Investors irked by Hansen Medical's (Nasdaq: HNSN ) falling stock price today may be missing the bigger picture: The growth story has begun. Now we get to see whether the founder of Motley Fool Rule Breakers rocket-stock Intuitive Surgical (Nasdaq: ISRG ) can repeat that success at his new company.
Not free, at last!
A few days ago, penning my Foolish Forecast for the robotic catheter-putter-inner, I described a business with no sales, a few prospects, and plenty of losses. A few days later, the picture has changed: Now Hansen has some sales, and buyers paid through the nose for them.
Not a lot of sales, granted. But the firm booked the first four sales of its robotic Sensei System for inserting catheters into patients' innards. Three went to European buyers, and one to a customer in the U.S., where the FDA approved use of the device earlier in this very quarter. Total take for the quarter: about $2.4 million. (Incidentally, that's the same revenue the company booked year-to-date, since Hansen -- as I may have mentioned -- hadn't sold anything previously.) Hansen grossed $781,000 in profits on the sales, but after several million dollars worth of expenses, and a few hundred thousand worth of interest, the company still ended the quarter with a $7.9 million net loss, about ($0.37) per share.
Hey, Jude!
Hansen also made some friends this quarter. St. Jude Medical (NYSE: STJ ) is teaming up with Hansen to create an "integrated EP solution." (That's "electrophysiology," for those in the house who aren't doctors.)
Thank you, sir, may I have another?
It's also promising that we're seeing signs of the business model emerge. Hansen won't just be selling Senseis at $600,000 a pop. The firm also made a few "initial shipments of Artisan catheters" this quarter. So apparently, Hansen will be adopting the famous Gillette (now Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG ) strategy of first selling the "razor," and then selling "blades" to generate years of additional revenue.
Back up a step
All of this sounds pretty good, right? Well, before you rush out and buy yourself shares of Hansen, let me clarify one point that I consider pretty important (even if management buried it deep within the press release). Remember how I mentioned that Hansen had $2.4 million in revenue, and $781,000 in gross profits? Well, as it turns out, two-thirds of those profits came from a reduction in cost of goods sold (COGS), yielding a "one-time benefit of $0.5 million from the sale of inventory which had previously been written down." In other words, at this early date, we should be expecting Hansen's gross profits to approximate not 33%, but something closer to 12%. You might expect that to increase over time with accelerating sales growth, but still, just a word to the Foolish.
How good might Hansen become, in time? Take a stroll through our analysis of Intuitive Surgical, and you may catch a glimpse of where Hansen is headed. Access to the service is free for the first 30 days.
Fool contributor Rich Smith does not own shares of any company named above. Why do we tell you this? Because The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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