Boston Scientific Cuts 2026 Sales Growth Forecast to 4.25% After Cyberattack
Key Facts
Boston Scientific cut its forecast for reported sales growth in 2026 to about 4.25% and organic growth to about 3.75%, and narrowed its adjusted earnings-per-share range to $3.16–$3.18, according to its results statement released on October 28. In July, the company had expected reported growth of 5.5% to 6.5%, organic growth of 5% to 6%, and adjusted earnings of $3.28 to $3.32 per share. Management said the cyberattack cut organic sales growth in the third quarter by about 300 basis points, and estimated its impact at about $150 million in revenue and about $0.07 per share in earnings. The cuts followed third-quarter sales of $5.138 billion, up 1.5% from the same period a year earlier. The new forecast points to disruption continuing to weigh after operations resumed, alongside other pressures that management said would affect growth.
Earnings under accounting standards fell to $582 million, or $0.40 per share, from $755 million and $0.51 per share a year earlier. Adjusted earnings per share were $0.73, compared with $0.75 in the third quarter of 2025. The chief financial officer said the incident’s impact went beyond lost sales and also included weaker manufacturing cost absorption, direct costs, expedited shipping and the use of experts. These burdens coincided with disruptions to manufacturing and the processing and shipment of customer orders, operations the company said were affected by the incident. The chief financial officer estimated the operational disruption lasted eight working days, within an outage that management described as lasting two weeks.
The company said in its filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it discovered the incident on August 25, 2026, and that it affected its ability to manufacture, process customer orders and ship them. The chief executive said all operations were back up and running on September 8, after the two-week outage. But resuming operations did not immediately end the financial impact, as management said normalization of customer inventory would weigh on fourth-quarter sales. The company expects the remaining impact on growth to be equivalent to 200–300 basis points in that quarter, with earnings per share reduced by about $0.04–$0.05. The company’s shares had fallen about 4% in morning trading on August 26 after it announced the operational disruption.
Boston Scientific expects reported and organic sales to decline between 1% and 3% in the fourth quarter, with adjusted earnings of $0.77 to $0.79 per share. Segment performance varied in the third quarter: cardiovascular sales rose 1.9%, while the MedSurg segment grew 0.7% on both an operational and organic basis. By contrast, urology sales fell 3.1% organically, while neuromodulation sales posted organic growth of 13.0%. The divergence puts segment performance in the context of a quarter in which overall growth was hurt by manufacturing and shipping disruptions. Management also said pricing pressures in China and weakness in electrophysiology and WATCHMAN would affect the outlook for next year.
Regional results showed operational growth of 6.1% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with reported growth of 4.4%. In Latin America and Canada, sales rose 16.0% on a reported basis and 10.5% on an operational basis. Asia-Pacific recorded declines of 0.6% on a reported basis and 1.1% operationally. Management said 2027 would be the trough of the growth cycle, and that achieving growth in sales and adjusted earnings per share would be difficult that year, excluding the pending Penumbra deal. The company expects a return to stronger performance in 2028, and said new-market opportunities could reach $25 billion by 2030.
The company is also pursuing a restructuring program targeting savings of more than $500 million over three years, with more than half of those savings expected by the end of 2027. The program adds a cost-cutting track to a forecast currently affected by the fallout from the attack and market pressures. Management, meanwhile, links its expected improvement in 2028 to the anticipated growth-cycle trough in the prior year and to addressing pressures in China, electrophysiology and WATCHMAN. The company estimated that new markets could offer opportunities worth $25 billion by 2030. The fourth-quarter forecast, which includes the continuing impact of customer inventory normalization, remains the nearest-term measure of how the resumption of operations is translating into sales and earnings.