Earnings bulletin: Johnson & Johnson's second quarter of 2019

Johnson & Johnson kicked off the second-quarter earnings season Tuesday, reporting that its pharma unit outperformed struggling consumer healthcare and medical device segments. Pharma posted sales growth of 1.7% and operational growth of 4.4% to hit $10.53 billion in sales.

Across J&J's entire business, the company's revenue sank 1.3% to $20.56 billion. At the same time, earnings jumped 41.8% thanks to a sale in medical devices that brought in about $2 billion before taxes. That revenue figure and adjusted earnings per share of $2.58 both beat analyst estimates.

With the performance, Johnson & Johnson increased its sales guidance for the year to between $82.4 billion and $83.2 billion, up from April's guidance of $82 billion to $82.8 billion.

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Within pharma, blockbuster immunology med Remicade continued to slump thanks to biosimilar pressure; sales for that med sank 16.2% globally to $1.1 billion for the quarter. Zytiga suffered from generic competition, and Xarelto posted a 19% decline in the U.S. thanks to new discounting rules in Medicare.

On the flip side, Stelara, Tremfya, Invega, Darzalex, Imbruvica, Opsumit, Uptravi, and Prezista grew by double digit percentages.