Here are five key quotes from Medtronic CEO Omar Ishrak during the recent conference call on the third quarter financial report, as reported in Seeking Alpha.
1. "We believe therapy innovation and economic value are not only the right strategy to achieve growth but that our diversification, differentiated approach and competitive advantages will enable us to deliver dependable growth in healthcare."
2. "In Turkey and Saudi Arabia, we're serving more patients as these countries rapidly develop and fund healthcare infrastructure, other countries in the region are also taking large steps to improve their healthcare system and are looking for partners like Medtronic to help to achieve better quality and value."
3. "We also expect Covidien to further strengthen our presence in emerging markets as we leverage or combine infrastructure customer relationships and breadth to products and services. This should enhance our ability to consistently contribute 150 to 200 basis points [to] Medtronic's overall growth from emerging markets."
4. "The acquisition of Covidien gives us increased financial flexibility providing an opportunity to assess our mix of dividends and share buybacks going forward which our Board typically valuate in June. In addition it solidifies our ability to deliver our commitment to return 50 percent of our free cash flow to shareholders."
5. "[Covidien's] newer technologies in the early stage technologies which are just being created will also have some traction in the emerging markets, especially with their value products that I think the emerging markets will want before the legacy Medtronic products will have traction a little longer term because those products are just being developed, but are important."
CFO Gary Ellis also discussed the company's plan to focus on cost synergies post-acquisition and plans to target $850 million in cost synergies through the 2018 fiscal year.