A Heartwarming Tale of a Medtech Company Turning Itself Around

Here's a Boston Scientific article recently published at the Motley Fool. Read it here.

The past couple of years have been tough on medtech companies. Few of the industry leaders that derive their revenue solely from medtech sales have had a rougher time than Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE: BSX) . While industry stalwart Medtronic, Inc. (NYSE: MDT) has posted steady gains, Boston Scientific has been losing ground over the past 5 years.

Losing heart

The cardiovascular segment remains the company's largest, but sales during the third quarter of 2013 were a paltry $667 million; that would be $2.67 billion on an annualized basis. In 2007, that figure was $6.56 billion. That is a slight improvement over 2012's dismal performance, however, when the company's share price nearly fell through the $5 dollar range.

The intensely competitive fields, cardiac rhythm management (CRM) and interventional cardiology, still represent the majority of the company's sales. The bleeding has stopped from the CRM segment, but growth is currently flat. Bringing those numbers up will be a difficult task going forward. Over the past several years, Medtronic also had difficulty achieving growth in its CRM segment. Its sales in the most recent quarter were up 4% year over year at $1.27 billion, however. Odds are that Boston Scientific will continue to operate in its shadow.

Pounce on the weak

Although Boston Scientific might not be stealing Medtronic's piece of the CRM market, St. Jude Medical Inc.'s (NYSE: STJ) grip has been slipping.

Read the full article only at the Motley Fool.

What's Going To Drive Growth At Medtronic Going Forward

This piece on Medtronic is intended to be the first of a two part series. Here are the first two paragraphs. Read the complete post here.

Medtronic (MDT) is a global leader in medical device technology from concept to sale. Although it is dwarfed by Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), General Electric (GE), and Siemens AG (SI), it is the world's largest medical device focused company. It has produced steady top line growth for over a decade.

Overall the medtech industry should experience a CAGR of about 4.5% over the next five years. Although in-vitro diagnostics is likely to be the fastest growing segment in the coming years, this is a thriving industry expected to grow across the board.

In this post, I would like to outline the factors likely to allow Medtronic to grow at a modest, but steady rate over the next five years and beyond. In the near future, once the market produces more data on recent product launches, I'll cover the negatives. More specifically, the US excise tax on medical devices, pricing issues in Asia, CoreValve litigation, diabetes, and transcatheter valve competition.

Continuing, but tapering growth

Over the past decade Medtronic has managed to grow its top line by a CAGR of 8.76%. Per share earnings have also steadily increased at a slightly higher rate. I've included a chart below with quarterly periods to illustrate the company's rock steady earnings.

Again, you can only read the complete post at Seeking Alpha. Here's the link.