Edwards Lifesciences Corporation (NYSE:EW) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And that’s really where our activation now is because we know the patients are there. We know they’re diagnosed with an echo, but they’re not moving. And so, it’s just a matter of tapping into those patients in the right way and getting the accelerated through the system.

Bernard Zovighian: What’s fair to say though is, in the past few years, we have done many pilots, many initiatives. We have extracted so many learnings. What we are doing right now is scaling. We are scaling and spending. We are spending resources in Q4 last year, this year, and the next few years. So, you are going to see more and more because we believe there are so many patients in need not receiving a treatment.

Matt Miksic: Super helpful. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question comes from Chris Pasquale with Nephron Research. Please state your question.

Chris Pasquale: Thanks. I think I heard you mention patient activation, not just with regard to TAVR, but also as an important part of the EVOQUE rollout. I was encouraged to hear from a lot of physicians back at TCT, they’re actually seeing many more of these tricuspid patients in their practice. So, as you think about the initial launch here, do you expect to have to do a lot of work establishing referral channels? Or do you think there are already a large number of these patients identified and waiting for treatment?

Daveen Chopra: Yeah. Hey, Chris. This is Daveen. No, I appreciate it. I think at least my reference toward in patient activation and how we think about in TMTT is more over the longer term, right? And we think about there’s so much learning that TAVR is happening where, yeah, we’re doing some things right now, we’re testing small things, but it’s really about over the midterm, how do we kind of help scale patient activation in a way that kind of TAVR has been doing and really helps drive kind of organic growth and a number of patients being diagnosed and being referred to our teams. Well, the other point I’ll kind of make is that, right now, I think that most of our time or a lot of our energy is really about building capabilities for getting centers up and running.

So, there are a lot of patients in the center. If you look at how our trials enrolled, especially the TRISCEND II trial, it enrolled really fast and enrolled very quickly. So, we know there’s definitely groups of patients who now are looking for options. They’ve been diagnosed and looking for options. But as we grow over time, we’re going to continue to try to build off that and leverage a lot of those kind of TAVR kind of patient activation efforts.

Chris Pasquale: That’s helpful. Thanks. And then a lot of focus, I think, rightly so on the new US products. But you’ve got a couple in Europe, SAPIEN 3 Ultra RESILIA and MITRIS RESILIA both rolling out there. Are the price premiums for those products in Europe the same as what we see in the US? And do you think you can get similar adoption in what is a more price sensitive market? Thanks.

Larry Wood: Yeah. I’ll start, and then if Wayne has anything to add, he can. The price premiums are different in the different markets because it all depends on kind of where the starting price was. So, we went for larger premiums in Europe than what we did in the US. And so, a more price sensitive market, obviously, that’s more of an issue. So, we’ve seen more rapid adoption of our RESILIA-based therapies in the US. But we continue to see this growing in Europe. And I think we’re really gaining momentum on our RESILIA platforms in total. I don’t know, Wayne, did you have anything to add?

Wayne Markowitz: Maybe just a couple of things I’d add was just if you think about our global adoption of the RESILIA premium technologies, we’re also seeing tremendous growth out of the emerging markets. And a lot of those emerging markets are finding and identifying patients that can be best treated surgically with RESILIA portfolio. So it’s been certainly a global effort, but strong growth out of the emerging markets even with premium technology, which is encouraging to see too.

Chris Pasquale: Great. Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. And our final question for today comes from Danielle Antalffy with UBS. Please state your question.

Danielle Antalffy: Great. Thanks so much, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Larry, just a quick question for you on the PROGRESS trial in moderate aortic stenosis. I mean, I know this isn’t the first time we’re hearing about the speed of enrollment in that trial that it’s certainly a positive signal. And I guess my question for you is, is there anything to read into the potential opportunity there based on the speed of enrollment? Was there anything unique about the trial that allowed us to enroll so much faster than you guys expected? And what could this mean for potential approval, number one; but number two, just more broadly, once we see this data uplift across the market?