Agreed; Mr. Genova has his assignment and is running with it. And Medtronic isn't playing games with anyone. They never do.
If anything, the monstrosity that is Hugo has proven that there is no viable alternative to create another player in the robotic surgery field. Trixie has had the multi-pod floor-hogging design available to the market and reception has been extremely poor. My belief is that there will be a new Hugo, whether single port or multi-port (or dual-port; I will explain). It will use some of Titan's IP to be a much more sleek design. Maybe it will be some variant such as four arms, each pair via a duplicate of Titan's single port; by allowing two entry points and four arms, it would allow for a much wider range of motion based on the separation of the two entry points. Meanwhile, Titan's current design which is nearly complete will get their (MDT's) initial foothold in the marketplace, and the "double-Enos" (or some other version of Medtronic's own flavoring) can follow when it is complete.
I don't think it's a matter of Enos rivaling Hugo; I think it is a co-development project in that Enos needs to get to market as quickly as possible to establish that foothold, and ongoing development for the bigger system can proceed using Titan's IP for putting Hugo on a major diet!
The value of Titan goes well beyond Enos because the IP will likely be the basis for a multi-tiered offering for their eventual product line. Just my guess. We should know by the end of next year when Enos gets approved and the trimmed-down Hugo is re-debuted.
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The mazor deal was valued at 22 x earnings. Mdts ceo mentioned conservative estimates for hugo is to grow the MITG rev by 2 to 2.5%. RTGs annual rev was 8.4b. If we think sport can rival hugo in terms of potential rev then that puts a 4.6B price tag on us. I dont think mdt is playing games with titan. They want to take market share from the competition and are prepared to invest towards that goal. They spent 2.3B on R and D last year. All titan has to do is let genova do his job and move development forwards.
