Up 700%, DexCom Stock Still Has Tons of Room To Run

Even with significant success over the past four years, DexCom (DXCM 0.62%) appears set to continue its growth in 2022 and beyond. In this segment of "The Earnings Show" on Motley Fool Live, recorded on Feb. 11, Fool contributors Taylor Carmichael and Brian Withers discuss the medical device company's encouraging outlook.

Taylor Carmichael: I decided to pull up the chart for DexCom from when they last released their device, the G6, that was four years ago. You can see what they did their stock has gone up 700% in four years. Nice eight-bagger that anybody would like that and it just absolutely killed the S&P 500. Ten times better than the S&P 500 and they're coming out with a new device this year.

The stock you will see has been hit pretty hard the last quarter or so. It's down fairly significantly from its highs. A good buying opportunity I think for somebody who's got a long time horizon, DexCom is looking really strong over the next few years.

Let's go over the results a little bit. In Q4, they had about $700 million in revenues, a 23% gain, that's a slight beat. Earnings, they had a major miss with their earnings. It was 21% off and then they didn't actually explain why, I did some digging. Part of it is they're building up for their launch, G7. And they are expecting to get the clearance in Europe really soon. They have already submitted for both the FDA and for the EU. They are expecting European clearance really soon and FDA clearance, I think sometime this quarter so they're really prepping for the launch and maybe they spent more money than they thought they would.

There's also a payment they had to make from a contract. I forget who was with, five years ago and they might not have expected that hit, or I don't know how they missed so much, but they did most for the quarter. They kept our outlook steady for the year $2.82 billion for 2022, and that's the low to 2.94 so basically almost $3 billion in revenues in 2022.

They launched the DexCom ONE product. This is a software solution and basically works with the G6 and it's a European thing. They launched in some Eastern European countries, Latvia, Estonia. Not major news, some small news, but it's just they are expanding their total addressable markets.

The big thing though is submitting the application to the FDA for the G7 and for the CE Mark in Europe. There are 500 million adults in the world with diabetes and the cost of treatment is almost $1 trillion. Diabetes is just a huge market. DexCom is a one-hit-wonder, that's what they do. They're continuing the glucose monitoring system.

The traditional standard-of-care was you do a little pinprick with a needle and check intermittently what's your blood sugar levels are and with DexCom it's continuous, it's a little under the skin device. It's real high-tech, really cool. They have 1.2 million patients now and they say their TAM will expand to 19 million by next year. Thus through expanding their available markets to where they're going to do their thing. DexCom is just a monster stock. Do you own this one, Brian?

Brian Withers: I actually don't. My sister does. I've talked to one of the folks who wears one of these continuous glucose monitors, and he just loves it. It's way better than the classic solution of testing on your own. It's got a neat app that interfaces with your iPhone or Android device. It just really ups the standard of care for folks who have diabetes.

Carmichael: Yeah. They basically have one competitor which is Abbott Labs (ABT -0.20%). Well, their existing competition is the traditional standard of care with the needles. But they have another continuing glucose monitoring competitor in Abbott Labs and that's a serious competition. DexCom is generally considered to be the high-end. It is more expensive, I believe device. It's considered by many to be a little stronger device on the technical side.

But Abbott's doing really well with their device too, and it's a huge market. Basically a duopoly right now in this section of the healthcare universe, $42 billion market cap. Their TAM is ten times bigger than where they are now. This company can seriously grow over the next five to ten years. It's not going to be a super-fast grower. But I think this is a very strong stock for more conservative investors.