Biotech Values

[microcapfun]

>>microcapfun: Comments on ISRG’s latest quarterly results?<< (Dew)

Oops ... Guess I'm a little late.

No change in my outlook (that you linked to). Intuitive is throwing more sales people at benign hysterectomies, and that procedure is starting to take off again.

"If you recall, last quarter we had called out the fact that there had been some slowing in da Vinci Hysterectomy specifically the benign side and we had called out potentially three reason why that might be, either a reset on the premiums, insurance premiums for potentially high incidence of COBRA fallout and then just the activities that our sales people had in just having a full plate. Well if you looked at it this quarter it was actually a significant move in benign hysterectomy, so it was actually a very strong turnaround. So, if there were trends that we saw they were really favorable on the benign side of the business and I think that speaks also for myomectomy and even the uro and gyn procedures and sacral colpopexy. So the sales people certainly I think we feel that it’s still early, but we’d like the momentum that we are building with the additional feet on the street."
http://seekingalpha.com/article/215749-intuitive-surgical-inc-q2-2010-earnings-call-transcript?part=qanda

This could bring their year-over-year procedure growth up again from the wimpy 36% seen in Q2 to at least the 40's soon.

I think the stock is extremely undervalued. The company is likely to 'own' a very significant fraction of the worldwide surgical market a few years from now, with thousands of dollars going to Intuitive for each of many millions of surgeries performed each year - giving revenues in the tens of billions.

At that point, if they can maintain their whopping profit margin, the market cap would be expected to be in the $100B range.

micro