Abbott Labs - FT.com And then, nothing happened. It has been six months since Abbott Laboratories announced that it would split into a branded pharmaceuticals company and a healthcare company selling nutritionals, devices, diagnostics and generic drugs. The break-up is still scheduled for the end of this year. But Abbott's shares have behaved as if no one much cares. They have returned 16 per cent since, all of 2 per cent better than the S&P 500 and the S&P 500 healthcare indices. To be fair, the two other mega-cap diversified healthcare companies, Johnson & Johnson and Novartis, have both underperformed the indices significantly. But Abbott is outgrowing those companies. Along with its first-quarter report on Wednesday, Abbott forecast high-single-digit earnings per share growth for the year. J&J expects 3 per cent growth at most, while Novartis expects declining profits. Abbott's share price performance may appear to defy logic. Nearly a third of the healthcare company's sales will come from nutritionals, for example. Pfizer is reportedly on the verge of selling its nutritionals business to Nestlé for about $9bn, or four times last year's revenues. Abbott as a whole trades at a very pharma-like 2.3 times sales. Surely there is value to be released? There are countervailing factors, though. Pure-play generic drug and medical device companies are not commanding the prices they once were. And Abbott's pharma business may sell at a discount to peers after the split. Just one drug, Humira, accounts for half of sales, and without it the business would not be growing at all. So the sum of the parts may not be worth more than the whole. If it is not, the only reason to pay for a split company is that the pieces, because of their "focus," will be better managed. That is a tricky proposition to prove in advance.