Boston Scientific Up After Earnings Beat and Signs of Progress

Boston Scientific Corp, the world's leading drug-coated heart stent producer, announced Friday it swung a third-quarter loss, but said sales of its implantable heart defibrillators were improving. The company reported a loss of $272 million ($0.18/share) after reporting a gain of $76 million ($0.18/share) a year ago. Excluding costs related to divestitures and amortization, the company earned $299 million ($0.20/share), beating analysts' estimates of $0.09/share. Sales climbed 1.1% to 2.05 billion, basically in-line with analysts' forecasts. Last year, safety concerns hurt sales of the company's two largest products. The earnings report showed some promise of overcoming those previous set-backs: "This quarter had a better feel to it," said CEO James Tobin (full earnings transcript for Q3). "This quarter represented the beginning of a turn for us." Sales of BSX's drug coated stents dropped 22% to $448 million, but the company also said revenues from its implantable cardiac defibrillators, ICDs, jumped 18% to $372 million. ICDs have recovered after Boston Scientific was forced to issue a global product recall. For the fourth-quarter, the company projects earnings, excluding certain expenses, to fall between $0.14 - $0.19/share, well ahead of analysts' estimates of $0.10/share. With the earnings beat and positive outlook, shares of the company were up 6.1% to $14.70

Sources: Press release, Bloomberg, MarketWatch
Commentary: Drug-Coated Stents Safer Than Thought -- Study • Boston Scientific Puts More Units Up for Sale
Stocks to watch: BSX. Competitors: JNJ, MDT. ETFs: IHI, PPH

Seeking Alpha's news briefs are combined into a pre-market summary called Wall Street Breakfast. Get Wall Street Breakfast by email -- it's free and takes only seconds to sign up.