Although billed as a health care conference, JPMorgan's annual industry shindig is mainly a biopharmaceutical company event. Certainly other sectors of the health care universe are well represented—and plenty of hallway chatter centered on the evolving Johnson & Johnson - Boston Scientific Corp. - Guidant Corp. takeover situation despite the absence from the conference of those firms in any official capacity. But for the most part, the device community was represented by mature, big- and mid-cap companies who brought recent track records of strong sales and earnings. And these companies showed a remarkable unanimity in the message sent to investors: the value of incremental technology enhancements and the need for cost-cutting and streamlined operations to allow for investment in innovation. It was a message investors liked, representing a business model with which they feel comfortable.
On the other hand, the diversity of messages from the Big Pharma side reflected the broader investment uncertainty about the...
