So is the MDT S670 stent for real? Would like to get feedback from hospitals using both the MDT S670 and the GDT Tristar stents. From the perspective of this article it looks like MDT is gaining the most.
Comments,
Mike
Medtronic revives lagging stent business, competes for lead with Guidant
Terry Fiedler / Star Tribune
Medtronic's biggest deal ever, the $4.3 billion acquisition of Arterial Vascular Engineering, quickly became its biggest headache.
From the time that Medtronic began to get serious about the company in the summer of 1998 to the closing of the deal in January 1999, AVE's market share in its key business of coronary stents plummeted from a strong 30 percent of the U.S. market to 10 percent.
Medtronic's stock took a hit as investors worried that the company might have paid billions for a flash in the pan.
Now, though, about a year after the deal closed, Medtronic's stent business is in the midst of a comeback in the $1.4 billion U.S. market, led by its newest stent, the S670. Stents are tiny metal coils that prop open formerly clogged arteries.
"There was some hand wringing," said John G. Kinnard analyst Tim Nelson said, but "Medtronic has come back strongly in the coronary stent market."
Lehman Bros. analyst David Gruber calls the progress "a fundamental turnaround."
Gruber estimates that Fridley-based Medtronic had about 30 percent of the U.S. stent market in December. That's up from 18 percent in October and from about 10 percent early last year.
Medtronic's gains, he said, came at the expense of both Indianapolis-based Guidant, the market leader, and the other main player, Boston Scientific.
Nelson put Guidant's fourth-quarter market share in the high 40s, with Medtronic at 25 and Boston Scientific third.
Boosting Medtronic's fortunes was the earlier-than-expected Food and Drug Administration approval of the S670 in mid-November. Guidant's latest stent approval was near the end of December, while Boston Scientific is expected to have a new generation stent on the market by the end of the first quarter.
Gruber said Medtronic could record $80 million to $100 million in stent revenue in the first quarter, compared with $77 million in the fourth quarter.
Before it acquired California-based AVE, Medtronic was a minor player in the vascular market, which includes such products as stents and angioplasty catheters. It wanted to be more competitive with the likes of Guidant, which was successfully bundling stents with other medical devices, such as defibrillators, for sale to purchasing groups and health-care providers.
A Medtronic turnaround in stents means the elimination of a big area of uncertainty in a company that otherwise is "hitting on all cylinders," Gruber said.
Stock in Medtronic, which is a leading maker of pacemakers, defibrillators and neurologicals and spinal markets, is up 17 percent since the approval of the S670 was announced. The shares closed Wednesday at $44.93ó, up 56¬ cents.
Medtronic is Minnesota's most valuable company, with a market capitalization of $53 billion.
¸ Copyright 2000 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
|
