Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Calls of Note Part 3

- Wachovia comments on Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG) saying the co seems to have become increasingly focused on international markets. Firm believes this is reflected in a change in its guidance format.

After some interim analysis the firm has sized the international market opportunities for prostatectomy and hysterectomy (for cancerous conditions only) at 140,000 and 400,000 annual procedures, respectively. ISRG has increased its investment in sales and marketing infrastructure abroad and WACH believes that recent growth trends demonstrate a significant impact here. Given this, the firm now assumes a greater contribution from international sales; their model now has ISRG's international sales increasing from 16% of total revenue at the end of 2006 to 18% by the end of 2008 (previously, they assumed that international sales remained at a constant 16% of revenue).

Firm concludes that a nominal shift of 1% of patients diagnosed with prostate cancer from watchful waiting or other treatment regimens to da Vinci prostatectomy (dVP) could potentially result in $0.02 upside to previous 2008 estimates.

Maintains Outperform rating due to strong fundamentals, low domestic and international penetrations into target markets, and potential for upside to both their and street estimates. WACH has increased their 2008 EPS estimate by $0.13 to $3.58.

Notablecalls: Anyone think ISRG will soon challenge the 52-week highs?

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