than 22% on an organic basis.
Excluding COVID testing-related sales, which totaled $1.9 billion in the quarter, organic sales increased 12% versus last year.
As we've seen since the start of the pandemic, our diversified mix of healthcare businesses continues to prove highly resilient.
Even as COVID case rates surged in the US and other geographies during the third quarter, strong growth in our more consumer-facing businesses, nutritionals, established pharmaceuticals and diabetes care, mitigated the modest impacts we saw from the surges in certain areas of our hospital base businesses.
This has been a consistent theme throughout the pandemic, as evidenced by an increase in total company sales, excluding COVID tests, of 11% on an organic basis through the first nine months of this year compared to our 2019 pre-pandemic baseline, which highlights that our growth is real and not simply a function of easy comps versus last year.
As a result of our strong performance and outlook, today, we increased our full year adjusted earnings per share guidance range now at $5 to $5.10, which reflects nearly 40% growth compared to last year.
I'll now summarize our third quarter results before turning the call over to Bob.
And I'll start with Nutrition, where sales increased 9% compared to last year.
Strong growth in the quarter was led by US pediatric and international adult nutrition.
In Pediatric Nutrition, sales grew over 8.5% in the quarter, led by strong growth in the US from continued share gains in our infant formula and toddler portfolio.
Sales of Pedialyte, our market-leading rehydration brand, once again grew strong double-digits, driven by market uptake of several recently launched new products as well as investments we're making in direct consumer promotion.
In Adult Nutrition, sales grew over 9% in the quarter, including mid-teens growth internationally, as we continue to see strong demand for our Ensure and Glucerna brands, including new users entering these categories and existing customers increasing their usage.
Sales increased more than 45% overall and 12.5%, excluding COVID testing-related sales.
During the quarter, as the Delta variant spread and COVID cases surged, particularly in the US, demand for testing increased significantly, most notably for rapid tests.
In total, during the quarter, we sold more than 225 million COVID tests globally and have now shipped over 1 billion tests since the start of the pandemic.
Over the of last several months, we've learned that COVID vaccines, while a powerful tool, are not the lone solution needed in our global fight against this virus.
Testing, particularly rapid testing, which is fast, affordable, and easy to use, is an important companion to vaccines and therapeutics.
Abbott has established a global leadership position in rapid testing, including a supply capacity of more than 100 million tests per month.
Moving to Established Pharmaceuticals, where sales grew more than 15%, driven by strong execution and a steady cadence of new product introductions.
Strong sales performance in the quarter was broad-based across several countries, including double-digit growth in China, Russia and India, which led to overall sales growth of 18% in our key emerging markets.
And lastly, I'll cover Medical Devices, where sales grew 13% in the quarter compared to last year and more than 16% compared to pre-pandemic sales in the third quarter of 2019.
Strong performance in the quarter was led by double-digit growth in Rhythm Management, Structural Heart, Heart Failure and Diabetes Care.
In Structural Heart, we continued to enhance our portfolio in large, fast growing markets with the recent US FDA approvals of Amulet, which closes the left atrial appendage in the heart to help reduce the risk of stroke in people with atrial fibrillation and Portico for transcatheter aortic valve replacement.
In Heart Failure, we announced results from the GUIDE-HF trial of our CardioMEMS System.
As with many other recent and ongoing clinical trials across the healthcare industry, a portion of the CardioMEMS trial overlapped with the COVID-19 pandemic.
After adjusting for this impact, CardioMEMS demonstrated a 28% reduction in heart failure hospitalizations.
And we filed with the US FDA for label expansion based on the trial data in the middle of this year.
During the quarter, we also added an attractive growth platform to our vascular device portfolio with the acquisition of Walk Vascular, a commercial stage company with a minimally invasive thrombectomy system called JETi that removes peripheral blood clots.
Peripheral thrombectomy is a large high growth area where we can leverage our existing commercial presence.
And I'll wrap up with Diabetes Care, where strong growth was led by FreeStyle Libre sales of nearly $1 billion.
During the quarter, we added over 200,000 new users, bringing the total global user base for Libre to well over 3.5 million users.
So in summary, we continued to achieve strong well-balanced growth across all of our major businesses, which is being fueled by strong execution and a steady cadence of new products.
COVID testing, particularly COVID testing, remains an important companion to vaccines and therapeutics and Abbott has established a strong leadership position in this area.
And based on the strength of our performance and outlook, we're raising our earnings per share guidance for the year, which now reflects growth of nearly 40% compared to last year.
I'll now turn over the call to Bob to discuss our results and outlook for the year in more detail.
Turning to our results.
Sales for the third quarter increased 22.4% on an organic basis, which was led by strong performance across all of our businesses, you along with global COVID testing-related sales of $1.9 billion in the quarter.
Excluding COVID testing-related sales, organic sales growth was 12.1% versus last year and 11.7% compared to the third quarter of 2019.
Foreign exchange had a favorable year-over-year impact of 1% on third quarter sales, resulting in total reported sales growth of 23.4% in the quarter.
Regarding other aspects of the P&L for the quarter, the adjusted gross margin ratio was 58.8% of sales, adjusted R&D investment was 6% of sales and adjusted SG&A expense was 25% of sales.
Our third quarter adjusted tax rate was 15.5%, which reflects an adjustment to align our year-to-date tax rate with our revised full year effective tax rate forecast of 15%.
The revised full year forecast is modestly higher than the estimate we provided in July due to a shift in the mix of our business and geographic income.
Turning to the outlook for the fourth quarter.
We forecast $1 billion to $1.4 billion of COVID testing-related sales and forecast organic sales growth, excluding COVID testing-related sales, in the low double-digits versus last year.
And based on current rates, we would expect exchange to have an unfavorable impact of around one-half of 1% on our fourth quarter reported sales.

user
abbott sold more than 225 mln covid-19 tests globally in q3.
compname says company sold more than 225 million covid tests globally in third quarter.
compname says co has supply capacity of more than 100 million tests per month.
abbott forecasts $1 billion to $1.4 billion of covid testing-related sales in q4.

assistant