Nearly a month after reaching a new high mark, the medtech industry once again shot up to reach another peak in its mid-pandemic rebound.
MassDevice’s MedTech 100 Index — which includes stocks of the world’s largest medical device companies — finished last week at 100.75 (Dec. 4), marking a 2.6% uptick from the 98.23 points registered at the end of the week prior (Nov. 20).
The new high bests the mark of 100.65 set on Nov. 9, setting a new all-time high since the index started being recorded on Jan. 1, 2001.
Medtech stocks had been on the rise over the past several weeks, following the election of Joe Biden as president of the U.S., positive news regarding the effectiveness of Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate, and shortly after that, the report of Moderna’s 94.5% effective vaccine candidate further contributed to a leap.
The new peak sees the index sitting more than eight points ahead of the pre-pandemic high of 92.32, which the market reached on Feb. 19, and now it appears the index is leaving any other previous high points well behind it. To date, medtech stocks have increased by 9.1%.
Medtech’s stock performance somewhat mirrored the overall markets, with the S&P 500 Index performing well with a 1.7% rise, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was similar to the S&P, posting a 1% increase.
Medtech’s lowest point during the COVID-19 pandemic remains at 62.13 on March 23. Since then, the industry’s stocks have experienced 62.2% growth in total, as of the end of last week.
The industry continues to plug along and businesses continue to operate through the pandemic. Here are some of the major highlights from the past week:
- Medtronic CEO Geoff Martha says pandemic emphasized need for reorg
- 7 takeaways about the COVID-19 vaccine with infectious disease expert Paul Offit
- 3M to lay off another 2,900 in $300M restructuring
- Olympus buys Veran Technologies for $340M
- BD to put $1.2B into drug delivery plant expansions
- Boston Scientific to sell BTG Specialty Pharmaceuticals for $800M
