Johnson & Johnson (JNJ): $94 billion of sales, a $5.5 billion talc proposal and 64 years of dividend increases

Johnson & Johnson makes medicines and medical devices, in two segments: Innovative Medicine, which was 64.1% of 2025 sales, and MedTech, 35.9%. Sales reached $94.2 billion in 2025, 6.0% more than in 2024. On October 13, 2026 it reported its third quarter before the market opened, and the stock closed 5.7% lower that day, at $248.61, for a market value of $599 billion. It is still 30.2% higher than a year earlier.

This profile follows the company through its SEC filings: where the money comes from, the years whose profit needs a footnote, the talc litigation, and who has been buying and selling.

From 1887 to 2026

Where the sales come from

One cancer drug carries a large part of the company. Darzalex, for multiple myeloma, sold $14.35 billion in 2025, 15.2% of all sales, up 23.0%. Stelara, an immunology drug, went the other way: $6.08 billion, down from $10.36 billion. The 10-K attributes that decline to biosimilar competition and says it took about 6.2 percentage points off worldwide sales growth. Tremfya, also in immunology, rose 40.5% to $5.16 billion. By customer location, the United States was 57.1% of 2025 sales.

Profit, and why it needs footnotes

The numbers below start in 2021. Johnson & Johnson split off its consumer health business, Kenvue, in 2023, and its 2023 annual report restated earlier years without it only back to 2021; putting the series together with older years creates a drop between 2020 and 2021 that never happened.

• 2023: net earnings include a $21.0 billion non-cash gain on the Kenvue exit, and charges of about $7.0 billion for talc matters.
• 2024: charges of about $5.1 billion for talc matters.
• 2025: earnings include the reversal of about $7.0 billion of the talc reserve, so they overstate the underlying year.

Talc, and the third quarter of 2026

On July 27, 2026, the company proposed to resolve the roughly 76,000 remaining ovarian talc claims, with a $5.5 billion commitment and a first payment of no more than $3 billion in 2027. The proposal requires at least 95% of the claims to participate. The company says the claims lack scientific merit.

Its third-quarter results, published on October 13, 2026, show the cost. Sales rose 5.9% to $25.4 billion, but net earnings fell to $210 million, or $0.09 a share, after $5.5 billion of pre-tax litigation charges and the costs of acquiring Firefly Bio and partnering with Sail Biomedicines. Over nine months, sales were up 7.4% and net earnings down 49.4%, a comparison also distorted by the 2025 reversal. These figures come from the earnings release; the quarterly report has not been filed yet. The company raised its 2026 sales forecast to about $101.2 billion.

Dividends and the long run

Johnson & Johnson raised its quarterly dividend by 3.1% in April 2026, to $1.34 a share, which it called the 64th year of consecutive increases. The yield on the last twelve months of payments is 2.12%. Because the last twelve months of earnings include the talc charge, the price-to-earnings ratio — 37.8 on $6.58 of earnings per share — says little about the business.

The SEC filings used here do not give the date the stock started trading, so the long view starts where the Yahoo Finance price history does, on January 2, 1962. Adjusted for seven stock splits, $1,000 invested that day would be worth about $1.11 million from the share price alone, and about $4.16 million with dividends reinvested.

Who owns it, and who sold

Vanguard (10.1%), BlackRock (7.7%) and State Street (5.5%) are the largest shareholders listed in the 2026 proxy statement. Eight of the 38 investment managers this site tracks held the stock at the end of June, the same number as a quarter earlier. The largest among them, Cliff Asness of AQR, trimmed his position by 17.9% to 2.9 million shares, and Ken Griffin cut his by 22.3%.

In the twelve months to October 13, 2026, executives sold $154.9 million of stock, none of it through pre-arranged 10b5-1 plans; $119.9 million was sold on the same forms that reported option exercises. Chief executive Joaquin Duato sold $66.8 million, including $22.1 million from his spouse’s account. The only purchase was by director John Morikis, $0.26 million in November 2025.

The figures above come from Johnson & Johnson’s filings and the 13F, Form 4 and Form 144 filings listed below. They describe what happened; they are not a forecast and not investment advice.