Medtronic CEO Omar Ishrak spoke about several key topics during the company's fourth quarter fiscal year 2018 conference call, according to a transcription in Seeking Alpha. Noticeably absent, however, was in-depth discussion about the company's expectations for the Mazor X spinal robot.
When asked about a timeline on the update for robotic technology, Mr. Ishrak said, "Robot is a major program for us, and obviously we are going to talk about it [at Investor Day]."
The company's Institutional Investor & Analyst Day is June 5. In the meantime, here are four quotes from Mr. Ishrak during the fourth quarter conference call.
On value-based care models: "We continue to make progress in creating new value-based business models that directly link our therapies to proving outcomes. With our direct related value-based healthcare arrangement, we now have over 1,100 hospitals under contract, covering over 38 percent of our U.S. CRHF implantables revenue helping to drive sequential market share gains in ICDs, CRTs."
On spine line growth: "We grew our spine business as reported 1 percent and when you combine that with our enabling technologies, like spine navigation and robotics, we grew closer to 3 percent. So we believe that this is definitely outpacing the competition."
On the softening spine market: "Regarding the softer market, what we are seeing is that historically, the procedure growth has outpaced the pricing pressure for maybe a net 2 percent to 3 percent global market growth. But in the last couple quarters, that procedure growth has softened and it has not outpaced price declines, the price pressures. So you are seeing more of a flat to slightly down market. That's why I am pretty excited about our performance."
On Medtronic's spine presence in China: "In China, which is a big business for us, our spine business grew 8 percent. So our outside of the U.S. growth is stronger than our U.S. growth and pulling up that business."