During the third quarter earnings call, Zimmer Biomet President CEO Bryan Hanson touched on several areas of growth for the company, as well as progress on the remediation efforts at its Warsaw (Ind.) North Campus.
According to a transcript of the call from Seeking Alpha, he said the remediation is on track and Zimmer Biomet has kept the FDA updated on its progress. He expects the campus is on the right track for full remediation. The company is now engaging third parties to conduct a full mock audit of the remediation work and to provide feedback.
Mr. Hanson said the progress the company is making with remediation is freeing up engineering time and allowing for members of the research and development team to shift their focus back to innovation. As a result, he said the company would have a robust technology pipeline heading into next year.
"Our innovation focus has also shifted, moving much more aggressively toward enabling technology around the implant, such as robotics, mini robotics, informatics and operating room efficiency," he said. "Although the implant will always be at the center of what we do, our goal is to provide a complete ecosystem that is both customer and patient centric."
Zimmer Biomet's ROSA Knee, its robotic knee system, had strong capital sales during the quarter, and accelerated from the second quarter. Mr. Hanson said the feedback from the ROSA Knee has been strong, and it contributed to more than half of the overall growth that came from knee products in the knee business.
Mr. Hanson also addressed the spine and maxillofacial business, which improved but still performed below market. "We don't expect to see real momentum shifting in this business until sometime in 2020," he said. "The primary drivers for this shift will be working through the final steps of our channel consolidation in spine and leveraging our new product pipeline, including the recent launch of the TrellOss titanium 3D printed interbody system, upcoming launch of robotics with ROSA Spine and the recently approved tether system [for scoliosis]."