Here are seven quotes from NuVasive Chairman and CEO Gregory Lucier on the third quarter financial report and what to expect in the future. He discussed these points during the third quarter conference call, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha.
Gregory Lucier on making investments during the third quarter: "We made the forward-looking decision to invest in a few key areas, including clinical services business, building out infrastructure to support set fulfillment and accelerating spend on certain R&D efforts. Our interactions with surgeon partners in healthcare systems signal better market conditions and data suggests an uptick in hospital volumes in elective surgeries."
GL on why the company made investments when last quarter the company said it would tighten its belt: "As CEO, I have to make the tough calls that are in the long-term best interest of NuVasive. During the quarter, it became clear that the U.S. spine market was turning for the better and our commercial teams were building momentum. As a result, we decided not to make further operational cuts or slow R&D project funding in order to back into an operating margin guidance we shared during our second quarter earnings call."
GL on new innovations in the future: "We are making significant progress on furthering our surgical intelligence vision…We have been working behind the scenes to further disrupt the spine market with a completely new approach to robotics. We are dead set on being the leader here, and when we bring on folks to NuVasive like Scott Huennekens, the newest member of our board and president and CEO of Verb Surgical; and named incoming CEO Chris Barry, with his extensive robotics background, you get a glimpse of the competencies we are assembling."
GL on his tenure before stepping away in November: "I saw my mission to advance the company that was still being run as a start-up well past the time when it was appropriate. In the last three years, we have created a supply chain capability, stood up a new state-of-the-art manufacturing plant, deeply strengthened our commercial forces in the U.S. and abroad, and drove an aggressive technology development agenda. In fact, this year more new technology will be launched than any other time in our company's history."
GL on how the company could expand into robotics: "Our robotics effort will be more of a build than a buy. It'll be, not completely, but definitely more of a build than a buy. Like we've been doing with all of these systems, part of our goal is to build the DNA to allow us to have a long-term sustained advantage in this industry."
GL on consolidation in the healthcare space: "As healthcare systems consolidate, part of that overall evolution process is to slim down the number of vendors, and when that happens we want to inevitably find ourselves in the final mix. We like it even further now that we're able to potentially offer a complete system of technology into an operating room to make an operating room into a NuVasive room, and it changes the dynamic."
GL on future cervical growth: "We are grossly underrepresented in cervical. So this is a massive part of the spine franchise we have a very small presence in. It's one of the areas, as I'm mentioning, we're targeting over the next few years to grow by huge amounts. So we started to see some nice progress there."