J&J suspends sales forecast

NEW YORK, April 25, (AP): Johnson & Johnson is suspending sales forecasts for its COVID-19 vaccine only a few months after saying the shot could bring in as much as $3.5 billion this year.

A global supply surplus and uncertainty about future demand - fueled in part by vaccine hesitancy in some developing markets - prompted the change, J&J said Tuesday. The company also reported a better-than-expected first-quarter profit and announced a dividend increase.

J&J’s one-shot vaccine brought in $457 million in global sales during the first quarter, while the company’s pharmaceutical sales as a whole totaled nearly $13 billion.

The vaccine registered only $75 million in sales in the U.S., or about 25% less than what it rang up after debuting in last year’s first quarter.

J&J has said it doesn’t intend to profit from the vaccine. But it said in January that the shot could bring in between $3 billion and $3.5 billion in sales this year, as countries continue to fight variants of the virus.

Demand for initial vaccine doses and booster shots has slowed since shots from J&J, Pfizer and Moderna entered the U.S. market last year. More than 82% of the U.S. population age 5 and older has already received at least one vaccination dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Options from Pfizer and Moderna also have been much more commonly used in the United States.