Stryker Corp (SYK) Presents at Cowen Healthcare Broker Conference Call - (Transcript)

Stryker Corp (NYSE:SYK) Cowen Healthcare Conference March 2, 2021 10:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Andrew Pierce - Group President, MedSurg & Neurotechnology
Preston Wells - VP, IR

Conference Call Participants

Joshua Jennings - Cowen and Company

Joshua Jennings

Good morning. My name is Josh Jennings from the medical device team at Cowen. We're moving through the medical device track here, day 2 of the 41st Annual Cowen Healthcare Conference. We're thrilled to have the executives from the Stryker management team joining us today. Andy Pierce, Group President, MedSurg and Neurotechnology; and Preston Wells, Vice President, Investor Relations. Gentlemen, thanks for taking time today and spending with us.

Andrew Pierce

Thank you for having us, Josh.

Preston Wells

Thanks for having us.

Question-and-Answer Session

Q - Joshua Jennings

If I may, I think investors are -- everyone's very keen on learning some updates or any updates that can be provided on elective procedure trends and anything specific that your team is willing to share, just with the COVID surges continuing into January and February, I think that's well known across the board.

But is there any updates, just in general, in kind of Stryker's elective procedure trends in the last two months? You guys updated us on the fourth quarter earnings call, I think in late January, so I guess, just in the month of February.

Preston Wells

Sure. So Josh, as we had talked about in our call, our earnings call, certainly, we did expect some of that disruption that we had in the fourth quarter to continue into January, February. And of course, as you said, we did see that.

And what we are seeing though is that the trends are starting to improve. I think as we talked about that as well, the hospitalization rates, the infection rates are really key