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On Thursday, 04 September 2025, Stryker Corporation (NYSE:SYK) presented at the Wells Fargo 20th Annual Healthcare Conference 2025, outlining its strategic plans and market performance. The focus was on the MedSurg and Neurotechnology segment, which is central to Stryker’s growth. While the company emphasized its robust innovation pipeline and positive market outlook, it also acknowledged ongoing supply chain challenges.
Key Takeaways
- Stryker’s MedSurg and Neurotechnology segment generates approximately $15 billion in revenue, representing 63% of total sales.
- The company aims to grow 200 to 300 basis points faster than the market.
- Supply chain issues persist in the Medical division, impacting some products.
- Stryker plans to update its long-term financial goals during the Investor Day in November.
- The company is committed to expanding its robotics and vascular portfolios through M&A.
Financial Results
- MedSurg and Neurotechnology account for about $15 billion in revenue.
- Stryker has increased its full-year guidance for both top and bottom lines.
- Inari is expected to contribute approximately $590 million in revenue for 2025, indicating a teens growth rate.
Operational Updates
- Stryker comprises 15 individual businesses within MedSurg and Neurotechnology, each with dedicated teams for R&D, marketing, sales, and M&A.
- The hospital capital environment remains stable, supported by a strong order book and customer liquidity.
- Key product launches include LifePak 35/335 defibrillator and the 1788 visualization platform.
- The Neurovascular business is strong globally, with significant operations outside the US.
- Stryker is addressing short-term disruptions in Inari by upgrading its commercial operations.
Future Outlook
- Stryker plans to continue M&A activities, focusing on robotics, peripheral vascular, and healthcare IT.
- The company expects Virtos to contribute to organic growth in Q4.
- The Vascular division is projected to grow 200-300 basis points faster than the market.
- Stryker anticipates high performance from Inari and aims to outpace competitors over time.
Q&A Highlights
- The company emphasized growth in both hard and soft tissue robotics.
- Stryker is committed to the neurovascular market despite competition.
- Plans to expand the peripheral vascular portfolio through acquisitions were discussed.
- Growth drivers in endoscopy, medical, neurocranial, vascular, and instruments businesses were highlighted.
- Updates on the integration of recent acquisitions like Vocera, Care.ai, Nico, and Inari were provided.
In conclusion, Stryker’s presentation at the Wells Fargo Conference highlighted its strategic focus on innovation and growth. For more details, readers can refer to the full transcript below.
Full transcript - Wells Fargo 20th Annual Healthcare Conference 2025:
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: I’m Larry Beagleton, the Medical Device Analyst at Wells Fargo, and it’s my pleasure to host this fireside chat with the management team from Stryker. With us, we have Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, and Jason Beach, Vice President, Investor Relations. The format’s going to be fireside chat, as I mentioned. By way of background, MedSurg and Neurotechnology accounts for about 63% of total Stryker sales, or about $15 billion in revenue. Andy, Jason, thank you for being here. Jason, thanks so much for being a supporter of this conference for many years. I appreciate it.
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us, Larry.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: Andy, Stryker’s MedSurg and Neurotechnology business has grown over 11% organically for the past three years. Year to date, it was over 11% as well. What do you estimate your WAMGR is, and how do you consistently grow above your end markets, which I assume aren’t growing at 11%?
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: It’s a good assumption. They’re not, but we are. The unique thing about our MedSurg and Neurotechnology business, and Stryker at least, is we’re 15 individual businesses. They’re diverse, both in terms of the categories that they play in, the types of technologies that they represent, but also in terms of call point, whether that’s a surgeon call point, or it’s an administrative call point, or even pre-hospital, which we have in our Medical division in Emergency Care. Each of these businesses, when we talked about this in our last Analyst Day, has a WAMGR that’s between kind of that mid-single-digit growth all the way up to upper single-digit growth. As you know, our stated expectation as a company is to grow 200 to 300 basis points faster than our markets. We certainly have that expectation in MedSurg and Neurotechnology. If you look across the organization, we typically do that.
Diverse businesses, like I mentioned, very focused, very specialized, which means they have their own dedicated R&D, marketing, sales, and they actually have their own dedicated M&A teams as well. They develop deep expertise in customer and in category. They learn customer needs where you might have an unmet or undermet need, and then we figure out, of course, how to properly serve that. Very focused, very specialized organization. We also, as many of you know, do a good job of leveraging M&A. I talked about our specialized M&A teams that sit inside of our businesses. We are very active across MedSurg and Neurotechnology on the M&A front. We have been busy this year. You don’t see as much of that, but you will start to see some of that coming forward. We were pretty busy last year, and over time, we’ve been very busy.
We are prolific innovators in our respective markets, particularly in our power brands. We are, in the vast majority, category leaders. A strong number one or number two player in each of the markets. We have high expectations. We will continue to have high expectations both for performance, but also how we innovate, how we show up for our customers. You can expect that we’ll continue to provide outsized growth for Stryker Corporation.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: That’s helpful. How are you thinking? I know you don’t guide by segment, but how are you thinking about the momentum in the second half of the year for MedSurg?
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Sure, yeah. I think Jason and Kevin did a good job in the last call of taking up our guidance, both in terms of the top line, but also the bottom line as well. Given I didn’t know the precise number was 63% of the company that is MedSurg, you can’t have a successful Stryker Corporation if you don’t have a fast-growing MedSurg. I think it’s a pretty good sign when they take up the numbers that we’re likely going to have a pretty solid second half in our world.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: That’s helpful. Investors are always asking what comes next for Stryker in terms of new products. I know, you know, as a company, Stryker keeps things pretty close to the vest. Any color hints you can share with us, or maybe even talk about some of the new product launches right now, like LifePak.
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Sure, yeah. We have a pretty consistent strategy, and we have for some time. It’s wrapped around our power brands. If you look at what we’ve done over the last few years, you mentioned a couple of those product launches that we’ve had. They are in our power brand categories of visualization. That would be the 1788 visualization platform, or our big professional defibrillator, LifePak 35/335, our ProCuity bed, et cetera, et cetera. A number of key product launches, System 9 on the power tool side. That’s part of our offense. You have seen, and you can expect to see over time, that in that kind of every three to five-year range, you’re going to see refreshes around those power brands. The ones that we’ve just mentioned have had a strong impact on the market. By and large, they’re kind of mid-cycle in their life cycle, launch cycle, rather.
We have some leg left on those product launches. You can bet that right behind those, we have those next-generation products that will be coming in those power brand categories. As we get bigger, as we add more businesses from an M&A perspective, wash, rinse, repeat power brands, you’ll see us maintain that regular cadence of innovation and ensure that we’re leading in the marketplace.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: That’s helpful. Andy, any changes to the hospital capital equipment environment since the Q2 call?
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Our Q2 call was just a few weeks ago. Over that period of time, we have not seen any changes. The hospital capital environment is stable. Our order book is stable. If you look at our backlog as a business, it’s quite strong. Our customers are feeling pretty good. They’re liquid. They are prioritizing and investing in our types of products. We feel good about the capital market.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: That’s good to hear. Jason, you have an Investor Day coming up in November. What can we expect at the Investor Day this fall? Can you disclose which areas you’re going to focus on? Typically, you focus on a few areas. Can we confirm that we will get an update on the long-term financial goals?
Jason Beach, Vice President, Investor Relations, Stryker: Sure. I’m not going to spoil it for you, Larry. I want to make sure that you show up on November 13th. I would say a couple of different things. Certainly, we are going to get into areas of growth as you think about the future for Stryker. We will obviously update the long-range financial plan versus what we said back in 2023 and how we see the next few years going forward.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: OK, got it. Sounds good. M&A, Andy, you talked about it, one of your core competencies. Where do you see interesting opportunities for M&A in MedSurg in Neurotechnology?
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Yeah, we have 15 individual businesses. Each of them maintains a list of interesting opportunities. Of course, we can’t do them all. All of our businesses would like to. That is a great problem to have when you have amazing opportunities to go out and execute on, and you have such a big, diverse company to be able to choose off of those lists. Although we have not been as active in the last months in terms of deals that we’ve announced publicly, Inari being a big one that we did earlier this year, we are continuing to be active all across our businesses with those interesting opportunities that we have. We’ve talked in the past about spaces that we’re interested in from a large adjacency perspective. Two of those we’ve done a pretty good job of getting into over the last few years.
I mentioned the one with Inari and peripheral vascular, but also an important space for us that you’ll see us continue to invest in, in healthcare IT. We first entered into that space just a few years ago with Vocera. We followed it up last year with Care.ai. I think you can expect more from us in those categories as well. I think you may know a few others that Kevin has mentioned over time.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: That’s helpful. Robotics is an area that.
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: That’s one of them.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: Kevin has mentioned. Obviously, you’re a market leader in orthopedic robotics. Are you thinking about soft tissue robotics and robotics more broadly? There are a lot of areas of surgical robotics that are new and are interesting. How are you thinking? How are you approaching that? I think one area that the one investor concern is that it’s an expensive area. If you do a deal in that area, people are concerned about potential dilution. How do you balance that?
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Let me just be very clear. We love robots at Stryker. We have a pretty good one in Mako, as you mentioned. The reality is robotics, whether it’s in soft tissue or hard tissue, is only going to continue to grow. The applications, the impact on the user, on the patient is positive, and will only continue to get more and more positive. We are very interested in the robotics space in general, as you mentioned, Larry. Of course, Kevin and Jason talk about that publicly. Soft tissue robotics, in particular, is an interesting space only because over time, we believe, as I noted, that we can provide really good medicine there. Now, is it right for Stryker today? Is it right for Stryker tomorrow? We will determine that over time. I’ll get to your economic part of that question here in just a second.
I will say that we are very active as a company in assessing deeply, assessing the opportunities that are out there from a startup perspective and maybe some more mature robotics organizations that you might see in the market or hear about in the marketplace today that maybe someday could be for sale. Are they right for us? TBD. We will continue to evaluate those. That being said, there are other opportunities, as you mentioned, Larry, in specialized robots. We are also looking deeply into those opportunities. Again, are they the right fit for us? I will say that should you one day see Stryker decide to enter into spaces outside of hard tissue robotics, you can believe that we’ve done our homework. We’ve gone in eyes wide open with what that means from an investment perspective. We firmly believe that that’s going to be the right decision for Stryker.
We get all of those concerns. I would say those aren’t necessarily concerns of ours. They’re realities of the marketplace. We have to synthesize those realities with what’s right for Stryker Corporation.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: That’s helpful. Let’s transition to the individual businesses. I think it would be helpful for people to unpack them a little bit, starting with endoscopy, a star performer in the first half of the year, 15% organic growth. Endoscopy is comprised of a few different segments. You’ve disclosed that in the past. Help us understand which segments are driving the growth there.
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Sure, yeah. A long-term high performer for Stryker, our endoscopy division is an interesting business in that it has four unique franchises. I talked about those 15 businesses. Four of them sit inside of our endoscopy division, starting with our core visualization business unit, what we call our endoscopy business unit. That business has our 1788. You can, of course, imagine that 1788 has been a strong growth driver for that individual business unit and for the division. We are kind of in that two-year mark of post-launch. We’re pretty much right there, and we expect to continue to get some legs out of our 1788 launch, particularly around the world, but also in the U.S. We have plenty of opportunity for ongoing upgrades of existing customers. It has been a terrific product for us to go out and take share.
Our communications business unit is also in our endoscopy division. That’s our hospital infrastructure business, operating room infrastructure business, booms, lights, tables, OR integration products for audio-visual integration inside the operating room. That has been a strong grower for us over the last several years, as you’ve had more and more new builds on the ASC side, but also new build and expansion on the hospital side. That fits in well from a trend perspective with where we are with that business, strong growth. Our sports medicine business has been a very strong creative grower for now many years, a small business once upon a time that now is growing into a more material business for the corporation, where we’ve been prolific in innovation. We’ve launched six new products in the last 18 months in the shoulder alone. We have a strong position in the hip.
We’re growing fast in the knee as well. That is a terrific business for the company. Lastly, our reprocessing business, which I think you’re all familiar with, is our fourth business unit, which has been a consistent grower for us over time and is a great brand builder for the company.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: That’s super helpful. Medical, there’s a lot to cover. We could spend a lot of time just on endoscopy. I know that. I had follow-up questions, but I want to make sure we get to other businesses that people are interested in. LIFEPAK 35/335 is in Medical, and so is Vocera, I believe. Medical has been, you know, the growth has been good, not I wouldn’t say above average. You have had, I think, some supply issues there. You’re launching LIFEPAK 35/335 outside the U.S. now. How is the LIFEPAK 35/335 launch going? I think you said the install base is over 100,000 units globally. Could the O.U.S. launch kind of accelerate the Medical growth?
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Last part of the question, yes. Today, we are now launching in Europe. EU MDR means that some of these launches have a little bit of a lag to them relative to the U.S. or the regulatory requirements. We are in Europe now. We’ve been there for a couple of months. You can expect, as we move into the next year, two, three, that you’ll start to see the impact of LifePak 335 in that market, internationally as well in total. In the U.S., we’ve been about a year on the market with LifePak 35, and it’s been every bit as successful as we hoped it would be. Of course, we build business models around each of these product launches, and we have exceeded what we expected from an impact of LifePak 335 here in the U.S. We’re upgrading existing customers. You talk about our 100,000-plus install base.
The majority of that’s here in the U.S. We’re upgrading those customers. That will have a long tail, as these upgrade cycles can be longer with a defibrillator, and we’re taking business from competitive customers as well. We feel great about it. It’s a unique technology. Our customers love it. It’s durable, and you know, we’re out there saving lives with LifePak 35, and pretty excited about that.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: Is it the supply issues that have held you back? The growth’s been good, but not stellar.
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Yeah, so our Medical division, you mentioned that there’s a lot there. There’s a lot in all of these big divisions of Stryker, and that they’re very diverse. Three individual business units inside of Medical, our Acute Care business, our Emergency Care business, and our Sage Products business sit inside of our Medical division. Some of those products, particularly the large capital, have complex supply chains. At times, you will see some disruption in supply from our Medical division. The great thing is that we do have enough diversity to oftentimes cover those challenges. From quarter to quarter, you might see some fluctuation based on that. We have stated, and we are optimistic that that will be a double-digit grower, that division, Stryker Medical, for the company this year. We expect strong performance.
Our ProCuity bed, our stretchers, LifePak 35, all strong contributors as we deal with some challenges on the supply chain front.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: That’s helpful. And Vocera.
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: By the way, LifePak 35 is not one of those challenges in terms of supply chain.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: Got it. And Vocera, so far, so good?
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: We are extremely excited about Vocera. We’re excited about it today. Our customers love the Engage platform, the middleware that we offer, the communication and care coordination that we provide through Vocera. We’re just as excited about how we continue to integrate all of these technologies that have a digital integration potential across Stryker, whether that’s beds or ProCuity, which we have integrated into Vocera today, or someday, maybe even a Mako robot that is pushing data through the Vocera platform. There is also that tie-in from a platform perspective to Care.ai. Sensors in the room, voice on the badge, and how all of that works from an AI perspective, workflow simplification, better patient care, better experience for nursing. Of course, we know nurses are under an incredible amount of stress, and we have a nursing shortage, so much more efficient care.
We’re extremely excited about Vocera, but more so, I’ll just say it one more time, excited about our entire digital vision that we have for the company.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: The other business that’s been a star performer, Neurocranial, 20% growth in the first half. Most people probably, I’ll admit, don’t know really much about Neurocranial. We probably, I don’t get questions on it. Let’s put it that way. Help us understand why that business is such a strong performer. I know you’ve talked about, I think, Virtos is in there, the interventional pain, interventional spine business. I want to talk about Virtos as well, but just help us understand why that business is so strong.
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Yeah, so there’s four businesses that are part of our Neurocranial franchise. Our interventional spine that you mentioned, our craniomaxillofacial business, our CMF business is part of Neurocranial, our ENT business, and our neurosurgical business. That makes up Neurocranial for the company. You might imagine in the neurospace that the neurosurgeon, in particular, has a lot of leverage with their hospital. They kind of get what they want. They’re saving lives. They’re treating very sick patients. We’re in that sweet spot of care. The IVS business, which you mentioned, has been one of Stryker’s fastest growers. It participates in the high-growth segments of spine, both on the pain side, but also in bone tumor ablation with our OptiBlade product. Virtos fits into that pain category. We’re very excited. We can talk more, as you said, Larry, about Virtos. That’s our interventional pain business.
We acquired Nico last year and interventional spine. Once upon a time, called interventional pain. I’m old. I’ve been around a long time. Our interventional spine business. Neurosurgical, that’s where our Nico acquisition from last year is. Nico is all about going after hard-to-reach tumors and stroke care. That’s been a great addition to our neurosurgical portfolio, helping to drive greater pull-through across that entire bag and raise our brand story in the marketplace. Neurosurgical, think about tumor removal and bone removal. Whether that’s in the cranium or in the spine or tumors primarily in the brain, that’s mostly related to both Nico and our Sonofab ultrasonics platform. Very fast growth, very innovative business, very competitive sales team in neurosurgical. CMF, long-term, great grower for us, outtaking share, moving customers to customized implants or what we call patient-specific, CT-based, and implant specifically designed for you.
That’s been a great grower for us. We continue to get traction in our ENT business, particularly as we’ve expanded our sales organization. We have launched some good new products there, but driving greater commercial excellence has led to a nice acceleration and growth in our ENT business as well.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: Virtos, you know, we’re familiar with the company before Stryker acquired it. That’s the mild procedure, right? Checks are very, very good. That turns organic, I think, in Q4. I assume that that will be accretive to organic growth. Is that fair?
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Yeah, both of those things are accurate. The deal closed at the end of Q3, so you’ll start to see organic growth coming out of Virtos in the fourth quarter. Yes, that business is accretive to Stryker’s growth, will be accretive to our growth overall. The other bit of good news is we’re ahead of our model with Virtos, so performing very well.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: That’s good to hear. Yeah, I mean, it’s hard to sustain 20% organic growth, but you know, we’ll see for a division.
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: It’s a good challenge.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: Let’s switch gears. Vascular, you renamed it. It’s still kind of the organic growth there, it’s still neurovascular. We’ll talk about Inari in a minute. That was actually one of your softer businesses in the first half. What are the trends in that business and what drives an acceleration?
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Sure, yeah. Specifically in neurovascular, neurovascular is a strong global business for us. It’s the one business in Stryker that we’re bigger outside the U.S. than in the U.S. We’re particularly sensitive to BVP as we have a big China business. You can see some movement there in terms of our growth related to various BVP activities that many companies have experienced in China. We’re not immune to that in neurovascular in particular. That is a crowded space, particularly on the ischemic stroke side. We have, frankly, been what we would consider to be below our standards in terms of our offering in ischemic stroke. We’re right in the early, early innings of launching a new large bore catheter called Broadway. We’re very excited about it. Our customers have received the product well, but it’s very early, and we expect that to be a growth driver for us going forward.
Our sweet spot as a neurovascular business is on the hemorrhagic stroke side. We have a great coil business, but we also have a nice and growing flow-diverting stent business. We are also in the early innings of a brand new launch there called Surpass Elite, our Elite system. That is also being extremely well received by our customers in early innings, but we expect that to drive growth for us going forward. Overall, new products are the game in neurovascular. When we get those new products, we drive that Stryker-level growth that you expect. We’re pretty optimistic about what we have coming in that business.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: Andy, one follow-up on neurovascular. It’s probably the most crowded space I can think of in med tech right now. I mean, you can count nine players or so, private, public companies. It’s a nice market, but it’s not huge. What are your thoughts on consolidation in that market? I mean, it seems inevitable.
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Yeah, it’s not unlike, you know, I gulp a little bit when I say this, but the core spine market is also a very crowded space. Of course, you’ve seen consolidation, like you’re mentioning, in that space too over time. I’ll talk about consolidation from our perspective. You can imagine, like we are, and we talked about earlier, very busy in that business evaluating opportunities to consolidate as well for a lot of those smaller players that are coming up or niche products that exist in neurovascular. Completely agree, crowded space, and it is ripe with opportunities for deals to happen.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: OK, and it’s an area you’re committed to, so you could participate in some of that consolidation.
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Completely committed to it. It is absolutely on the right side of healthcare. It’s great medicine. It doesn’t mean it’s easy. It is competitive, particularly on the ischemic stroke side. It’s competitive, but 100% committed to neurovascular.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: Contour, which is available in Europe, which has a good reputation, that’s still a year or two from the U.S.?
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Sure, yeah. Contour is our intrasaccular device, our one-and-done. You’ll hear those technologies called that. It’s available in certain markets outside the U.S. you just mentioned in Europe. We will, coming to a theater near you, have that in the U.S. We’re not talking specifically about launch dates here in the U.S. for that, but we’re excited about where we’re going with Contour.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: Great. Inari, the growth in the second quarter, based on your commentary, you didn’t give exact numbers, but you know, by our math, maybe slightly below 10%. You expect an improvement in the second half of the year. What’s giving you the confidence that you can accelerate so quickly?
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Very excited about Inari. As you might imagine, we did our homework, and there were lots of options, or at least plenty of options for us to evaluate in the market in the peripheral vascular space. We chose Inari for a reason. We believe in their portfolio. We believe in their science. We also believe culturally that they’re a really great fit for Stryker overall in terms of their focus on the customer and their focus on technology. That being said, oftentimes when we acquire companies, and this is not a new story, it’s not just a Stryker story, you see some short-term disruptions when you’re integrating companies. That is not something that we don’t expect. We’re experienced acquirers. We know that that happens, and we expect that.
In particular, in Inari’s case, we felt like we had the opportunity to make some important upgrades on the commercial side of the business. They have a number of really exceptional sales professionals, but we had the opportunity to go in and add some Stryker-level talent in many places. We feel like we’re through that. We feel great about sales organization stability today and where that’s going to take us from a performance perspective going forward. We also, importantly, moved in Stryker leaders in key positions. Our Division President announced on day one is Tim Lanier, who ran our very successful trauma and extremities business and happened to come to Stryker via an acquisition. He was running the shoulder business for Wright Medical, so he knows what it’s like to go through an integration. That’s brought him a lot of knowledge and credibility with the Inari team as well.
He also had six years leading the sales organization of EV3 some moons ago. He has an experience level in peripheral vascular as well. Tim’s there. We have a brand new sales leader, not new to Stryker, 20-year veteran, that we moved from one of our other high-performance businesses to lead that sales force, building the right culture, the right incentive structure, the right talent. We did the same thing on the marketing side where we took one of our high-performing star marketers and moved them from one business of Stryker into Inari. We feel great about the management team and where we’re headed with that business. I think you can expect Stryker-level performance out of Inari going forward.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: Jason, you’ve said for the year, for 2025, you’ve given a sales number right for Inari that implies growth of what, low teens, something like that?
Jason Beach, Vice President, Investor Relations, Stryker: Yeah, that’s right. In Q1 and again in Q2, we said we expect roughly $590 million of revenue for the 10 months that we will have owned them. To your point, it implies kind of teens growth for the year this year.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: Is that how you see Inari longer term, Andy, a double-digit growth?
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: The way we think about Inari is twofold. One is we mentioned at the very beginning that we expect all of our businesses, it doesn’t matter if it’s Inari or it’s our craniomaxillofacial business, or you name it, to grow faster than their markets. We like to say 200 to 300 basis points faster, at least. We expect Inari to do the same. The second part of that is you have tailwinds in market growth as you drive mechanical thrombectomy adoption in both pulmonary embolism and in DVT. You’re going to get a faster growing market spend that way, and you’re going to get Stryker growing faster than that market. You can imagine that that would equate to a strong accretive business over time to Stryker’s overall growth.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: One follow-up on that. Obviously, I guess the 200 to 300 basis points faster than market. It’s a competitive market, not only with Penumbra, who seems to be doing well. They disclosed some of their growth rates in their peripheral market. You also have new competition coming. It does seem like, I agree, the market growth is pretty strong, but growing 200 to 300, growing faster than market seems challenging.
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: It is challenging. It’s not unlike our neurovascular business. We have high expectations for our neurovascular business, and they know it. That team is accountable, and there’s improvements that we can make there. Inari, we will not back off. It’s not who we are, growing faster than our market. Yes, it’s competitive. Yes, it’s getting more competitive. We have to make our way through that maze. It’s tricky for sure, but we do the right things to control what we can control, both on the portfolio side, but also how we go to market and represent through our sales organizations. We feel like we can win in that space. I think you can expect that we will not back off of our expectation that over time, we grow 200 to 300 basis points faster than our market.
In short-term periods, could you see that change based on some new product launch or other market dynamic? You could. Over time, our expectation is that we are beating our market.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: Andy, you’ve talked about building out the peripheral portfolio. It’s a pretty heterogeneous area. How are you thinking about kind of building out that portfolio over time?
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Right, yeah. If you look at the whole total peripheral vascular universe, and certainly as you include the arterial space, we’re today really only playing in a small sliver of the total addressable market in peripheral vascular. We, of course, are looking primarily at the faster growing segments or categories of peripheral vascular. Many of you are aware of some of those that even have transacted in recent times. We’re also looking at opportunities to participate in those. You can bet that back to this M&A story, where we have dedicated M&A teams, of course, working alongside our marketing team, we are assessing essentially all of the opportunities that we can, the entire universe. We are funneling those down into the right types of acquisitions for Stryker. You can expect that we will continue to do transactions in peripheral vascular.
I won’t give you exactly, for competitive reasons, where we’re going. You can bet that we’re going to be busy there.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: You named the business vascular, which neuro, some people would define it neuro, coronary, and peripheral. Did we expect at some point in the future Stryker to also be in coronary? I’m not asking for timelines.
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: It is named neurovascular. Today, we’re focused on peripheral vascular.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: And neuro.
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Neuro, of course. Neuro relative to coronary, you obviously have a near adjacency to peripheral vascular. Also, similar types of technologies oftentimes to neurovascular. You’re right about that, Larry. We’re not getting ahead of our skis. We know what we need to do today and how we need to go out and win and prove ourselves, both in terms of ensuring that Inari was a great acquisition for our shareholders and for our customers. You can imagine over time, Stryker does find its way into new categories and segments. We’ll see where we go over time.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: OK, we didn’t cover instruments. In case there’s anyone from the instruments business online listening, I don’t want them to feel slighted. It doesn’t get a lot of attention, but it is a consistent double-digit grower. I think it’s mainly power tools and waste management. What’s driving the growth there and what’s underappreciated about this business?
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Very consistent long-term grower for Stryker. Thanks to our friends that might be listening from Instruments for asking the question. Yes, we have really strong power brands in our Orthopaedic Instruments business, which primarily today is being led by our System 9 heavy-duty power tools. We also have a launch in our next generation of Sterashield, so the hoods and togas for personal protection. That’s in that business and a handful of other categories that are there. High market share, high growth over time. On our Surgical Technologies business, its sister business unit inside Instruments, that’s where Neptune Waste Management resides. We have had incredible success over time in waste management, and we are by far the market leader in waste management. It also plays nicely from a trend perspective to trends in smoke management. The smoke evacuation business resides in our Surgical Technologies business.
That trend, of course, is more and more regulations and laws that have been put into place around, particularly states in the U.S., around smoke evacuation and surgical smoke. That plays into our hand there. We have a great business for sponge counting with our SurgiCount Plus system with Triton, which also helps to measure or quantify blood loss for patients. That business is fast growing for us as well. Really some neat categories and product technologies that we have in our Instruments business that are helping to drive strong growth for us today and have really for a long time.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: That’s helpful. I wanted to, we’re running out of time. I wanted to give you an opportunity to make some closing remarks. Maybe you can do that and also just, obviously, you’re not going to talk about MedSurg growth in 2026, but just how you’re feeling about the momentum. This has been a consistent double-digit grower for Stryker.
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Yeah, we have a pretty admirable growth profile as a company. You’ve mentioned the 11% growth over the last few years. I think most would love to have that. We don’t take that for granted. We know it takes extremely hard work, great innovation, great M&A, great sales execution, taking care of our customers. We do not expect that to change. We will continue to innovate. We’ll continue to buy companies. We’ll continue to drive specialized sales forces. We will expect to outgrow our competitors over time. We think that part of the battle to growing like that is having high expectations. We will not back off of those high expectations. You can expect that MedSurg and Neurotechnology over time will be accretive to Stryker Corporation’s growth. We expect that. We’re very excited about the future.
Larry Beagleton, Medical Device Analyst, Wells Fargo: Perfect. Thank you for being here.
Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, Stryker: Thank you. Thanks, everybody.
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