On Tuesday, 13 May 2025, Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX) presented at the Bank of America 2025 Healthcare Conference, revealing strong financial performance and a strategic vision for growth. While the company celebrated significant Q1 achievements, it also addressed challenges like tariffs and discussed future plans, including leadership transitions.
Key Takeaways
- Boston Scientific reported 18.2% organic revenue growth and a 28.9% adjusted operating margin for Q1 2025.
- The company raised its 2025 organic revenue growth guidance from 10-12% to 12-14%.
- Key products like Ferrapulse and Watchman showed strong performance, driving market expansion.
- The company plans strategic acquisitions to enhance its position in the electrophysiology (EP) market.
- An Investor Day is scheduled for 30 September 2025 in New York to outline future growth plans.
Financial Results
- Q1 2025 adjusted EPS grew by 34%, with a gross margin of 71.5%, aiming to return to 72.4%.
- Boston Scientific absorbed $200 million in tariffs but offset this through revenue gains and cost reductions.
- The operating margin guidance for 2025 is set at 27.5% to 27.75%, with a long-term goal of exceeding 30%.
- The company has intentionally increased its Weighted Average Market Growth Rate (WAMGR) over recent years.
Operational Updates
- Ferrapulse, a leading PFA system, launched successfully in Japan and is progressing in China.
- The Agent Drug-Coated Balloon is performing well both in the US and internationally.
- Watchman grew by 24%, benefiting from its success in concomitant procedures.
- The FerroWave system generated $1 billion in its first year, with a penetration target of 80%.
- Recent acquisitions include Bolt for IVL and Sonovi for RDN, focusing on markets with high growth potential.
Future Outlook
- Boston Scientific is committed to expanding into new markets and sustaining high growth.
- The company aims to become the leading player in the EP market through innovation and acquisitions.
- Watchman is expected to continue its growth, supported by favorable clinical data and the upcoming Champion trial results.
- Ferrapulse penetration in China is projected to accelerate in 2026 due to provincial tendering processes.
Q&A Highlights
- PFA technology is reshaping the EP market, with Boston Scientific focusing on catheter technologies and strategic acquisitions.
- Watchman growth is fueled by concomitant procedures, with half of EP ablationists now performing these cases.
- Positive results from the Champion trial are anticipated to further expand the Watchman market.
For more detailed insights, refer to the full transcript of the conference call.
Full transcript - Bank of America 2025 Healthcare Conference:
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: right, good morning, everybody. Travis Steeve, the Medical Device Analyst at Bank of America. And first up at the BofA Conference, welcome to have Boston Scientific. We’ve got Dan Brennan, and we’ve got Joe Fitzgerald, CFO and head of cardiology. So thanks for joining us.
I did want to start out and say this is Dan’s last investor conference.
Dan Brennan, CFO, Boston Scientific: It is.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: That’s going on my resume.
Dan Brennan, CFO, Boston Scientific: Mine too. Right.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: And I just wanted to kind of set the stage here. You know, you joined Boston in 01/01/2014. And since then, Boston stock’s gone up $7.50 percent. And, you know, the S and P is up 285%, including dividends. And so that’s a 20% annual return, 20.7, almost 21% annual return there.
Healthcare has returned 10%. The S and P’s returned 12.6. So I think, you know, very impressive career. And I just wanted to kind of set the stage and say, you know, you’ve created a lot of shareholder value and, very honored to kind of do the last presentation with you.
Dan Brennan, CFO, Boston Scientific: I appreciate the kind words. It takes a team. We have 55,000 global team members to make that happen every day.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: Well, you. And so maybe like we could start with the transition. Know, anything you wanna kind of say on the transition, you know, kind of why you picked John as a succession plan? You know, do you expect much to change with the CFO transition? I will
Dan Brennan, CFO, Boston Scientific: tell you, in terms of CFO transitions, think this one will be about as smooth as you can imagine. If you look at a resume of someone you want to pick to put into the to succeed me, twenty five years at the company, he knows the business, he knows the team, He has the support of the board, the team, the executive committee, the the global organization. He knows investors. I spent the last year in in investor relations. I’ve known John twenty five years.
Everything he’s ever done, he’s done exceptionally well. He’s crushed it. There’s no reason to think he’s not gonna do the same in this role. So I’m excited to see what he and the team will do. Great.
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: Did I mention his handicap?
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: Golf. Right. It’s a good skill to have. Maybe we’ll just kind of level set. You you just reported Q1 results, and I think it was essentially 18%, closer to 20% growth, excluding the selling day and the very high end of med tech.
I don’t think anybody else really grew faster with this revenue size. Anything you kind of wanted to call out, where the strength came from, anything that surprised you in the quarter, just kind of sustainability of some of this growth? Sure.
Dan Brennan, CFO, Boston Scientific: I mean, what a great quarter, right? As you said, 18.2% organic revenue growth, 28.9% adjusted operating margin for the quarter, 34% adjusted EPS growth. And really, one of my favorite numbers in the quarter was the gross margin, 71.5%. So you think back for those that have followed Boston for a while, 2019, we were 72.4, and the team is maniacally focused on getting back there. When you’re at 71.5, you don’t have to adjust the aperture of your lens that far to say, maybe we could get back to that 72.4.
That’s been a long road from 2019, but exciting to see the earnings power of the and the gross margin power of the company really shine through in the quarter. It came from the places you’d expect, right? Ferrapulse continues to be the PFA system of choice. You look at the launch in Japan is going extremely well. China, albeit, you know, probably a little bit longer and more of a evolutionary launch over time that that’s going well.
Agent, our drug coated balloon in The United States is going extremely well as well as outside The United States. Watchmen grew 24% for a franchise that size to grow that level. And I’m sure Joe will get into more of the details there. The concomitant procedural success there is real. We talked about that on our earnings call a couple weeks So really, just a fantastic way to start the year, and allowed us to increase guidance from which was 10 to 12%.
Last year, we did 16.4% organic revenue growth. And it was a bit of what are you going to do for an encore? So we came out at 10 to 12 in February and, you know, a couple short months later in April, we’re able to raise that to 12 to 14. So I think off to a fantastic start and really couldn’t have asked for
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: a better Q1. You absorbed $200,000,000 in tariffs. And since then, we’ve had somewhat of a trade deal with China or things have gotten better on the China rates. Curious how you think about the impact of that.
Dan Brennan, CFO, Boston Scientific: MR. Yeah, we laid that out very clearly on our earnings call a couple weeks ago where we said we have a $200,000,000 net headwind from tariffs, unanticipated. It started the April. So really proud of the team getting together in a few short weeks and being able to offset that. You don’t want to let that get in the way of the momentum of the company.
And so we were able to offset that $200,000,000 of net tariff impact unanticipated with, call it, half of it with revenue upside and a penny of foreign exchange favorability and then about $100,000,000 of targeted smart discretionary spend reductions. So obviously, the news of yesterday with China, the China back and forth coming down to lower rates, we’ll have a little bit of relief on that 200,000,000 But it’s still obviously a number that we need to offset, and we’ll do that in ’twenty five and let the strength of the
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: business shine through. When some of the trade deals come through and the tariff rates get better, how much of that gets kind of reinvested in the business, like some of the discretionary spending savings that you might go back towards or versus kind of let it flow through to the upside?
Dan Brennan, CFO, Boston Scientific: Yeah, I hope that’s a problem we have coming up. It’ll be a nice problem to have if that happens over the coming months and quarters. And it’s a problem we’ve had a nice problem we’ve had in the past. And we I think we do a nice job as a team of looking at ways to reinvest to continue to fuel the top line to make that, you know, durable and consistent for the long term, as well as dropping some relative to the margin in moment. I love the you know, so 27% we were adjusted operating margin last year, despite $200,000,000 of unanticipated headwinds, we’re still going to deliver 50 to 75 basis points this year.
So 27.5 to 27.5. So nice problem to have, and we’ll approach it as we always have.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: And then when you think about, you know, we talked about strength in the quarter and margins with EP and Watchman. What’s the kind of the durability of those businesses, especially EP is now accretive, FairPulse is accretive, you know, the durability of that margin going forward?
Dan Brennan, CFO, Boston Scientific: Yeah, the margin expansion journey at Boston Scientific is alive and well. And it’s really, you’d have to walk the halls with, you know, Joe and myself and the team. It’s just part of the DNA of the company. You know, when when confronted with $200,000,000 of an unanticipated headwind on April 2, you know, you could have said, geez, maybe we won’t expand margins as much as here. It just doesn’t enter the room with us.
We just said, you know what, we’re going to offset it, we’re going to we’re going to continue to do the 50 to 75 basis points. And we’ll find ways to offset that. So the margin, call us 27 and a half to twenty seven and three quarters at the end of this year, We’ve talked for a long time about 30% plus as our longer term goal. And there’s plenty of room from where we are today to get to that and beyond. The margin expansion journey, which is a critical part of our success, looking backwards and also going forward alive and well.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: I wanted to kind of switch gears to revenue growth. Is kind of growing in this low double digit revenue growth range now. And, you know, I still get the question like how sustainable is that? I think a lot of people don’t fully appreciate that your weighted average market growth rate now, I think Jacob already said January ’9 percent, it was 5% in 2019. Don’t fully appreciate how your markets have shifted.
But when you think about kind of the long term here and your visibility to the pipeline and the investments you’re laying, just the durability of kind of this double digit revenue growth rate at Boston, know, the revenue base gets bigger.
Dan Brennan, CFO, Boston Scientific: Yeah, I mean, we’re obviously not going talk about ’26 and anything specific to that. But if you look back and you go ’23, ’20 ’4, ’20 ’5, you’d be 12/16, and then ’12 to ’14. That’s three pretty good years. We the increase in the WAMGR has been completely intentional. I would even go back further than 2019.
If you go back, you know, another five years, you know, back when it was low single digits, every year continuing to increase the WAM group. That was a very, intentional strategy that, that the company’s had, and it’s been very successful. Relative to ’26 and beyond, I will say, look forward to September 30. In New York, we will host an Investor Day. So John and Mike and Joe and the team will give you a sense as we always do of what we think we can do for for the out years.
But September 30 in New York, market calendar.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: Good. So we’ll have a new LRP in September. That would be the goal.
Dan Brennan, CFO, Boston Scientific: That’s up to John Monson. But my guess is if he if he maintains the same blueprint as the past, which I’m sure he will, you’ll get a sense of what we think we can do going forward.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: Right. So it probably no surprises, kind of the same philosophy on kind of setting ORP and outlooks.
Dan Brennan, CFO, Boston Scientific: Yeah, I think, you know, the, as I said, 2324, ’20 ’5, really successful years. So I mean, again, we got three quarters left and excited about the rest of ’25. And if think back, we had a conference, we were at a conference in January. And there’s the last slide that our CEO Mike Maloney presented was a really critical slide that shows all the new areas that we want to get into. So we’re super focused on Q2 twenty five.
We’re focused on full year ’25. But we’re also focused on ’26, ’20 ’7, ’20 ’8, ’20 ’9, and yes, ’30, like those years. And when you look at that slide, and you look at all the areas that we either are already in or can get in because we have a VC investment or we’re working on it internally, That really, I think lends confidence to the ability for the company to continue to grow, at the high end of the of the peer set for a long period of time. And lo and behold, holding us accountable. When you look at that slide, we’ve already done Bolt for IVL, and we’ve done Sonovi for, for RDN.
So we’re working hard to continue to check the boxes on that slide.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: How are you thinking about any changes to like the M and A strategy? You know, now that your weighted average market growth rate is a lot faster, your revenue base is bigger. How does the M and A strategy change? Or does it not change? Just trying to think about how are you thinking about M and A from here?
Dan Brennan, CFO, Boston Scientific: I think it’s been extremely successful over the last decade. We’ve done almost 50 deals over that timeframe. They’ve all been tuck in deals. They’ve all been deals that from, you know, 40,000,000 to, you know, a little over 4,000,000,000. And they’ve been has every one of them been successful?
No, but that’s okay, because that means we take the right amount of risk. And a lot of them have been really successful. And you could point to a variety of those deals as as to fueling our growth today, in addition to the internal R and D that we do. So I wouldn’t anticipate any change. It’s if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: Maybe just remind us how you define tuck in and a and kind of capacity for M and A?
Dan Brennan, CFO, Boston Scientific: Well, from a tuck in perspective, every deal we’ve done has been a tuck in deal. We really don’t define it by size, we define it by something that is high quality, innovative, and in a market with a growth profile accretive to Boston Scientific’s WAM variant. So if it meets that, then I think we’re interested relative to adding it to the Boston Scientific portfolio. And again, I’m proud to look back at the 50 deals we’ve done and they all fit that profile.
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: I would add to that too, like what’s the strategic fit with the commercial channel and R and D expertise that we already have? So you take Bolt and Sonovi, right? Those are things that will be sold and delivered and supported right through our existing global channels in PCI cases globally.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: Right.
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: Like very strong strategic Makes
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: sense. Maybe switching gears to electrophysiology. Maybe just help us, you know, what’s kind of the state of affairs in EP right now, kind of where you’re seeing things play out in the market?
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: Yeah. So the advent of PFA into The US, which began about fourteen months ago, has been quite disruptive. And FerroWave, our FerroPulse system has pretty much led that disruption. We did about a billion dollars in the first twelve months post FDA approval. You know, we’ve said we put this at Investor Day, our last Investor Day, and we’ve talked about it, you know, what will be the rate and pace of adoption and penetration of PFA into what in The United States as an example, until January 24 was a purely thermal ablation market.
So if you if you say we were 40% penetrated last year at the end of the year, we see a path where PFA will get to 80%. So back to your sustainability and durability, we see that. We can watch that with every new account we open, whether it be in The US or Japan, the continued penetration and sort of, yeah, penetration of the actual AF cases. So we see that as a sustainability and then, you know, we are a very nice attractive market share. Whether you look at Europe, United States or Japan, China’s too early to call because it’s like we’re in the we’re still in the batting cage getting into the first inning.
But, you know, our share position and the assumed continued penetration for the EP market of PFA is right on top of our growth drivers.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: If you look at the, you know, kind of total EP share today, you’re kind of a number three player, you kind of crossed over to number from four to three. Like, is there a pathway to be, you know, number one share player in EP in your mind? And when you think about the market structure, like historically there’s always been, you know, one player with 50% plus share. Like, is the market gonna be that concentrated going forward or is it gonna be more fragmented? Just kind of thinking about how you think the market has changed structurally from here.
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: Yeah, it’s an interesting question because if you look at the RF side of that market, it was a duopoly basically for the last thirty years. You have the cryo segment, which was a monopoly for one of our competitors. We’ve already seen in, you know, call it the first fifteen months of having a disruptive technology, not in the bag of number one or number two, just how quickly this can shift. So I would say if you look out, it’s going to the market’s going to look dramatically different than the duopoly or the monopoly that I talked about. And what we love is, you know, we have this fabulous FerroWave catheter that has served as like the foundation of our entry.
But beyond that, you see multiple catheters that we’re developing, multiple clinical studies, and then the ecosystem around it, whether it be mapping, ice guidance, diagnostic catheters, You know, you look at the deal we just did, Cortex, right, which takes us into source mapping, which has been something that the EP market has been chasing for fifteen years. So when you look at all the things beyond the exact ablation catheter, we’ve got really good plays with our SoundCath acquisition with Cortex. You just saw the data presented at HRS for the our first PFA point catheter. And we just announced that we have a large focal form catheter called Ferraflex, which is in its EFS study. So when you look at that ecosystem and stuff that’s not really purely an ablation catheter, it’s the ecosystem of the EP lab, we feel really good about the sustainability of our leadership.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: So ultimately, a pathway to being kind of a leading share player in NEP, sounds like.
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: Yeah. We’ll probably give more on that at our long range plan Investor Day. What day is
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: it? Thirtieth. Thirtieth. Yeah. In New York.
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: You’ve already seen us move out of last place. Yep. Depending on how you account, we’ve already become number two in certain markets. And we are executing a play, including tuck in acquisitions to become long term, the clear number one in the EP space.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: When you think about the percent of the case that’s kind of available to you today, there’s a lot of ancillary stuff, but you don’t really have products, ICE, diagnostics. Like, can you talk about how you’re kind of filling in the surrounding portfolio in EP a little bit more kind of the pathway there? How much of that can kind of pull through with the case versus, you know, to actually go and like win on technology there? And kind of what percent of the case are you, you have available today versus, you know, kind of where you can be in the future?
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: Okay, so I’m not, I could go on like a mathematics to answer that whole question, but I’ll try to be really simple. So if you look today, we we have done a great job. We control the ablation catheter in a very large percentage of cases. That’s fair. In a market like The US, One Hundred Percent of cases are mapped and mapping up until September of this year was probably 99% control.
So the first step for us is to take Fairview with our Ferronav catheter. We got approval for that in q four. We went to full marker at least in February. So it’s now we’re going to disrupt how mapping is done. If and in that mapping, you probably have 2 to $4,000 of incremental revenue.
If you control the map of the procedure. There’s another thing that’s done in every EP case in The United States is they use ice guided imaging, which is anywhere from a $1,500 to a $4,500 catheter in the case. That’s where we did the SoundCath acquisition, the Animana collaboration that we just announced before HRS. Those two things will help us penetrate, you know, take ice catheters globally, it’s plus a billion dollar market. We have zero with that.
So I would I would consider it to be mapping, then ice guidance, and then there’s a whole host of other products that are used. Guide catheters, Duodecapolar catheters, you know, that that are not an insignificant amount of money when you times their ASPs times 400,000 AF ablations in The United States. So we’ve got strategies in each of those. The first one that’s coming to fruition now is the delivery of our mapping system called Fairview on OPAL.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: How’s the initial feedback been with that?
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: I think it’s been very good. I think if you if you think about mapping, it’s almost you become addicted to your mapping system like you do your phone. If you’re an Android or you’re an iPhone, we can’t talk about, you know, switching. So it’s a it’s a high preference, high sort of love for that mapping system. And I would say in the first, let’s call it six months of us introducing that, we are very pleased with the reaction to the type of map we create, the fact that it takes cost out of the procedure.
If you if you use FerraNav, which is the FerroWave catheter with a nav sensor shown on Opel, you can you can pretty much get rid in eighty five percent of the cases, a $2,500 mapping catheter. And then you also reduce exchanges. So there’s a safety, a workflow, and an economic benefit to that. So I would say thus far we’re very happy with the launch of Opel and Farahi.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: Do you think the ablation catheter or is it the mapping system that really is kind of driving the ultimate decision of where share goes here?
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: I have two answers to that. Alright. What was what was happening before February one of twenty four?
Dan Brennan, CFO, Boston Scientific: Mhmm.
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: And what was happening what’s happened afterwards? So I would say before the launch of FerroWave, you had a strong preference for mapping systems, which then led to the ablation catheter. And, basically, FerroWave, the introduction of the pentaspine catheter has has completely blown that up. So now it’s, well, I’m using this catheter, which mapping system can best display? And and FairWave can be shown on all three mapping systems, but each of those mapping systems are on a different journey in terms of how do you get a high utility, a high usability of the mapping system to get maximum advantage from the PFA ablation.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: Your competitors have had in mapping have had years of innovation cycles and mapping. You’re a bunch further behind in mapping. Do you feel like you’re kind of caught up to the innovation cycle? Do more innovation be done on the mapping side? Just trying to
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: think about There is a ton of innovation. I mean, what people don’t realize because our share was so low is we jumped into mapping fifteen years ago. So we purchased Rhythmia in 02/2012. I would say that’s one of the acquisitions Dan referred to, not the most successful one that we did. Had we not done that, we would not be in a position today to both disrupt the ablation catheter side and to disrupt the mapping side.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: Okay. Any changes in how you’re thinking about the market growth in EP pricing holding with some of the newer technology, the CFA?
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: Doctor. I mean, historically, the EP market has been like the polar opposite of like the DES and the pacemaker market. Most new technologies come with a with a price uplift. That’s been pretty steady over the past twenty to thirty years. And reimbursement, especially like in a country like The United States, you know, half of the ablative market, we’ve seen really good movement on both inpatient and outpatient reimbursement.
Could that change? Sure. But the technology, better the technology, do customers perceive it as safer and leading to a higher level of efficacy? That has driven decision, not price, historically in the EP market. And then maybe talk a little
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: bit about the China and Japan opportunity, how that’s going and is that we’re to start to see that in growth rates here.
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: Yeah, so Japan launched Q4 last year with reimbursement, which means you get pretty much access to the entire Japan market pretty quickly. And our rate of penetration and account opening in Japan looks very similar to what we executed in The United States. So fast and deep. Now, if you juxtapose that China, where you have to go province by province, I mean, we’re it’s going to be a while. Think I think the acceleration of the China penetration of FerriPulse, that’s more of a 26.
We’re just we’re getting all the building blocks in place and you have to do provincial tendering. That’s just going to be slower than either of the three Europe, U. S. Or Japan market. It’s still, you know, both of those are billion dollar markets.
So super attractive. I think it’s just well known that penetrating China because of the provincial tendering, a little bit of a delayed approval cycle compared to those other three markets. But again, it’s a billion dollar market. You just got to be Has
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: Europe surprised you at all in kind of where we’re at today in Europe?
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: No, I would have said it surprised us back in ’twenty one when we launched in Europe, the pace and rate of adoption, which then we prepared for for US and Japan because those came three and four years after Europe. So I would say back in the early days of launching FerroWave, we were in a little bit of a wow, like this is even better than we knew it was in the clinical trials that have been done to date. And the customer desire for a safer, more predictable, higher efficacy potential was very high. And then therefore the adoption became very fast.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: And one last one on EP, you know, of their competitors are, you know, now launching multiple ablation products moving into the market. How do you expect the dynamics to change with the market more competitive?
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: Well, we were just at the HRS meeting, and they had PFA live the day before. So I think there were like 25 cases, probably seven to 10 different technologies. So seems like all multinationals, all startups, no matter what they were doing, have flipped to a PFA strategy. The thing I always like to remind investors is FerroWave is unique in that it’s been on the market for four plus years. We’ve treated more than 200,000 patients.
More than 20,000 patients have been included in some type of clinical study. We have very large registries going. So the experience with and again, if you’ve seen one PFA system, remember, you’ve only seen one PFA system. So the combination of our FerroStar generator, our FerroDrive sheath, and our FerroWave, The clinical evidence and the commercial experience with that, compared to somebody who might be getting approval in The U. S.
After having done 300 cases in total premarket, it’s just dramatically different. And then behind that, you have our new catheter form factors, you know, which are pretty deep. If you look at our FerroPlate catheter, we just announced the results for ADDvantage phase two. So that will bring a point catheter into the FerroWave workflow for persistent AF. So that’s a twofer.
So you get the expanded indication, and now you get a preferred form factor for things like CTI ablation. So I think that’s underappreciated as well. Before we run out
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: of time, there’s another product that you guys have that’s pretty important to you, Watchman.
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: Oh, thanks for that one.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: So the label expansion for the option trial coming later this year, how do you expect now that you’ve had time to talk to customers after they’ve seen the data, how do you expect kind of the procedure volumes are gonna change, you know, once this becomes on label going forward?
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: Yeah. I would say today we do not think like concomitant is off label because we’re taking two approved procedures, left atrial appendage closure with WATCHMAN and ablation with anything that is market approved. And that, number one, is reimbursed. And number two, neither of those are contraindicated. So I think the two things have happened which have accelerated concomitant.
You had CMS proffer a new DRG to reimburse hospitals when they’re done in the same setting. That hit October 1. And then at we presented the option data, which showed the safety and efficacy of concomitant procedures and also sequential procedures. So as Dan and Mike talked about on the call, you know, we’ve already seen fifty percent of our EP ablationists now do a concomitant case, and we’re what, six, seven months post approval. So that’s going well.
And I’d just like to remind everybody that, you know, I forget the number, but let’s say we do plus one hundred thousand WATCHMANs this year in The United States. There are four hundred thousand patients who end up getting ablated, which means there’s probably a couple of million patients that are seen in clinic be evaluated for their AF on whether or not an ablation should occur. So our belief that concomitant, especially in The United States, can be a near term growth driver. And if you don’t look any further than Q1, right, our growth went up to 26% from, let’s call it, 20 on average and 24%. A lot of that growth was due to concomitant growth.
But we’re very bullish, and we’re still in the very early innings of driving concomitant. Any
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: big change in EPs versus interventionists during the procedure? I don’t know if there’s the capacity, you know, for these doctors to have to do these procedures or?
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: I mean, we you know, over the ten years that WATCHMAN has been approved, you know, we’ve launched hundreds of accounts. We’ve trained thousands of doctors. We’re super proud of the safety profile of WATCHMAN. If you look at Watchman from its first clinicals, now up to the introduction of the third generation Watchman FlexPro, our actual procedural safety profile has gotten better. That usually doesn’t happen when you launch something broadly, commercially.
So we think that’s good. We have lots of users. And I think, you know, we’re still, take the 4,000,000 patients that the current label and CMS payment scheme covers, We’re still in the early penetration rates of that. And then we’ll see Champion, let’s call it first half of next year, which is the first head to head 3,000 patient randomized study with two very important endpoints. Is it non inferior for the prevention of stroke?
And is it superior for bleeding? Because very high percentage of WATCHMAN patients come off anticoagulants. People on anticoagulants must stay on them for life for protection against. And what we showed an option was we were not inferior for prevention of ischemic stroke, and we had a really good superiority margin. And, time will tell, but that’s our hypothesis for doing champion.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: And does the option trial give you more confidence in the champion outcome? And is that going to be at like ACC or HRS?
Joe Fitzgerald, Head of Cardiology, Boston Scientific: It’s TBD. Feel very confident we can say first half. It depends on when last patient gets followed, how much time do we have between that and when you have to follow for a late breaker, about a % confident, I should say 99% confident first half of ’twenty six.
Travis Steeve, Medical Device Analyst, Bank of America: Perfect. And that’s all the time we have. But I did want to I think Dan Brennan deserves a standing ovation for the last decade, plus the CFO at Boston Scientific. So we’ll end with that. Sounds good.
Yep. Good. Thanks a lot. Yep.
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