Haven't visited for a while since I basically have forgotten Titan as an investment. Haven't sold because miracles can happen; barely worth the effort to sell anyway.
SPORT is a technologically good, maybe even great, design, with no end of potential for continued improvement as a platform. It should be an alternative platform with DaVinci. Hell, it is basically ready to put in use now, except for the destructive time and cost of regulatory approval.
What didn't materialize was a market for it. Most surgeons are training as they always have and content with the state of their art and any niche technology aids. I know many good surgeons who couldn't care less about SPORT. If any of the big player medical companies thought they could really push SPORT to premier platform status under their name they would have bought it up long ago. Management would have accepted a high-enough price if offered.
Despite all the rosy projections, there has just never been a market. DaVinci was a fortuitous aberration, just like Apple was in personal computing technology. Forty years later, Apple is still Apple, nobody else quite like them or in their "space", even if they are finally loosing their steam which was Steve Jobs.
My prediction: there will be no next DaVinci, just multiple niche players for surgical specialties. For at least 10 years. Then they will coalesce under some international information standard, like the Verb concept. By that time, SPORT technology will have been superseded. The patent holders may make some money in the short term.
Management's mistake has always been to try and go it alone.
I don't fault myself for investing in Titan. Lots of reasons to think it was a good idea. Kudos though, to those who read the market disinterest clearly (and let's admit it has been staring us in the face for the last 6-7? years), and managed their exit to avoid the worst losses.
