Baidu Becomes China's Largest Online Video Platform: A Long-Term Catalyst [View article]
@Author
Great perspective on Baidu.
One thing you may have missed is the following - China is in the process to rolling out 4G. Of the 1.1 billion cellphone installed base, over 80% are currently 2G and below.
Baidu will be investing heavily into mobile search in 2013-14 in order ensure that its 70-80% PC search market share carries over into the 1 billion smart phones that will be running on 4G from 2014 onward.
The Wall Street analysts totally missed this monumental transition from the X00 million PCs to the 1.1 billion smart phones, and have been focusing only on the short term profit miss without understanding the necessity for Baidu to invest heavily ahead of the Chinese 4G rollout.
Enough On Da Vinci: What About Growth? [View article]
@farcry:
The typical revenue recognition process in medical capital equipment for direct channel is based on not only system shipping to the customer but also several criteria based on customer acceptance of that shipment. So in the USA, the sales are actually very solid numbers - meaning there is very low likelihood the customer can return the shipment.
In oversea market when sold through distributors, sales are based on distributor taking lien of the system. So you can have instances of a system being sold to a distributor but sitting in its warehouse and not in a hospital.
Most of ISRG's systems and procedures are in the USA. So I have pretty good confidence in their sales data.
Jamba - Morphing From Turnaround To Growth Story [View article]
@Author Keep up the good work on writing articles on Jamba Juice.
I will be heading over to the company's shareholders' meeting on May 14th and will probably write an article to update everyone on the company's consumer product and JambaGo initiatives.
@Brian Good article. I have tried to model ICAD's therapy business but it is very difficult:
(1) The company lumped applicator sales into its product revenue, so it is hard to figure out the ASP of the controller. (2) While the company has been tracking skin procedures and actually provided that in the conference call (625 for Q1-2013), it did not do the same for breast procedure. So we have to guess it from the applicator unit sales - which can just be sitting in the hospital's stock room.
Anyhow, it would be great if the company starts doing a better job tracking actual procedures performed in its Axxent installed base.
I agree with your assessment about Qihoo.com. I did a search on Chinese History or 中国 历史 on Qihoo.com and Baidu.com and there is a huge discrepancy between the two results.
Qihoo provided a bunch of blog chatters. While Baidu returned Wikipedia, as well as Baidu's Baike (encycopedia) as well as a host of relevant contents. No way Qihoo can win against Baidu with this kind of crappy search results.
I have no idea what the Wall Street analysts have been smoking to think of Qihoo being a viable competitor.
The US healthcare system is about 50% Medicare, 50% 3rd party insurer. Hysterectomy and prostatectomy are typically paid by 3rd party insurers. Hospitals typically negotiate their rates with the private insurers on a cost-plus basis. So the hospitals providing robotic procedure typically charge a higher rate to the private insurer.
In the past, patients and referring physicians do not know the price charged by each hospital so they refer patients based on reputation only. This is a really weird system and is only practiced here in the USA and is the main reason why our healthcare cost is so high.
Under the Affordable Care Act, there will be more and more Affordable Care Organizations which are groups of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers, who come together voluntarily to give coordinated high quality care to their Medicare patients. These ACOs will be provided Medicare claim data which will allow everyone to know the huge discrepancies between hospitals. This will eventually force hospitals providing DaVinci procedures to actually eat the cost of the instruments.
Let approach this from a US health system viewpoint.
With 37 million surgical procedures in the US, the $2,000 per procedure instrument cost will translate to $74 billion in additional cost for the entire US healthcare system (if they were all to be performed by DaVinci). The total spending on US healthcare is $2.7 trillion, 18% of our GDP.
If these 37 million surgeries were instead performed with laparoscopic instrument, the healthcare system will derive the benefit of shorter hospital stay and fast recovery without having to pay the DaVinci toll.
This is one of the key argument behind the ACOG Statement. ISRG is exacting too high a toll for their proprietary technology.
@ALPHAMALES From a technology perspective, ISRG has a wonderful solution.
But from a healthcare economics perspective, it adds cost to the system without necessarily improving on clinical efficacy. At least, they have not proven it yet. Until that happens, we need to track for market saturation - which may be happening in the USA.
Very good question. You are pointing out a very important thing about ISRG system sales.
# Systems sold = # Upgrades + # New Systems
About 50% of the systems sold by ISRG are upgrades to existing systems in existing accounts. This is why the install base does not increase by the number of systems sold.
As ISRG saturates its US market, it needs to depend on upgrade sales to their existing accounts taking out older generation systems.
The Chinese Google Is A Better Buy Than The Original One [View article]
@Author
Good article. One thing you need to understand about China is the fact that it grows in fits and starts - fast rapid surge followed by slowdown, then repeat again. This is partly because of private market responses to central planning's multiple 5-year, 10-year plans.
We need to be careful about our developed world presumption that everytime a fast grower's revenue growth slows down, it means market saturation or maturation.
China does not work like that. It is still a developing market with GDP per capital of US$6,000.
Baidu Becomes China's Largest Online Video Platform: A Long-Term Catalyst [View article]
Great perspective on Baidu.
One thing you may have missed is the following - China is in the process to rolling out 4G. Of the 1.1 billion cellphone installed base, over 80% are currently 2G and below.
Baidu will be investing heavily into mobile search in 2013-14 in order ensure that its 70-80% PC search market share carries over into the 1 billion smart phones that will be running on 4G from 2014 onward.
The Wall Street analysts totally missed this monumental transition from the X00 million PCs to the 1.1 billion smart phones, and have been focusing only on the short term profit miss without understanding the necessity for Baidu to invest heavily ahead of the Chinese 4G rollout.
Enough On Da Vinci: What About Growth? [View article]
The typical revenue recognition process in medical capital equipment for direct channel is based on not only system shipping to the customer but also several criteria based on customer acceptance of that shipment. So in the USA, the sales are actually very solid numbers - meaning there is very low likelihood the customer can return the shipment.
In oversea market when sold through distributors, sales are based on distributor taking lien of the system. So you can have instances of a system being sold to a distributor but sitting in its warehouse and not in a hospital.
Most of ISRG's systems and procedures are in the USA. So I have pretty good confidence in their sales data.
Jamba - Morphing From Turnaround To Growth Story [View article]
If the company continue to turn around its business, it will go beyond $10 even without the reverse split in a few years.
Jamba - Morphing From Turnaround To Growth Story [View article]
Keep up the good work on writing articles on Jamba Juice.
I will be heading over to the company's shareholders' meeting on May 14th and will probably write an article to update everyone on the company's consumer product and JambaGo initiatives.
Really great article! Karl!
ICAD's Double-Digit Growth Looks Sustainable [View article]
I will rework the model. Looking pretty good on the skin side.
ICAD's Double-Digit Growth Looks Sustainable [View article]
Good article. I have tried to model ICAD's therapy business but it is very difficult:
(1) The company lumped applicator sales into its product revenue, so it is hard to figure out the ASP of the controller.
(2) While the company has been tracking skin procedures and actually provided that in the conference call (625 for Q1-2013), it did not do the same for breast procedure. So we have to guess it from the applicator unit sales - which can just be sitting in the hospital's stock room.
Anyhow, it would be great if the company starts doing a better job tracking actual procedures performed in its Axxent installed base.
(Q1)
2013 2012 2011
Controllers & Applicators Rev $2.4 $5.70 $3.10
Controllers sold 9 30 13
Balloon Applicators (Breast) 175 664 205
ASP ($K) $267 $190 $238
Installed systems 52 43 13
Skin Procedures 625 827 200
Skin Procedure/system 13 30 15
Breast App/system 9 31 16
Sevice&Consumable Rev $0.9 $4.6 $2.8
Sevice&Consumable/Sys $75,789 $164,286 $215,385
Baidu: Disturbing Growth Slowdown [View article]
I agree with your assessment about Qihoo.com. I did a search on Chinese History or 中国 历史 on Qihoo.com and Baidu.com and there is a huge discrepancy between the two results.
Qihoo provided a bunch of blog chatters. While Baidu returned Wikipedia, as well as Baidu's Baike (encycopedia) as well as a host of relevant contents. No way Qihoo can win against Baidu with this kind of crappy search results.
I have no idea what the Wall Street analysts have been smoking to think of Qihoo being a viable competitor.
Modeling Intuitive Surgical's Triple Revenue Stream [View article]
In the past, patients and referring physicians do not know the price charged by each hospital so they refer patients based on reputation only. This is a really weird system and is only practiced here in the USA and is the main reason why our healthcare cost is so high.
Under the Affordable Care Act, there will be more and more Affordable Care Organizations which are groups of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers, who come together voluntarily to give coordinated high quality care to their Medicare patients. These ACOs will be provided Medicare claim data which will allow everyone to know the huge discrepancies between hospitals. This will eventually force hospitals providing DaVinci procedures to actually eat the cost of the instruments.
http://bit.ly/Ya9OJS
http://bit.ly/183cqZ3
ACOG is getting ahead of the game and posturing itself positively in front of this emerging trend.
Modeling Intuitive Surgical's Triple Revenue Stream [View article]
With 37 million surgical procedures in the US, the $2,000 per procedure instrument cost will translate to $74 billion in additional cost for the entire US healthcare system (if they were all to be performed by DaVinci). The total spending on US healthcare is $2.7 trillion, 18% of our GDP.
If these 37 million surgeries were instead performed with laparoscopic instrument, the healthcare system will derive the benefit of shorter hospital stay and fast recovery without having to pay the DaVinci toll.
This is one of the key argument behind the ACOG Statement. ISRG is exacting too high a toll for their proprietary technology.
Modeling Intuitive Surgical's Triple Revenue Stream [View article]
From a technology perspective, ISRG has a wonderful solution.
But from a healthcare economics perspective, it adds cost to the system without necessarily improving on clinical efficacy. At least, they have not proven it yet. Until that happens, we need to track for market saturation - which may be happening in the USA.
Modeling Intuitive Surgical's Triple Revenue Stream [View article]
I will look into it as well. Thanks.
Modeling Intuitive Surgical's Triple Revenue Stream [View article]
I think you are dead on. I will be finishing the 2nd article in a couple of weeks. We will find out, won't we?
Modeling Intuitive Surgical's Triple Revenue Stream [View article]
Very good question. You are pointing out a very important thing about ISRG system sales.
# Systems sold = # Upgrades + # New Systems
About 50% of the systems sold by ISRG are upgrades to existing systems in existing accounts. This is why the install base does not increase by the number of systems sold.
As ISRG saturates its US market, it needs to depend on upgrade sales to their existing accounts taking out older generation systems.
The Chinese Google Is A Better Buy Than The Original One [View article]
Good article. One thing you need to understand about China is the fact that it grows in fits and starts - fast rapid surge followed by slowdown, then repeat again. This is partly because of private market responses to central planning's multiple 5-year, 10-year plans.
A review of Baidu's growth:
(000 RMB) 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007
Revenue ¥22,306,026 ¥14,500,786 ¥7,915,074 ¥4,447,776 ¥3,198,252 ¥1,744,425
Revenue Growth 54% 83% 78% 39% 83%
We need to be careful about our developed world presumption that everytime a fast grower's revenue growth slows down, it means market saturation or maturation.
China does not work like that. It is still a developing market with GDP per capital of US$6,000.
Modeling Intuitive Surgical's Triple Revenue Stream [View article]
Precisely. The company needs to change its way, correct its mistakes. Then there will be an opportunity for a turnaround play.