Stryker CEO Kevin Lobo and Vice President of Strategy and Investor Relations Katherine Owen discussed the device company's better-than-expected performance for the Mako surgical robotic line and concerns about the spine line going forward during the quarterly investors call.
Here are five key quotes from the call, based on a transcript from Seeking Alpha:
Ms. Owen: "We are pleased that upgrades of existing robots in the field to the total knee application are pacing ahead of plan. Upgrades of our existing customers with the big focus in Q4 which does take considerable time from our capital sales force to close. We expect to continue new robot installations as well as completing upgrades of the majority of robots in the U.S. during 2018."
"Looking ahead to 2018, we believe we are well positioned to continue to drive Mako momentum including double digit year-over-year growth in new robot installations, completion of the upgrades of existing robots in the U.S. expansion OUS and further evidence of the improved clinical outcomes with the Mako Total Knee at both AAOS and later in 2017 at AAHKS."
"I think we're just going to have to be cautious and conservative around our expectations [for spine] for 2018 because the whole market is seeing some difficulties. So, we're going to continue to invest there and we're committed to the spine market — we've got a great organization there. Fortunately we're a big enough company that we can manage through some of these challenges and still market the necessary investments."
Mr. Lobo: "We're very excited and bullish about the prospects for the future and you would recall a few years ago, we said that after we do the full launch of the total knee we expected to gain hundreds of basis points of market share and clearly this is only one quarter, but it's a terrific quarter."
"We do believe the combination of robotics and 3-D-printing is really powerful. Because born perhaps having a precise robotic assisted cut is really going to help enable that press fit…we think the two together are very synergistic and we do expect the cementless portion of Mako procedures to increase pretty dramatically."