Staar Surgical Co. (Nasdaq: STAA), Orange County’s most valuable publicly traded company in the ophthalmology industry, is expanding its presence in its relatively new hometown of Lake Forest.
The nearly $5 billion-valued medical device maker, which designs, manufactures and markets implantable lenses for the eye, earlier this month said it is adding to its headquarters along Atlantic Ocean Drive.
Expect more eye care visitors to Lake Forest to learn about the company’s Implantable Collamer Lens, also known as ICL. The addition is what the company is calling the ICL Experience Center, a new in-house facility for surgeons and staff that use its products during operations. Staar has already implanted more than 1 million vision ICLs to date.
A first of its kind for Staar, the center “will offer surgeons and their staff in-person didactic training, surgical simulation and marketing education and training,” according to Chief Executive Caren Mason.
“The center will feature Staar’s next-generation ICL planning ecosystem, which connects and integrates with the diagnostic equipment surgeons currently use for case management,” Mason told analysts earlier this month, following the company’s third-quarter earnings results.
Mason said the company expects to open the experience center in the first half of 2022.
Monrovia Move
The center’s addition is a notable sign of local growth for Staar, which moved its headquarters from Monrovia to Lake Forest about two years ago. Shares in the company have roughly tripled in price since the move.
Its Lake Forest headquarters, just off Bake Parkway, run some 21,000 square feet, according to CoStar Group Inc. records.
Along with executive offices, the headquarters facility contains “operational facilities we expect to use for future manufacturing of Staar’s presbyopia lenses, EVO Viva,” the company said in its latest annual report.
Analysts are projecting the company’s revenue will climb 41% this year to $231 million, followed by 28% growth to $295 million in 2022.
FDA Waiting Game
The new experience center comes as the company is preparing to get U.S. regulatory approval for the new EVO family of myopia lenses.
The EVO implantable lenses treat farsightedness.
The new product is sold widely in China, Staar’s largest market, as well as other Asian and international markets. In the U.S., it remains “under customary interactive FDA review,” according to Mason.
The company had previously hoped to get FDA approval by the end of October, but “we were basing that on pre-COVID guidelines,” Mason told analysts.
Due to COVID, the FDA “has been a bit challenged,” she said.
After Staar gets regulatory approval, it’s planning to up its presence in the U.S., Mason told analysts last month.
Upon FDA approval, “we will add at least one additional major metropolitan market to our advertising program and, in 2022, markedly increase our consumer advertising investment related to celebrity social media and digital campaigns,” she said.
