Humira is still delivering growth for Abbott Laboratories ($ABT). The anti-inflammatory drug brought in $2.3 billion for the second quarter. That's a 16.5% increase, and it went a long way toward the company's 2% sales growth for the quarter.
Abbott hopes it goes a long way toward supporting its spinoff of the pharma division later this year. The company is preparing to split into two separate publicly traded firms: a diversified healthcare company under the Abbott Laboratories flag, and a drug-centered company dubbed AbbVie.
The company is already taking charges to earnings related to that impending split. Excluding those and other items, profits hit $1.97 billion, or $1.23 per share, the Chicago Tribune reports. Analysts had expected $1.22. Sales came in slightly below analyst estimates, at $9.81 billion, compared with the expected $9.84 billion.
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