Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX) saw share prices gain slightly this morning after beating Wall Street’s earnings expectations by a healthy margin, despite a $423 million write-down on the value of its cardiac rhythm management business stemming from a reorganization of the Natick, Mass.-based medical device company.
Boston Scientific reported losses of $354 million, or 26¢ per share, on sales of $1.76 billion during the 3 months ended March 31, for a top-line slide of 5.6%.
But excluding 1-time items such as the write-down, earnings were $224 million, or 16¢ per share, a full 7¢ ahead of The Street and squarely in line with Boston Scientific’s own guidance.
"We continue to be encouraged but not satisfied with our operating performance," president & CEO Mike Mahoney said in prepared remarks. "The company delivered adjusted results that are consistent with 1st-quarter and full-year guidance. We continue to make strong progress on our strategy to return to consistent sales and earnings-per-share growth."
The write-down stems from a reorganization of Boston’s business into 3 divisions: Cardiovascular, rhythm management and medsurg.
"This amount represents a non-cash write-down of our goodwill balance attributable to our global cardiac rhythm management reporting unit in the 1st quarter of 2013," the company said in a press release.
Boston Scientific lowered its forecast for the rest of the year, saying it now expects sales of between $6.95 billion and $7.15 billion, down from $7.05 billion to $7.35 billion. Full-year EPS are now pegged -6¢-1¢ (down from 29¢-37¢), with adjusted EPS at 65¢-70¢, compared with prior guidance of 64¢-70¢ – a slight increase to the bottom-end outlook.
Second-quarter sales are forecast to be between $1.74 billion and $1.80 billion, Boston said, with EPS of 7¢-10¢ and adjusted EPS of 14¢-17¢.
BSX shares were up 1.6% to $7.48 apiece as of about 1 p.m. today.
