Nevro (NYSE:NVRO) shares ticked down yesterday despite second-quarter revenues that came in well ahead of analysts’ expectations and just beat the company’s own forecast.
Redwood City, Calif.-based Nevro posted losses of -$11.5 million, or -40¢ per share, on sales of $78.02 million for the 3 months ended June 30, widening its losses by 32.9% on sales growth of 40.8% compared with Q2 2016.
Analysts on Wall Street were looking for losses of -30¢ per share on sales of $75.0 million; the company itself last month predicted sales of $77.5 million to $78.0 million for the quarter.
Nevro’s Senza device, which won pre-market approval from the FDA in May, is designed to deliver up to 10,000Hz to the spinal cord, allowing it to avoid the tingling sensation known as paresthesia that bothers some patients. The FDA allowed the company to label the device as superior to other spinal cord stimulators.
“These results were driven by the continued global adoption of HF10 therapy and execution by our outstanding commercial team. We remain confident in both the near and long-term outlook for our business,” president & CEO Rami Elghandour said during a conference call with investors. “We have taken steps to improve commercial execution as we grow our sales organization to broaden access to HF10 therapy. In Q4 2016 and Q1 2017, we expanded our U.S. sales management and are now in position to support the current scale of our growing salesforce.”
Nevro stood pat on its revenue forecast for the rest of the year, saying it still expects to report sales of $310 million to $320 million.
Elghandour said the company finished the quarter with 259 sales reps, up from 232 at the end of the first quarter, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. Nevro CFO Andrew Galligan said the company expects each rep to generate sales of $1.3 million to $1.5 million after they’ve been seasoned for a year to 15 months.
Investors, perhaps reacting to the conservative sales outlook, sent NVRO shares down -0.7% to an $82.66-per-share close yesterday. The stock slid another -0.3% to $82.45 in post-market trading yesterday.
