It’s a shorter list this year.
Don’t tell Edwards Lifesciences Corp.
Orange County’s largest public company (NYSE: EW) by market cap—at $45 billion last week—is also its biggest medical device maker by a wide margin.
Its local workforce is approaching 5,000 people and no slowdown appears to be in sight, thanks to a big expansion underway at its Irvine campus.
Shorter Stories
The Business Journal list of OC medical device makers ranked by employees is in fact shorter this year. We made it tougher to make the cut, requiring a minimum of 100 workers to be ranked.
More than a dozen companies we queried failed to qualify, including nine that made the list last year.
A couple were shaved off by a hair:
• Tenacore Holdings in Santa Ana, which sells parts and products, and repairs equipment, reported 92 workers.
• Sechrist Industries in Anaheim, which says its shipped hyperbaric chambers to more than 140 countries, had 90.
• Freedom Innovations in Irvine, which manufactures lower limb prosthetics, has 82.
All three have more than 100 companywide and may well be back on future lists.
Long Games
The big guys will be waiting.
Edwards outsmarted that “100 minimum” cutoff by adding 350 employees to an already top-level local total.
• That’s about one new employee a day including weekends, with time off for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• It’s more net new workers than total local worker count at each of a dozen companies on the list.
• And it’s 22% of the list total and two-thirds higher than the next-ranked device maker.
No. 2 Applied Medical Resources Corp. in Rancho Santa Margarita still did well, hiring more than a hundred new employees—also beating in new workers the minimum total cutoff for all firms. That was good for 4% growth, and Applied Medical is knocking on the door of 3,000 total workers.
Add another hundred next year and they’re in the club.
Five other firms show at least 1,000 workers. They include Glidewell Dental Laboratories in Irvine at an estimated 2,000 and MicroVention Inc. in Aliso Viejo (see related story, page 3), a Japan-owned maker of minimally invasive devices to treat vascular diseases of the brain.
The seven-largest medical device makers are pushing about 16,000 workers locally—more than 12 times that companywide across the firms—and heart valve maker Edwards has nearly a third of that local total.
Big Moves
Several companies grew employee count by double digits including:
• No. 16 Glaukos Corp. (NYSE: GKOS) added 70 workers to 280, for one-third local growth. The company makes devices to treat glaucoma, is expanding into its new headquarters, said this summer it will license technology from a swiftly growing, privately held San Diego firm to expand its offerings, and year-to-date the San Clemente company, preparing a move to Aliso Viejo, has added about 40% to its market cap, which last week stood at about $2.7 billion.
• No. 18 ICU Medical (Nasdaq ICUI), also in San Clemente, shrugged off collapsed merger talks a year ago with London-based engineers Smiths Group PLC (LSE: SMIN), a $6.6 billion market cap firm with security and defense holdings, along with industrial, aerospace, and med tech divisions. ICU added 25 workers to 250, for an 11% growth clip. Shares in the infusion maker took a 20% hit when the merger failed and fell another 30% from that new lower level after a summer quarterly report, but it still sports a $3.3 billion market cap.
• No. 23 Pro-Dex Inc. in Irvine, a contract manufacturer for multiple industries—oil, gas, aerospace, security and defense, and communications, in addition to healthcare—added about three dozen workers to rise above the 100-level cutoff on the strength of that 42% growth.
One new company joined the list on the strength of a Business Journal estimate—and an IPO.
No. 24 Axonics Modulation Technologies Inc. (AXNX) in Irvine has about 100 workers, our research shows, from 55 last year, up 84%.
Axonics went public in November at $15 a share, raising about $130 million; it traded last week at $31, for an $897 million market cap.
The biggest declines were from No. 19 Endologix Inc. (Nasdaq: ELGX) in Irvine, which makes a device to treat abdominal aortic aneurysms. Local employment fell 18% to 245 workers; its shares are down 78% on a reverse-split adjusted basis in the last 12 months to a $75 million market cap.
Dental laser maker Biolase Inc. cut workers by 10% to just hit the 100-worker cutoff.
Its shares haven’t traded above $3 for two years; its market cap last week was about $22 million.
