Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Rick Wise of Leerink Swann.
Rick Wise - Leerink Swann
Good morning, everybody. A couple of questions, can you talk a little bit more about the Knee weakness, surprisingly if it does. First, were you surprised? Second, do you think that the new Hips will turn things around? So, one, do you expect to see that turnaround starting early in the year or is this a process that's going to take the full year?
David Dvorak
I think on the Knee side of things, obviously there has been a combination of factors that have contributed to the performance declining in the second half of 2008. The most significant of those really have been the training and education slowdown. As we said, we got some of the surgical institute events back up and running at the end of the second quarter, but that pace continues to accelerate and the full offering of medical education events is now being implemented. So we'll see improvement on that front.
We have some other offerings that I discussed in my script that we'll be unveiling at the academy meeting as well and then the collaborative relationships with surgeons contributed to that as well, Rick. So I think that we have ironed out many of those root causes of the instability in our Knee business and we'll see that stabilize as the year progresses.
It's also important to note that even on the Knee side, some of these disruptive factors that we faced in 2008 causes the sales force to end up in a pretty defensive mode and we're seeing the beginnings of our group of sales force folks getting reoriented towards going on the offense, and you're going to see more and more in the sequential progression of our revenue growth in 2009 on that front.
Hips, all the same factors would apply on that side as well, but here you also have some pretty significant product gaps and some field actions in the Durom area that were disruptive in 2008. We feel very strongly about the quality of our current stem offering, have some great innovations that are currently in the marketplace, but the pacing items to restore the growth rate to our hip business, we see as being the introduction of the cup side.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
