Medtronic reported flat first quarter revenue at $7.3 billion and a slight increase in spine revenue to $652 million.
Here, Chairman and CEO Omar Ishrak, President of the Restorative Therapies Group Geoff Martha and Executive Vice President and President of the Minimally Invasive Therapies Group Bob White discuss the company's spine, pain, robotic and emerging orthopedic lines. The quotes are from Medtronic's first quarter conference call, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha.
Omar Ishrak on spine sales: "In spine, while growth was flat this quarter, when our spine revenue is combined with our sales of spine-enabling technologies that are reported in our neurosurgery business, our overall revenue grew 4 percent. We believe this is a more relevant comparison of our spine results against our competition and an indication that our surgical synergy strategy is working, driving above market growth."
OI on the pain business: "Our pipeline has never been stronger and in the next 12 months or so, I am really excited about what we can do in our pain business, our Intellis and Evolve workflow is really hitting the mark here and our strong turnarounds which we expect to continue."
OI on robotic technology: "The integration of capital equipment, in this case the robot with implants and our sort of high value consumables, is a unique competence that we are delivering and it's something that would set us apart, and use our scale to really create these markets in a new and differentiated way that will set us completely apart from the competition."
Bob White on Mazor X: "We remain absolutely on track with what we talked about during Investor Day [on Mazor X]. We continue to get really good surgeon feedback. In fact, we have got additional surgeons in this week who are providing us feedback on the system."
On whether the company will grow in orthopedics:
OI: "The orthopedic space is an adjacent space and there are some areas where we can add value and we have done some early work in that area…but let's not take our eye off the main goal which is our core markets where we intend to set the standards and technology and keep driving those markets up."
Geoff Martha: "Do we feel a need to run orthopedics? I would say no. It's not a need. If there is an opportunity for us to be disruptive and scale the business in a disruptive way then we think we can do that and they will move more aggressively…On the device side, our knee is out there and we have a limited release getting some clinical experience and feedback. The hip is not yet approve[d], it's coming in the next couple of months and we will do the same with that in terms of getting some feedback. And we are still looking at spine and orthopedic bundles and unique business models. But again, until we see something that is a disruptive path forward and it has to be a better opportunity than some of the other organic opportunities that we have."
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