Richard Newitter: My first question is just going back to TAVR. You know, at your Analyst Day, you had talked to, you know, an expectation and a level of confidence that you could disrupt that market in the US relatively quickly out of the gate. I’m just curious with, you know, and get something approaching 20% share of the market over time, which is what you’ve done, you know, in other markets with your disruption capabilities. I’m just curious, does anything change there with the indeterminate kind of view of what the next steps are for the US? I’m just trying to focus on that commentary a bit. You know, does your outlook for the franchise in the US change in TAVR? And then I have a follow-up.
Kenneth Stein: Yeah. Just a few clarifying points. Again, in Europe, where we set 70,000 valves and physicians use it routinely on an everyday basis. We continue to grow faster than the market there and have continued to done that for, I don’t know, 10 quarters in a row. So we make nice progress. And we’re excited about getting the large valve size approved in Europe. I believe in 2025 is the time period. In the US, you know, honestly, first of all, I would state that we’ve never quoted a market share goal for TAVR in the US. So we never said 20. I’m not sure if that was what you put in your models or not. But based on the results that we’ve seen in Europe, we’ve always been confident in our ability to have ACURATE be a meaningful growth driver in the US, as we stated in Investor Day.
You know, as a result of this, we are disappointed that, you know, we’re not going to have this launched in 2024. As we talked about, based on the data that we just highlighted in the script, and as Janar mentioned, we now need to wait for the full year data, the full one-year follow-up on the 1,500 patients, and then working with the FDA and submitting that and having a data readout by year-end 2024. And we’ll take it from there. So we — as Janar said, the trial is still active. So we do not expect any of this news to alter our 8% to 10% organic growth over the three-year period. We’re coming off of 12%. We continue to grow faster than most all of our peers and drop EPS faster than our peer group. And we’re still very committed to those financial targets.
And we’re hopeful that ACURATE will continue to be a big growth driver for us. But a lot of it depends on that data readout in fourth quarter ’24.
Richard Newitter: Okay. Thanks for that. And then maybe just on M&A, you know, you’ve been active in 2023 and congrats on Relievant and more recently Axonics early this year. I’m just curious on kind of how we should think about, you know, how aggressive and opportunistic you’ll be over the next twelve months. You mentioned, obviously your first priority remains deploying capital for tuck-ins. You know, but do we kind of think of you guys in a little bit of a digestion period or kind of steady she goes just as aggressive and opportunistic as you have been in the past?
Daniel Brennan: Sure, I can take that one. So as you mentioned, Axonics, the most recent deal we did. Super pleased with that. I think that is a classic tuck-in for Boston Scientific. It’s one, I think, we — as you look back, these types of deals, we really do well with and we’re super excited to have that close and welcome the Axonics team into the BSE family. As you said, we’ve been remarkably consistent over a long period of time. Tuck-in M&A is still the number one capital allocation priority for us and will continue to be active. In terms of how active over the near-to medium-term. This is not a major event like a major delevering event that we need to do. This is — take on a little bit of additional debt over a period of time. And then over a very reasonable period of time, we’ll be right back to where we are today relative to our leverage goal. So I look us — I look for us to continue to be active in the tuck-in M&A space in ’24 and beyond.
Richard Newitter: Okay. Again, congrats on an outstanding 4Q.
Michael Mahoney: Thank you.
Daniel Brennan: Thank you.
Operator: The next question comes from Patrick Wood with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Patrick Wood: Amazing. Thank you for taking the question and congrats, Lauren. I’d like to stick with Axonics, if that’s all right. I appreciate it hasn’t closed yet. But I’m just kind of curious, you know, Urology in Boston has a very sizable distribution network across, I guess, primarily Stone Management, but a whole bunch of different areas. How are you thinking about, you know, the ability to drive adoption in OAB faster and like really push that asset? I’m guessing, you know, having just played with the numbers, and correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s some assumption of slightly faster growth once you’ve acquired Axonics and the Street previously had in there. At least that’s where I end up with the numbers. Feel free to correct me. But how are you thinking about the commercialization really pushing that through the distribution network? Thanks.
Michael Mahoney: Sure. Well, we haven’t closed it yet. We hope to first half this year. You know, the team at Axonics done an amazing job with this platform since starting the company years ago and taking significant share and what is a strong double-digit growth market. The team at Axonics, you know, can’t speak too much for them. It hasn’t closed yet, has also done a remarkable job in a few areas. One at just the core technology where they gain — leveraged that to gain share, the clinical data that they have, the commercial excellence that they possess, and also expanding the market through their direct-to-patient marketing and awareness. So this is a significant global opportunity. And the patient awareness of this treatment is still early days.
