Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Your first question comes from Matthew Dodds with Citigroup.
Matthew Dodds – Citigroup
Good morning. I had a couple of questions. First, for Bill. When you look at the ICD numbers, you came almost all the way back internationally and share if you look at where you were – I mean your fiscal fourth quarter ’07 – in the US you are still a couple of hundred points below. What I am wondering specifically is, is Quattro more important in the US for single coil, and internationally is there something else there that’s made the recovery a little bit slower. And then the second question – I guess for Bill and Gary, when you look at the full year guidance, when you’ve had a really good fourth quarter sometimes in the past, the Q1 comes in a little below expectation, and Gary, now you are not giving Q1 guidance, but is there any reason to think there is going to be an acceleration through the year in fiscal ’09.
William A. Hawkins III
Let me just respond to the first question on the market share in the US and OUS. No, I wouldn’t suggest that there is any reason to believe that the Quattro is anymore important in the US than it is OUS. I mean, we feel very good about our position. We’re continuing to assert our new products and as you’ve seen, I think, we’ve recovered nicely from Fidelis and we are optimistic going forth. So, it’s a marathon, it’s on a sprint, and we keep on running.
Gary Ellis
Matt, this is Gary. Just let me make a couple of comments on the guidance. And you’re right. I am not going to give you Q1 guidance. I’ve given you kind of an annual number, but what I would expect to be an answer to your question could you see things accelerating as we go through the year. In some ways what I would say is I think you can see – the guidance I gave – the revenue itself – the revenue growth will probably be higher in the first part of the year just because of the fact that you have Kyphon obviously put the first six months that we didn’t have in last year’s numbers. So, you get to the comparison in the back half of the year. So, the growth rate in revenue will actually be probably higher in the first half of the year than they would be just in the back half just for that fact alone. Otherwise, I’d say the rest of the growth rates – and also on Endeavor – the reality would be – Endeavor you would see more growth rates in the first obviously three quarters than you would see in the fourth quarter where you have the comparison with Endeavor this year. So, growth I’d say – in revenue – growth rates would probably be higher probably earlier in the year and may be even coming down a little bit as we got closer and with tougher comparisons in the back half. On the other hand I would agree that operating leverage will continue to improve as we go through the year because some of the initiatives we have just taken underway as far as reducing cost, etc.; those initiatives will start to play out or continue to play out as we go through the year itself. We’ve seen some of that benefit in the current year, but that will obviously come over time, and so the operating leverage component of our guidance, I would say, you will start to see that playing out more as you go through the year itself versus just being in the first quarter. And just to end, I just want to highlight, we had a very strong fourth quarter, but there is no indication to us that that momentum that we had in the fourth quarter is going to hurt the momentum as we enter in the current year. We had a strong fourth quarter, but that momentum, from what we can tell at this point in time, continues to be strong. So, we feel good about even entering into the current year.
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