Listen to this article

The Da Vinci Xi robotic surgery system. Intuitive continues to dominate the space. | Source: Intuitive

Intuitive Surgical released preliminary Q4 results that included a slight revenue miss, though the company expects da Vinci surgical robot procedures to grow at least 12% this year.

The Sunnyvale, California-based surgical robot developer expects fourth-quarter revenue to total $1.66 billion. While that represents a 7% increase from the same period in 2021, it falls just shy of Wall Street expectations. Analysts projected revenues totaling $1.68 billion. The company expects full-year 2022 revenues of $6.22 billion for a 9% increase over the previous year.

Shares of ISRG dipped 4.3% at $259.70 apiece in early-morning trading today. MassDevice’s MedTech 100 Index — which includes stocks of the world’s largest medical device companies — rose 8.8%.

Worldwide procedures with the da Vinci surgical robot grew 18% compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. This occurred despite a COVID-19 resurgence in China, which impacted procedure volumes in the area, according to a news release. The company also placed fewer da Vinci systems compared to the same period in the previous year (369 vs. 385). Overall placements decreased 6% from 1,347 in 2021 to 1,264 in 2022, Intuitive said.

Despite fewer placements, Intuitive projects da Vinci procedures to increase by approximately 12–16% year-over-year in 2023.

COVID-19 headwinds out of China could prove transitory

The company noted that the COVID-19 resurgence impacted da Vinci procedure volumes in the U.S. and Europe. However, recoveries soon followed. The virus may continue to adversely impact its procedure volumes, Intuitive said.

“Our customers continued to grow their adoption of our training, products, and services in the fourth quarter and for the full year,” said CEO Gary Guthart. “We remain focused on supporting our customers’ drive to improve the quadruple aim in acute interventions.”

Analysts think the procedure volume headwinds prove transitory as they have with previous COVID disruptions in China. They described Intuitive as one of the highest-quality growth names in large-cap medtech.