Irvine’s Edwards Lifesciences Corp. is expecting higher profits in 2008 and continues to focus on its core heart valve operations.
Edwards is selling its LifeStent device, used to treat diseased blood vessels, to C.R. Bard Inc. of Murray Hill, N.J. for $140 million.
The heart device maker is selling LifeStent as part of its effort to focus on core heart valve operations. Edwards has lost market share to key rival St. Jude Medical Inc.
“Although sales are growing, the LifeStent product line is generating operating losses,” Chief Executive Michael Mussallem said in a release. “Achieving leadership in the peripheral vascular market would have required substantial additional investment.”
Edwards also recently offered Wall Street updated profit and sales guidance.
This year, Edwards expects a profit of $118 million to $120 million. Sales are forecast to be $1.07 billion to $1.11 billion for 2007.
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Edwards’ LifeStent device: selling for $140 million |
The company expects to see a profit gain of 11% to 14% in 2008, and sales up 8% to 13% to $1.16 billion to $1.21 billion.
Edwards also expects to generate free cash flow of $155 million to $165 million.
Analysts on average have expected Edwards’ 2008 profit to grow 11% and sales to come in at $1.15 billion.
During an investor conference in New York, Edwards also gave updates on some of its products, including the Sapien aortic heart valve. Officials said they expect Sapien sales to top $20 million next year.
Sapien is approved in Europe, but the Food and Drug Administration hasn’t cleared it yet for domestic use. Eighteen European customers have ordered Sapien, Edwards said.
Advanced Medical Directors
Advanced Medical Optics Inc. elected two new directors earlier this month, including one from ValueAct Capital Partners LP, an activist hedge fund that’s the Santa Ana company’s largest stockholder.
The directors are G. Mason Morfit, 32, a partner at San Francisco-based ValueAct, and Daniel Heinrich, 51, senior vice president and chief financial officer for Clorox Co., the Oakland consumer products company.
The move increases Advanced Medical’s board to 10 members.
ValueAct’s Morfit is also a director at Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, the Aliso Viejo-based drug maker.
“Each bring distinct experiences that will broaden and enrich our board,” said Chief Executive James Mazzo in a release.
Mazzo pointed to Morfit’s stockholder, governance and capital markets expertise and Heinrich’s financial expertise and understanding of the global consumer market as qualities they would bring to Advanced Medical’s board.
ValueAct is known as an activist shareholder that presses a company’s management to make changes. The fund now owns some 15% of the contact lens solution and eye surgery company.
ValueAct and Jeffrey Ubben, its managing partner, opposed Advanced Medical’s $4.23 billion bid this summer for rival Bausch & Lomb Inc.
Advanced Medical eventually walked away from Bausch, which was bought by private equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC for $3.67 billion.
UCI Plans Medical Building
The University of California, Irvine is spending $40.5 million on a medical education building.
The 65,000-square-foot facility is scheduled to be finished in November 2009. In a release, UCI said it would be the “hub of all educational activities” for its more than 400 medical students.
Features include a telemedicine facility to train students who will deliver healthcare to underserved agricultural and remote regions of California. The building is also going to house UCI’s Program in Medical Education for the Latino Community, which specializes in training doctors who will serve Hispanic communities.
A majority of the building’s funding,$35 million,comes from a voter-approved state bond.
The medical education project isn’t the only health-related construction work the university has under way. Work continues on its $427 million New University Hospital that will supplant the existing UCI Medical Center in Orange.
Bits and Pieces:
Ware Malcomb Architects of Irvine said it was awarded the Town and Country Medical Office project in Orange. Town and Country is a 65,370-square-foot medical office building Orange-based St. Joseph Health System named Larry Stofko chief information officer. Stofko served as vice president for IT strategy and innovation for the 14-hospital, three-state Catholic healthcare system for the past seven years before assuming his new position.
