Major heart valve maker sees profit drop after product line cut
Medical device company Edwards Lifesciences showed lower profits in late-2000s financial report. Numbers dropped after company stopped selling heart-rhythm treatment device
Back in late-2000s‚ Edwards Lifesciences Corp - the worlds top artificial heart valve producer showed a big change in its money numbers. The Irvine-based companyʼs fourth-quarter profits went down because they stopped selling a heart-beat fixing device
The numbers tell an interesting story: the company made $20‚7M (about thirty-four cents for each share) which was way less than their earlier $38‚6M (sixty-one cents per share) from last year. The drop happened mostly due-to some special costs they had to pay
When looking at the core business numbers (without the one-time costs) Edwards actually did better than what market-people thought: they made sixty-one cents per share while experts predicted only fifty-three cents. This shows the companys basic work was still doing good; even with the product-line changes
The California-based medical device maker made this choice as part of their business plan - focusing more on their main products: artificial heart valves. This move showed how companies sometimes need to cut some things to keep their main work strong
