Investors pushed shares of Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) down this morning after the world’s largest pure-play medical device company reported mixed results for its fiscal 1st quarter.
Fridley, Minn.-based Medtronic posted profits of $953 million, or 93¢ per share, on sales of $4.08 billion for the 3 months ended July 26. That’s a 10.3% top-line gain on 1.9% sales growth.
Adjusted to exclude 1-time items, earnings per share were 88¢, dead even with expectations on Wall Street, but analysts were looking for more top-line growth. Consensus sales estimates were for $4.11 billion, prompting MDT shares to dip nearly 3% this morning on The Street.
"Our Q1 results reflect that we are broadly outperforming our sector," chairman & CEO Omar Ishrak said in prepared remarks. "At the same time, we continue to strengthen and geographically diversify our business and remain confident in both our outlook for the remainder of the year and our long-term competitive position in the changing healthcare environment.
"We continue to make progress on our transformational opportunities of globalization and economic value, which we believe will establish durability in our long-term performance and create potential upside to our baseline expectations," said Ishrak. "Ultimately, we intend to transform Medtronic from being primarily a device provider today into the premier global medical technology solutions partner of tomorrow."
Medtronic confirmed its outlook for fiscal 2014, saying it still expects to log constant-currency sales growth of 3%-4% and diluted EPS of $3.80-$3.85 and adjusted EPS growth of 6%-8%, or $3.89-$3.96 per share.
MDT shares were trading at $52.67 apiece as of about 10:20 a.m. today, down 2.6%.
