Stryker (NYSE: SYK) stock plunged this week after its CFO said the orthopedic and surgical device giant is still managing supply disruptions after an Iran-backed cyberattack earlier this year.
SYK shares are down more than 10% over the past five days, trading at around $273 apiece, though the stock was up more than 1% today.
During a Sept. 8 presentation at Wells Fargo’s 21st annual healthcare conference, held in Boston, CFO Preston Wells said Stryker’s peripheral vascular business, acquired last year through the $4.9 billion purchase of Inari Medical, hadn’t recovered as company officials expected. The business involves catheter-based mechanical thrombectomy devices.
Wells explained:
“As we talked about at the end of last year, we obviously had some sales force execution things that we were working through as we were kind of bringing the sales force up to a Stryker standard. We got that to a point in the first quarter that we felt really good about where that was headed only to have the cyber event. … Our manufacturing was taken down for several weeks. We brought that back up. And for all of our existing businesses, it’s just a process of restarting. You restarted back on the processes that you have and … you’re off and running. On the peripheral side, … there’s a lot of process things that have to still get improved as that business is able to ramp and scale. And so as we think about integrations for us and we integrate manufacturing, you’re always going to run into some things over time.”
Stryker now expects to rectify peripheral vascular business challenges the fourth quarter of 2026, according to Wells. The company had previously said it planned to work through issues by the third quarter.
William Blair analysts led by Steven Lichtman described the peripheral vascular problems as among a number of incremental headwinds described during Stryker’s Wells Fargo presentation. “The integration of the legacy Inari manufacturing facility into Stryker’s system is taking longer than expected, with the setback of the March cyberattack having ripple effects. Management talked about a potential 70- to 80-basis-point impact to third-quarter sales (about $45 million on our estimate).”
