Getting ready for a move up: Summit Technology, NASDAQ: BEAM
Autonomous' LASIK Hyperopic PMA Scheduled for FDA Panel Review
siliconinvestor.com
The laser vision correction stocks took a beating during the second half of 1999 mostly due to the perception of a yet to materialize price war within the industry. Summit, lumped in with VISX, was especially vulnerable due to weak 1999 earnings.
The last FDA review saw BEAM stock spike to 29+ in July. It's highly probable that the upcoming review will result in approval, recasting the company as the sector leader in terms of technological advantage. Not a whole lot of risk here either. This past year's earnings were damaged by the acquisition of Autonomous Technologies and subsequent spending necessary to get ready for this upcoming PMA as well as LADARVision(TM) development and marketing expenses. LADARVision was the target technology of the acquisition.
The company is accelerating manufacturing with backlog orders projected for another year. Each laser sold builds a residual per procedure income.
Beyond LADARVision, the company's plans are CustomCornea(TM). Simply put, LADARVision utilizes the same eye tracking technology used by the military's Apache Gun Ship helicopters for line of sight target acquisition. That system was developed by Autonomous. CustomCornea uses both the eye tracking technology and a ray trace technology to build a custom ablation profile and direct the laser to correct for, not only surface refractive errors, but internal eye errors as well. The result is a surgical procedure that results in "better than perfect vision." (Anything lower than 20/20 such as 20/12 is considered better than perfect, a condition very rare in nature) While there are several other companies developing similar technologies, only Summit Technology has all the pieces of the puzzle under single management control, and already working together and currently being tested on human eyes.
As always, due diligence recommended before valor.
HerbVic |
