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Biotech / Medical : VISX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Mac who wrote (1639)	2/22/2000 9:41:00 PM
From: HerbVic	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1754

I'm definitely disappointed, and view this more as a deperation measure by VISX to protect its installed base even at the expense of earnings, rather than risk seeing laser after laser traded in for competing systems. Agreed. The dynamics are complex, but the management team had to be seeing a runaway trainwreck in the making to pull the stunt they just did. The $250 per procedure fee was a building residual. Cutting it by 60% means that it must have been as good as lost anyway. I see the market splitting along quality of performance lines. The big question at this juncture is, "how elastic is it?" Are there enough fence sitters waiting on cheaper procedures to make the move a sound one for VISX? Perhaps, but I really doubt it. The numbers don't add up. But VISX wants to hold on to practitioners while they get their act together on wave front technology. The "$150 per" boost to a high volume clinic's returns amounts to quite a plum by the end of the quarter. However they may have unwittingly provided the means for their own demise. The income boost afforded by the steep discount may produce sufficient revenue to purchase an upgrade to a CustomCornea(TM) system which would work in conjunction with installed VISX Stars(TM) (though not as well without an eye tracker), or a LADARVision(TM) system, or both. One must also consider the fence sitters here too. At least some unknown quantity of potential patients are simply waiting for the technology to mature. After all, they each have only one pair of eyes. On waking to the possibility of permanent fix eye correction, one can easily see the necessity of making the expensive procedure worth it on the first try. The Doctors want to give their patients "better than 20/20 vision" and being able to promise them that is what will really open up the market. IMHO HerbVic