Friday, October 21, 2011

Seeking Alpha: Intuitive Surgical - A Good Bet For Aggressive Growth Stock Investors

Surgical robotics company Intuitive Surgical (Nasdaq: ISRG) is making a habit of breaking and rewriting the rules about how medical technology stocks are supposed to work. Although equipment companies like Stryker (NYSE: SYK) have had the occasional strong quarter, this has been a tough market for capital equipment and yet, Intuitive is doing fine. The third quarter is supposed to be a weak quarter for procedures in general, especially in this low-volume market, and yet Intuitive seems to be building momentum.

Not surprisingly, this is also a stock that seems immune to what constitutes typical or “appropriate” valuation on a growing med-tech name.

A Stellar Third Quarter
Intuitive had an amazing third quarter, with 30% overall revenue growth. System sales growth of 25% was quite impressive in its own right, and particularly with a roughly 50% acceleration in the growth rate of net new robot placements. Perhaps even more impressive, though, was the 38% growth in instrument revenue and the 30% procedure growth. In a market environment where Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) and Bard (NYSE: BCR) are largely scraping to get volume growth and even a share gainer like Covidien (NYSE: COV) is having some challenges, this performance is beyond exceptional.


Read the full piece here:
Intuitive Surgical: A Good Bet For Aggressive Growth Stock Investors

No comments: