Boston Scientific lifts earnings forecast on solid demand for heart devices
By Mariam Sunny and Christy Santhosh
(Reuters) -Boston Scientific raised its annual profit forecast on Thursday, banking on strong demand for heart devices including its stroke prevention product, Watchman, and a recovery in demand for elective surgeries.
High profit-margins and increasing demand for Watchman, which brought in sales of $323 million in the reported quarter, will drive growth at Boston for years due to the device's early launch in the market and ease of use, according to analysts.
Shares of the Massachusetts-based company, which generates most of its revenue from sales of its heart devices such as pacemakers and stents, rose nearly 1%.
A steady recovery in surgical procedures that were deferred during the pandemic, especially by older adults, as well as easing staffing shortages at hospitals have increased demand for medical devices.
Rival Abbott Laboratories also topped quarterly profit estimates earlier this month on upbeat sales of its glucose monitoring and heart devices.
Boston Scientific said it expects the impact from GLP-1 weight loss drugs on its heart devices to be "very limited" in the short-term and "minor" in the long-term as it sought to calm investor jitters over the new drugs eating into the market for medical devices.
"We expect it will take at least a decade to reach peak penetration of these products in the indicated population. And even after a decade, we expect that only a minority of American patients with obesity will be taking these drugs," Boston Scientific Chief Medical Officer Kenneth Stein said.
The company's cardiovascular unit generated revenue of $2.19 billion, a nearly 12% jump from a year earlier, beating estimates of $2.13 billion.
It now expects full-year adjusted earnings per share of $1.99 to $2.02, compared with analysts' estimates of $2 per share.
On an adjusted basis, Boston Scientific earned 50 cents per share in the quarter, beating estimates of 48 cents per share, according to LSEG data.
(Reporting by Christy Santhosh and Mariam Sunny in BengaluruEditing by Vinay Dwivedi)
