The biosimilar drag on Johnson & Johnson stock is shrinking, and the business underneath it is already growing at a double-digit pace. Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) has climbed 53% over the past twelve months and trades about 3% below its 52-week high, but the underlying business is still undergoing a fundamental shift that the headline numbers obscure. The case is there anyway, and it is sitting inside the headline growth rate.
That rate carries a drag from a single product, and how much longer it lasts is the whole upside case. The Biosimilar Drag Is Getting Lighter, Not Heavier Worldwide sales grew 5.6% in the second quarter of 2026 on an operational basis, which strips out currency. That figure absorbs an approximately 460 basis point headwind from STELARA, the immunology blockbuster losing patients to biosimilars, and by the company's own account sales excluding STELARA grew double digits.
The headwind itself is getting lighter: it was about 540 basis points in the first quarter of 2026, and STELARA was only 4% of the Innovative Medicine segment in the second. On an operational basis, revenue growth excluding STELARA accelerated as the drag narrowed from 540 basis points in the first quarter to 460 basis points in the second, even as overall operational growth moved from 6.4% to 5.6%. The gap between the headline rate and the underlying one narrows as STELARA gets smaller, even before factoring in potential contributions from newer pipeline assets.
TREMFYA Leads New Patient Starts In STELARA's Biggest Market What replaces STELARA is not spread thinly across the portfolio. Over 75% of STELARA's sales were in inflammatory bowel disease, and TREMFYA is now the share leader in new patient starts there, with 58% of IL-23 inductions in ulcerative colitis and over 50% in Crohn's disease. TREMFYA's growth moved from about 64% in the first quarter of 2026 to 71% in the second, and the second quarter was its first $2 billion quarter.
Growth that survives the loss of a blockbuster is the kind of durability the Trefis High Quality Portfolio looks for in its holdings. The Soft Spot In This Case Sits Inside MedTech The second quarter of 2026 was strong enough that management raised its full-year guidance, lifting adjusted operational earnings per share by $0.18 at the midpoint. What a raise powered by the drug portfolio does not fix is cardiovascular, the one part of MedTech management says fell short of its own standards.
Cardiovascular grew 3.1% in that quarter, held back in part by a China inventory dynamic management put at about 400 basis points in electrophysiology. Abiomed, the heart-pump business, declined 2% as physicians grew cautious over a neutral clinical trial in the U.K.; management expects a gradual return to double-digit growth there, and the trial meant to settle the question does not read out until 2027. Whether that business gets back to double-digit growth is the piece of the story still unresolved, and it is best tracked against the other companies whose guidance keeps climbing.
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