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Abbott's Biosimilar Push to Help Sustain EPD Growth Momentum
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Key Takeaways
Abbott's EPD segment delivered 9% sales growth in Q1 2026, led by emerging markets demand.
ABT is expanding biosimilars through mAbxience and other partnerships across emerging markets.
Abbott sees biosimilars as a key growth driver amid rising demand for affordable biologic drugs.
Abbott’s (ABT - Free Report) Established Pharmaceuticals Division (“EPD”) has remained a steady growth driver, delivering above 7% sales growth for the past several quarters. In the first quarter of 2026, the top line increased 9%, supported by broad-based momentum across the markets. Excluding foreign exchange impacts, Key Emerging Markets sales grew 9.4%, led by double-digit growth in several countries across the Latin America and Asia Pacific regions. Other Emerging Markets sales increased 7.9% in the quarter.
The business benefits from the favorable long-term health care economic and demographic trends in these markets, including higher birth rates, expanding middle-class aging populations and growing demand for access to high-quality health care solutions. Abbott’s broad portfolio of branded generic medicines tailored to local conditions across key therapeutic areas, including cardiometabolic, women's health and gastroenterology, supports the growing demand.
Biosimilars, the highest-growth segment in the branded generic pharmaceutical market, is a key growth pillar for EPD. The cost-effectiveness of these drugs, which deliver similar safety, efficacy and purity profiles to approved biologic medicines, is a key factor supporting the projected 18.4% CAGR growth of the market between 2026 and 2033.
Back in 2023, Abbott partnered with global biotech leader, mAbxience, to commercialize several biosimilars spanning oncology, women's health and respiratory diseases in emerging markets. The company’s broad presence across these regions provides an opportunity to scale a capital-efficient licensing model and expand access to these life-changing medicines. Since then, Abbott has continued building the portfolio through collaboration agreements, advanced the regulatory approval process for several biosimilars and initiated their launch sequence in emerging markets.
Overall, management is confident to sustain the growth momentum in the EPD business.
Recent Developments Among Abbott’s Peers
Boston Scientific (BSX - Free Report) has met theprimary safety and effectiveness endpoints for its FRACTURE Investigational Device Exemption trial, evaluating the use of the SEISMIQ 4CE Coronary Intravascular Lithotripsy Catheter to treat patients with severely calcified coronary artery disease. Findings from the trial were presented in a late-breaking trial session at the EuroPCR 2026 congress. Boston Scientific announced a $1.5 billion strategic investment in MiRus LLC, which includes an exclusive option to acquire the MiRus TAVR system, subject to additional payments and certain milestones.
QIAGEN (QGEN - Free Report) is set to integrate NVIDIA-accelerated computing and the NVIDIA BioNeMo platform with its bioinformatics business, QIAGEN Digital Insights. The collaboration is designed to support practical applications across the drug discovery lifecycle, including target identification and validation, drug repurposing, biomarker discovery, pathway analysis and hypothesis generation from multi-omics data.
ABT’s Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates
Over the past six months, ABT shares have plunged 30.7% compared with the industry’s 29.5% decline.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
In terms of valuation, Abbott is trading at a forward, five-year Price/Earnings (P/E) of 15.59X, lower than its 22.56X median and the industry average of 15.61X.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
See how estimates for Abbott’s 2026 and 2027 earnings are shaping up.
View the Zacks #1 Rank List
Image: Bigstock
Abbott's Biosimilar Push to Help Sustain EPD Growth Momentum
Key Takeaways
Abbott’s (ABT - Free Report) Established Pharmaceuticals Division (“EPD”) has remained a steady growth driver, delivering above 7% sales growth for the past several quarters. In the first quarter of 2026, the top line increased 9%, supported by broad-based momentum across the markets. Excluding foreign exchange impacts, Key Emerging Markets sales grew 9.4%, led by double-digit growth in several countries across the Latin America and Asia Pacific regions. Other Emerging Markets sales increased 7.9% in the quarter.
The business benefits from the favorable long-term health care economic and demographic trends in these markets, including higher birth rates, expanding middle-class aging populations and growing demand for access to high-quality health care solutions. Abbott’s broad portfolio of branded generic medicines tailored to local conditions across key therapeutic areas, including cardiometabolic, women's health and gastroenterology, supports the growing demand.
Biosimilars, the highest-growth segment in the branded generic pharmaceutical market, is a key growth pillar for EPD. The cost-effectiveness of these drugs, which deliver similar safety, efficacy and purity profiles to approved biologic medicines, is a key factor supporting the projected 18.4% CAGR growth of the market between 2026 and 2033.
Back in 2023, Abbott partnered with global biotech leader, mAbxience, to commercialize several biosimilars spanning oncology, women's health and respiratory diseases in emerging markets. The company’s broad presence across these regions provides an opportunity to scale a capital-efficient licensing model and expand access to these life-changing medicines. Since then, Abbott has continued building the portfolio through collaboration agreements, advanced the regulatory approval process for several biosimilars and initiated their launch sequence in emerging markets.
Overall, management is confident to sustain the growth momentum in the EPD business.
Recent Developments Among Abbott’s Peers
Boston Scientific (BSX - Free Report) has met theprimary safety and effectiveness endpoints for its FRACTURE Investigational Device Exemption trial, evaluating the use of the SEISMIQ 4CE Coronary Intravascular Lithotripsy Catheter to treat patients with severely calcified coronary artery disease. Findings from the trial were presented in a late-breaking trial session at the EuroPCR 2026 congress. Boston Scientific announced a $1.5 billion strategic investment in MiRus LLC, which includes an exclusive option to acquire the MiRus TAVR system, subject to additional payments and certain milestones.
QIAGEN (QGEN - Free Report) is set to integrate NVIDIA-accelerated computing and the NVIDIA BioNeMo platform with its bioinformatics business, QIAGEN Digital Insights. The collaboration is designed to support practical applications across the drug discovery lifecycle, including target identification and validation, drug repurposing, biomarker discovery, pathway analysis and hypothesis generation from multi-omics data.
ABT’s Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates
Over the past six months, ABT shares have plunged 30.7% compared with the industry’s 29.5% decline.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
In terms of valuation, Abbott is trading at a forward, five-year Price/Earnings (P/E) of 15.59X, lower than its 22.56X median and the industry average of 15.61X.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
See how estimates for Abbott’s 2026 and 2027 earnings are shaping up.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Abbott currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).
You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.