Dear fellow shareholder,
In a year of rapid, constant, and volatile change, Abbott again demonstrated what has set it apart and kept it thriving for 138 years: vision, know-how, adaptability, and the determination that comes from a compelling sense of purpose.
Navigating the environment
2025 was a year that favored the long view - looking to both the past and the future. Our deep experience has prepared us to deal with challenges and put them in perspective. And our established long-term orientation helps us look past the turbulence of the day to the decades ahead and keep building accordingly.
The fundamental key to our success, as always, is our diversified business strategy. We're a broad-based medical technology company, not dependent on any single business. Abbott investors understand well how our breadth gives us more ways to win, balancing challenges in one market with over-performance in another. Last year once again demonstrated the value of this strength.
But the advantages of our diversity go much further. Because Abbott has the broadest range of businesses of any healthcare company, we have expertise in more therapeutic areas and in more health technologies, so we see the biggest and fullest picture of global health and of medical science. That gives us a unique position and ability to bring trends and opportunities together to help more people around the world.
Financial performance
Abbott's global sales in the year were $44.3 billion, which reflects an increase of 6.7% on an organic basis for the base business.* Adjusted earnings per share were $5.15.**
In the year, Abbott extended its record of more than a century of uninterrupted returns to investors when it paid its 408th consecutive quarterly dividend. And our dividends have risen in each of the last 54 years, again earning Abbott membership in the exclusive ranks of Dividend Kings. Sustaining this legacy, in December we announced a dividend increase of 6.8 percent for 2026.
We continue our concerted margin-improvement efforts and our steady progress on this front. In 2025, we delivered top-tier operating margin expansion with an increase of 100 basis points, despite the impact of tariffs.
Expanding access and impact
Our goal at Abbott is to help as many people as possible to live fuller lives through better health. And we're taking disciplined strategic actions to make that happen through the products we develop and the way we manufacture them, through the markets we participate in, and through our efforts to build healthier communities.
Our innovation engine
Innovation is everything in healthcare. At Abbott, our efforts are clearly focused on expanding access and affordability to help more people get the care they need. Our new-product pipeline is robust, productive, and highly innovative. Highlights include:
- Volt, our pulsed field ablation system designed to deliver precise, targeted energy during cardiac ablation procedures, received both U.S. FDA approval and CE Mark.
- TactiFlex Duo, our device to provide more effective treatment for complex cardiac arrhythmias, was granted breakthrough designation by the FDA as well as CE Mark.
- Tendyne, our transcatheter mitral valve replacement system, received FDA approval.
- i-STAT High Sensitivity Troponin-I test, a rapid point-of-care diagnostic to aid in the early detection of heart attack, was launched in the U.S.
- We introduced new formulations of Ensure, our leading adult nutritional, and PediaSure, our nutritional supplement for children.
- We're launching multiple biosimilar medications in emerging markets to treat a range of conditions, including autoimmune diseases and cancer.
- TriClip, our first-of-its-kind, minimally invasive treatment option for patients with tricuspid regurgitation, was approved in Japan.
- Navitor, our transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) system, received CE Mark to treat people with symptomatic severe aortic stenosis who are at low or intermediate risk for open-heart surgery.
- We filed for approval of our dual glucose/ketone sensor for people living with diabetes. Ketones are chemicals made by the liver when the body burns fat for energy. When insulin levels are too low, ketones can rise to dangerous levels, leading to diabetic ketoacidosis.
- And we conducted more clinical trials in 2025 than ever before, with over 200 studies in progress. This includes initiation of TECTONIC, our U.S. pivotal trial to evaluate investigational coronary intravascular lithotripsy; and Veritas, our investigational trial to evaluate Amulet 360, our next-generation left atrial appendage occluder designed to reduce risk of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation (AFib).
Over the past three years, our pipeline has been the richest we've seen, and we - and the customers we serve - will be reaping the benefits for years to come.
An exciting new business
In November, we announced our agreement to acquire Exact Sciences, a leader in the $60 billion cancer screening and precision oncology diagnostics segments, including market-leading tests such as Cologuard™ and Oncotype DX™.
This will add a strong new growth vertical, providing us leadership in these large and fast-growing areas.
The acquisition will be immediately accretive to our revenue growth and gross margin. Exact Sciences generated more than $3 billion in 2025 revenue, with an organic sales growth rate in the high teens. It will become a subsidiary of Abbott, raising our total diagnostics sales to more than $12 billion annually.
And Abbott will multiply the business's growth potential, as Exact Sciences has been concentrated primarily in the U.S. Abbott's global presence will bring these important products to many more people who need them around the world. We expect to close the acquisition in the second quarter of 2026.
Meeting demand
Our global manufacturing network has been built strategically over decades to ensure we can get our products to the people who need them as reliably and efficiently as possible. With more than 90 facilities around the world, we manufacture close to the markets served. This has proven particularly helpful in the current international trade environment.
We recently enhanced our network with the opening of a major new medical devices plant in Querétaro, Mexico. This state-of-the-art facility will provide electrophysiology technologies to help people with AFib - a life-threatening condition that today affects an estimated 37 million people worldwide and is growing rapidly. And we've initiated plans to develop a new cardiovascular device manufacturing facility in the state of Georgia to be completed by 2028.
Investing in Abbott Innovation
Driving future growth with more than 200 clinical trials in 2025. Key trials include:
- VERITAS
Amulet 360, our next-generation left atrial appendage occluder
- TECTONIC
Coronary intravascular lithotripsy (IVL) uses sound waves to break up hard calcium buildup in blood vessels
- FLEXPULSE
TactiFlex Duo ablation catheter to treat abnormal heart rhythms
Community
And Abbott helps more people still through our efforts in citizenship and sustainability. In 2025:
We donated over $36 million in cash and products to support humanitarian efforts in more than 50 countries around the world, including food banks in the U.S., to help address childhood hunger and increased community needs.
In its second year, The We Give Blood Drive — our partnership with the Big Ten collegiate athletics conference to increase blood donation — grew exponentially, inspiring more than 80,000 donations, enough to save almost a quarter of a million lives.
We marked the 20th year of our proactive "disaster pack” initiative originally launched in response to Hurricane Katrina. Over the last two decades, this program has helped nearly a million people with more than $70 million in total disaster aid.
Our Abbott Future Well Communities program addresses chronic diseases by breaking down social and economic barriers to health. Through programs in Stockton, California; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Chicago and Waukegan, Illinois, we collaborate with local organizations to provide services and resources such as nutritious food through our Healthy Food Rx program, health education and screenings, and transportation to medical appointments.
Resilience
As an Abbott shareholder, we know there are things that you expect from the company. Things like stability. Like reliability. Like focus on what matters most.
These are timeless, enduring virtues. And we believe they're the right ones to have. They've sustained us for almost 140 years and counting; and they've helped make Abbott the most profitable healthcare stock of all time.
As always, your company is focused on disciplined execution across our operations. We're sticking to the fundamentals of our business, concentrating on quality, on efficiency and, above all, on innovation for the future – always finding the new and better ways to work and succeed that have kept Abbott growing for so many generations.
Our business is about building human resilience in the face of complex challenges to health. Operating that business successfully is about building organizational resilience in the face of equally complex challenges – economic, regulatory, and competitive. Abbott remains uniquely ready and committed to do both in the years to come.
Abbott proud,
Robert B. Ford
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer
March 2, 2026