Stryker Corporation (NYSE:SYK) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Richard Newitter: Thanks. And then maybe just a follow-up on Spine. It’s one of the few businesses that’s not back in the high single digits or better yet but you obviously have pretty good line of sight to seemingly transformative technologies and product rollouts with Mako, but that’s 1 year, 1.5 years away. So I guess, do we just kind of think of spine as a grind from here higher or stabilization and then look out when ‘25 comes around?

Kevin Lobo: Yes. I think the word stabilization, I’d probably prefer that than grind, but yes, it’s probably both, right? So Spine is a tough market, no question about it. But already with Q Guidance, we’re feeling good about that. We’ve bolstered our expandable portfolio a bit. We still have a couple of gaps that we’re looking at. Obviously, we would like to fill. But the enabling tech is really what gets us excited. And so I think the robotic platform will put us on a par at least with the competitors and then this other secret launch I talked about from coming out of instruments, which we’ve shown some surgeons kind of will put us ahead of the game on enabling technology. But yes, we have to wait. Unfortunately, it’s not ready yet.

It’s coming. The instrument launch will probably come in before the Mako, and that will be able to be used with the Q Guidance. It will be compatible with Q. So that’s where — you’ll hear about that probably earlier than you’ll hear about Mako. But yes, I wouldn’t assume we’re going to — we’re going to try to kind of keep in line with market growth, which is kind of what we’re doing right now, hold our own until we get to that period of time, and then we could start to grow more like a typical business of Stryker.

Operator: Thank you. At this time, I would like to turn the call back over to Kevin Lobo for closing remarks.

Kevin Lobo: Thank you all for joining our call. We look forward to sharing our Q3 results with you in early November.

Operator: This does conclude today’s Stryker’s second quarter earnings call. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.