By TOM MURPH-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

John­son & John­son is sus­pend­ing sales fore­casts for its COVID-19 vac­cine on­ly a few months af­ter say­ing the shot could bring in as much as $3.5 bil­lion this year.

A glob­al sup­ply sur­plus and un­cer­tain­ty about fu­ture de­mand — fu­eled in part by vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy in some de­vel­op­ing mar­kets — prompt­ed the change, J&J said Tues­day. The com­pa­ny al­so re­port­ed a bet­ter-than-ex­pect­ed first-quar­ter prof­it and an­nounced a div­i­dend in­crease.

J&J’s one-shot vac­cine brought in $457 mil­lion in glob­al sales dur­ing the first quar­ter, while the com­pa­ny’s phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sales as a whole to­talled near­ly $13 bil­lion.

The vac­cine reg­is­tered on­ly $75 mil­lion in sales in the U.S. or about 25% less than what it rang up af­ter de­but­ing in last year’s first quar­ter.

J&J has said it doesn’t in­tend to prof­it from the vac­cine. But it said in Jan­u­ary that the shot could bring in be­tween $3 bil­lion and $3.5 bil­lion in sales this year, as coun­tries con­tin­ue to fight vari­ants of the virus.

De­mand for ini­tial vac­cine dos­es and boost­er shots has slowed since shots from J&J, Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na en­tered the U.S. mar­ket last year. More than 82% of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion age 5 and old­er has al­ready re­ceived at least one vac­ci­na­tion dose, ac­cord­ing to the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion.

Op­tions from Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na al­so have been much more com­mon­ly used in the Unit­ed States.

U.S. reg­u­la­tors al­so have said that most Amer­i­cans should re­ceive the Pfiz­er or Mod­er­na shots in­stead of J&J’s ver­sion due to a rare blood clot­ting prob­lem tied to the shot.

Vac­cine sales are a small part of the to­tal rev­enue pic­ture for John­son & John­son. The com­pa­ny al­so sells med­ical de­vices, con­sumer health prod­ucts like Band-Aids and a range of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. That in­cludes the can­cer treat­ment Darza­lex, which brought in $1.86 bil­lion in the quar­ter.

Over­all, J&J’s prof­it fell 17% to $5.15 bil­lion in the first quar­ter, as re­search and de­vel­op­ment costs and oth­er ex­pens­es climbed. Ad­just­ed earn­ings came to $2.67 per share, as to­tal rev­enue grew 5% to $23.4 bil­lion.

An­a­lysts ex­pect­ed, on av­er­age, earn­ings of $2.58 per share on $23.62 bil­lion in rev­enue.

J&J said Tues­day that it now ex­pects 2022 ad­just­ed earn­ings of $10.15 to $10.35 per share, a drop from its pre­vi­ous fore­cast that com­pa­ny of­fi­cials at­trib­uted to for­eign cur­ren­cy rate changes.

Wall Street ex­pects, on av­er­age, earn­ings of $10.55 per share.

Sep­a­rate­ly, the com­pa­ny said Tues­day that it was rais­ing the quar­ter­ly div­i­dend it pays share­hold­ers by 7 cents to $1.13 per share. That will hike the an­nu­al pay­out to $4.52 per share from $4.24.

Shares of New Brunswick, New Jer­sey-based John­son & John­son, which is a com­po­nent of the Dow Jones In­dus­tri­al Av­er­age, climbed 3% to $183.03 in late-morn­ing trad­ing.

The Dow was up around 1%.