Question-and-Answer Session
Louise Mehrotra
We will now open the floor to questions. If you could wait for a microphone as we are webcasting the meeting.
Rick Wise - Leerink Swann
Clearly device group had a terrific quarter, very solid performance this quarter but when you look at some of the pieces, let’s say Biosense Webster, my impression is its a little slower growth then the stronger double digits we’ve seen. Are you seeing any change, any rebound in procedures, more broadly or conversely are you seeing any signs of procedure slowdown anything getting worse? I’m asking post the St. Jude pre-announcement talking about inventories or procedures.
Alex Gorsky
There are a couple of points to consider. First of all what we’re using today is second quarter data, we don’t have the third quarter data yet so it’s important. One of the things I found in my transition from Pharma to Devices is the challenge of trying to read the data very accurately. Most of our comments, really all of our comments are predicated upon second quarter data. What we saw is obviously in any areas where there were discretionary procedures or elective procedures we’ve seen the impact of the global economy. Specifically in things like aesthetic procedures we’re seeing those down about 20%.
We also felt in areas that were associated with any capital spending obviously that was an issue for us in our ASP business, some of our Biosense Webster. We also have a pretty good indicator, we believe, of the general surgery market by our sutures. We think they’re actually a good analog. Usually that market grows at about 1% or 2% in volume over time at a pretty steady pace. What we saw earlier this year was that market was actually down about 1% or 2%. We think that’s a good baseline of where the overall market is. Clearly we think it’s affecting those discretionary, optional surgery areas more then the baseline.
Regarding Biosense it’s difficult to say, we saw the softness in the stent market so that we think there may be people avoiding surgery for a number of reasons. We’re obviously watching it very closely to see how it compares later. Finally what I’ll say whenever we’re looking at year to year comparisons it’s important to remember what happened the previous year that may have impacted the results and that’s certainly the case I think in the cardiovascular side of things.
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