Has the Stryker company historically felt little impact from recessions? Does the current pressures on hospital capital expenditures have a significant adverse affect on the business? Is the sales shortfall primarily a result of a significant and rapid contraction in hospital capital budgets?
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…Stryker Corp.’s eight-year run of growing annual earnings by at least 20 percent has come to an end.
The Kalamazoo-based manufacturer of medical equipment Friday cut its profit and sales forecast, blaming the recession’s impact on hospital spending…
Stryker had previously said its annual net earnings for 2008 would be $2.88 a share. It now expects net earnings to be in the range of $2.77 to $2.79 a share, or a 14 percent increase over 2007 net earnings per share.
Since becoming a publicly traded company in 1979, Stryker has grown annual earnings by at least 20 percent in 26 of 28 years. Its annual net profit growth in 1998 and 1999 was below 20 percent due to the cost of its $1.9 billion acquisition of Howmedica in December 1998.Howmedica was a medical-instruments division of Pfizer Inc.
The company also said it would incur a $20 million charge this year to restructure its Japanese operations and from a “decision to substantially reduce its development efforts associated with the 2006 acquisition of SightLine Technologies.”
The Gazette reported Thursday that Stryker was closing SightLine Technologies, a Stryker operation in Israel working to develop flexible endoscope technology used in surgeries. An Israeli business-news Web site had reported this week that SightLine fired 71 employees and shuttered the business.
J. Patrick Anderson, Stryker’s vice president of corporate affairs, declined to comment further on SightLine or the company’s statement Friday.
Stryker bought SightLine in 2006 for $50 million.
In its statement Friday, Stryker also said its fourth quarter sales would be down and that currency exchange rates from sales overseas would also hurt earnings…