Intuitive (Nasdaq: ISRG) shares are down today despite fourth-quarter results that topped the consensus forecast.
Despite Street-beating results, the Sunnyvale, California–based robotic surgery technology developer also reported that COVID’s omicron wave is affecting procedure volumes.
Intuitive posted profits of $380.6 million, or $1.04 per share, on sales of $1.6 billion for the three months ended Dec. 31, 2021, narrowly increasing its bottom line by about $100,000 on sales growth of 10.5% year-over-year.
Adjusted to exclude one-time items, earnings per share were $1.30, 2¢ ahead of Wall Street, while sales beat analysts’ projections by approximately 0.8%.
Worldwide procedures performed with Intuitive’s da Vinci surgical robot increased approximately 19% compared to the fourth quarter of 2020, as last year was adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Intuitive said in a news release that the resurgence of COVID-19 late in the fourth quarter of 2021 also impacted procedures, though.
For full-year 2021, Intuitive earned $1.705 billion, or $4.66 per share, off $5.710 billion in revenue, representing a 61% bottom-line gain and 26% top-line growth compared with 2020.
Intuitive did not provide financial guidance for 2022. ISRG shares were down more than 7% at $276.90 per share in morning trading today. MassDevices‘s MedTech 100 Index, which includes stocks of the world’s largest medical device companies, was down about 1%.
