Biotech Values

[microcapfun]

>>ISRG - da Vinci systems

Suspension of guidance for systems revenue and instruments and accessories revenue, makes me cautious about the increased overall 2009 procedure growth guidance. Is it the just the stocking orders or other reasons? If there were also fewer procedures/system, it might get worse.<<

I guess there are just too many moving parts right now, and management would rather not give guidance than give guidance with a huge uncertainty. But they did give some guidance, in fact the most important guidance ...

>>Moving on to procedures, our procedure growth has been stronger than we previously expected. Procedures grew approximately 60% in the first quarter consistent with our procedure growth for all of 2008. As a result, we expect procedures to grow more than 40% this year compared with our previous forecast of 35% to 40%.<< (Q1 cc)

Their modus operandi is to give guidance for the year each quarter - and then raise that guidance the quarter after. So if my estimate of 50% procedure growth for 2009 is correct (which was obtained partly by looking at the individual high-volume procedures and how adoption for each has been growing), look for them to say something like "40% to 45%" during the Q2 call, "at least 45%" in the Q3 call and then report 50% in the Q4 call.

By the way, if you just use the annualized Q1 number of 4 x 45,500 procedures you come up with 34% growth for 2009 over 2008. So that's what you'd come up with if you pessimistically assumed no sequential growth from Q1 through the end of the year.

micro