When I was preparing for this, I did some research and I was disappointed to learn that the Band-Aids I've been using all these years are no longer owned by Johnson & Johnson.
What happened to the Band-Aids? I mean, I thought Band-Aids were Johnson & Johnson. And how come you became CEO and you got rid of the Band-Aids?
So, it's not only you. I think many retirees of the company are sending me mail regarding that same feeling. Many of them worked in our consumer sector. And even today when I tell people I'm the CEO of Johnson & Johnson, they tell me the baby shampoo company all the time.
So, you became the CEO and then within a year or two of that, you spun out your entire consumer division, all the kind of products that I buy at the drugstore. And you got rid of all those things. Why did you do that?
We wanted to be more focused on medical innovation. The consumer business had departed from medical innovation. We were more connected with cosmetics, over-the-counter medication, and it didn't fit in the overall umbrella of trying to bring medical innovation to treat tough, difficult conditions like oncology, cardiovascular, or dementia. So, we wanted to be a more focused company dedicated to medical innovation and we were deliberate about separating the consumer company. It's good for companies like Johnson & Johnson to reinvent ourselves.
All right. Since you did that, has your stock gone up or down?
It's going up. As a matter of fact, last year in 2025 was one of the best years for Johnson & Johnson history in terms of total shareholder return. We had 47% return in 2025.
Pretty good.
Now, I can tell from your accent that you're not from Mississippi.
No, I am not from Mississippi.
Missouri.
Now, you are a native of Spain. So, how did a native of Spain rise up to be the CEO of an American company that is the largest healthcare company by revenue in the entire world? Let's talk about your story. You're born in Spain. What city?
I was born in Spain in Valencia. I'm the son of an engineer and a nurse. So, I had the medical side in my family and also the entrepreneurial side. I grew up in a large family. My dad had nine brothers and sisters, so I have like 40 cousins. I was in the middle. So, I realized at the beginning that I needed to have a strong voice in order to be heard. Otherwise, nobody was paying attention to me in my family.
Your parents are both alive, right?
Yeah, my parents are both alive.
Do they ask you about the Band-Aids, too?
Yeah. No, but you know, they ask me questions about Johnson & Johnson and how I'm doing and things like that.
All right. So, now, as I understand it, you went to college in Spain initially, right?
And then, after you graduated from college, you applied for a job at Johnson & Johnson and got turned down.
Yeah. I got an interview and I didn't make it to the second interview.
So, what happened to the person who turned you down? Is he still there?
He worked in the consumer business and look what happened with consumer.
And he said, "Okay." All right. So, now, you worked your way up. Over how many years have you been at Johnson?
I've been at Johnson & Johnson and it goes fast. 37 years this.
Wow, you like a long-term relationship. How long have you been married?
I've been married 35, so I've been at Johnson & Johnson longer than I've been married.
You stay with whoever you go with initially, right?
In every aspect, I'm a loyal person.
So, to be very serious, how did somebody from Spain, nothing wrong with Spain, it's a great country, they financed Christopher Columbus to come here, right? Great country, but how did somebody from Spain rise up to be the CEO of the typical American healthcare company? Not that it's impossible as I said earlier, but what was your skill set? Were you a salesman? Were you a product person? What did you have as your skill set?
My skill set at Johnson & Johnson is that I never said no. So, all the opportunities that the company put in front of me, I took them. They moved me to different countries. I came to the US. I worked in the medical device division, in the consumer division, in the pharmaceutical division. I worked in supply chain. I was the chief information officer for a while. So, I did many jobs at Johnson & Johnson and I think that those opportunities that the company gave me gave me the opportunity to be who I am now. Johnson & Johnson is a big company. We build talent from the inside. The average seniority of a Johnson & Johnson employee in the US is more than 10 years.
All right. Who were Johnson & Johnson? Were they brothers or mother and father and son? Who were Johnson & Johnson?
Two brothers. They were two brothers from Pennsylvania that went into the Philadelphia Fair in 1884, I think it was, and they saw a presentation from a British surgeon called Joseph Lister that was talking about the germ theory in infections during surgery. And they decided that that was the way to go and they created a company that did surgical dressings, aseptic surgical dressings. And from there we went to the Band-Aids.
No, as I understand there were actually three brothers.
They were three brothers.
Was it Johnson & Johnson & Johnson? Why is it just Johnson & Johnson?
I think another one created a separate company, so he was not part of the Johnson & Johnson.
I see. Okay. So, what did Johnson & Johnson do, to be very serious, to enable it to grow to be the largest revenue company in the world in terms of healthcare companies? What did they actually do? They make better products? Are they harder working? What do they actually do?
They are a great American story of ingenuity and creativity. So, they started as a surgical dressing company and from there they went into the consumer side with the Band-Aids. In the '50s we went into pharmaceuticals for the first time. And they had a philosophy that was based on integrity. Our Credo of Johnson & Johnson was written by one of the family members more than 80 years ago in 1943. And it was based also on decentralization. They wanted their managers to run their businesses as if they were their own companies. So, they were very successful on that and they created the largest, most diversified healthcare company in the world. Still to this day, we're the largest healthcare company in revenue.
Now, the owner of the New York Jets is Woody Johnson. He's a member of the Johnson family.
Are there any other members of the Johnson family still involved in the company?
There's no member of the Johnson family involved in the company. The last member of the Johnson family working in the company as a CEO finished his job in the '60s. So, today we don't have any member of the Johnson family working in the company. We honor the Johnson family and once a year with the annual meeting we meet with many members and we tell them how the company is doing, but at this point no member of the Johnson family is in the company.
The company was started in what city?
The company is in New Brunswick. We started in New Jersey 140 years ago in 1886 and we are in the same place. When I go to drive every day, I go to the same place in which Johnson & Johnson started.
New Brunswick, New Jersey. Great town.
How many employees does Johnson & Johnson have?
We have 140,000 employees globally.
How many in the United States?
We have about 60,000 in the US, 80,000 globally.
And what are the revenues of Johnson & Johnson now?
Our guidance this year is going to be somewhere north of a hundred billion dollars.
A hundred billion dollars.
And what's the market capitalization of the company?
The market cap varies every day as you know very well, but it's about 570 billion dollars.
That's a lot. So, now, in the United States there are only two companies that have a triple A credit rating. Does anybody else know what Johnson & Johnson is? That is the only other company in the United States, publicly traded company, that has a triple A credit rating. Anybody? Microsoft is the company.
Microsoft, yeah. Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson. So we're proud to have a triple A credit rating. I think it's a better credit rating than the US government. It's a sign of our financial discipline and our trajectory over a long period of time. Many investors ask me why having a triple A credit rating, you could be more leveraged. I say, "Look, it's a sign of our financial discipline. We are not married to the triple A credit rating. If a good opportunity would come along, we would be happy not to have a triple A credit rating, but it's a sign of our financial discipline and our investors like it."
For 15 years in a row you've had an annual dividend that has increased. Is that right?
Years we've increased our dividend, yeah.
So, that's pretty good. Do you try very hard to make sure you do that every year?
That's sacrosanct. When investors ask me, "What about the dividend?" I say, "That's always going to be there. You can bet that you will have a dividend growth if you are investing in Johnson & Johnson."
All right. So, if you've got a market capitalization of over $500 billion, of course, if you had Band-Aid, you'd have even more, but you don't have the Band-Aids anymore. So, what are the products? You're in two businesses. You're in pharmaceuticals and you're in medical devices. Let's talk about pharmaceuticals. What is your biggest pharmaceutical product?
Our biggest pharmaceutical product is a drug for multiple myeloma called Darzalex. Multiple myeloma is a blood cancer that has improved significantly in the last decade. The life expectancy of a multiple myeloma patient was about single years. Now, a multiple myeloma patient can expect to live more than 10 years. In some ways, we're turning multiple myeloma into a chronic disease. So, Darzalex is our largest product.
In the United States, if you develop a pharmaceutical product like the one you just talked about for multiple myeloma, you have roughly 17 years before it goes off patent.
And so, you have a 17-year period of time before it becomes a so-called generic. Is that a risky kind of adventure for you where you got to develop these products, and then if you develop them, 17 years later, they're gone.
I think it's a good system. On one hand, it rewards the investment that you do in innovation by giving you a period of exclusivity. And on the other hand, after a number of years, those medicines are very cheap and available. Keep in mind that 90% of the medicines prescribed in the US are generics. So, the majority of the medications that you get in your pharmacy most likely are generic medications. So, it helps in the affordability aspect.
And you have the highest revenue of any healthcare company in the world. But, there's one healthcare company that has a higher market capitalization than you, which is Eli Lilly, and that's about roughly a trillion dollars because they have a GLP-1 drug. How come you don't have a GLP-1 drug?
That's a good question. We were focused on a different area. We were not focused on obesity or diabetes like Eli Lilly was. Great for them that they were able to identify this transformational medicine GLP-1. There's going to be more GLP-1s coming through the pipe. Multiple companies have GLP-1s. So, it's good that they were able to identify that advance. We have other things to pay attention to like trying to cure cancer or address dementia, which are real social problems and real issues that we want to pursue. But, no, we are not going to be in the GLP-1 area.
So, the things that you're focused on, most people like in my age, I'm focused on drugs that are Alzheimer's related. Is that something you're focused on?
Because that's going to be a big thing, right?
I think the biggest challenge for the healthcare industry and for the pharmaceutical and medical device industry is to address the issue of neurodegeneration and dementia. It's a real social problem. Your chances of having some type of cognitive impairment increase as you age. As we are increasing our age, the likelihood of having more people with dementia is higher. So, I think this is the most important problem in my view that the industry can address. We are working on that at Johnson & Johnson. We're trying, we fail, and we come back again.
The greatest cause of death in the United States, I assume, is cardiovascular.
So, are you doing anything on cardiovascular?
Yeah, we work in cardiovascular disease in the area of heart failure, also in the area of atrial fibrillation, which is a common problem of cardiac rhythm, and also in an area we call circulatory restoration. So, we work in cardiovascular disease in areas that are quite specialized, specifically in our medical device sector.
Cancer, we aim to be the number one company in cancer. Our goal is to be number one by 2030. Perhaps it's the best sign of where the company is heading. What is the new Johnson & Johnson about? It's trying to eliminate cancer. The basic areas that we're working: I mentioned multiple myeloma. We're also working in lung cancer, bladder cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, head and neck cancer. So, we have multiple medicines to address a number of cancers that have common oncogenic drivers. Cancer is an area in which progress is occurring at an accelerated pace. On one hand, we understand better the biology of the disease, and on the other hand, we have better technologies to kill cancer cells.
You doing anything for people with teeth that don't work as well as they used to?
No, we have not gotten there, but there are companies in medical devices that work in that area in dental, yeah.
