We predicted in January 2007 that orthopedic stocks were poised for a good year. We thought we would revisit our prediction after most of the publicly traded orthopedic companies reported their 1Q:07 earnings.
The table below clearly shows that the orthopedic stocks have held up during the first three months of the year. The orthopedic stocks in HealthpointCapital's Ortho Index are currently trading at 32.8x earnings and 5.0x sales. This is comparable to the level they were trading at 30 days ago and well above the 24.8x earnings and 3.8x sales they were trading at a year ago.
Orthopedic stocks continue to trade at a premium to our overall medical technology index which has increased in valuation only slightly during the previous twelve months.
The biggest movers to the upside during the previous 30 days included: AAP Implantate AG (+39%), LifeCell Corp (+20%), Cytori Therapeutics (+18%), Regeneration Technologies (+11%) and Wright Medical (+10%).
The largest orthopedic stocks have performed extremely well during the previous twelve months: Smith & Nephew (+52%), Stryker (+50%), Zimmer (+41%) and Biomet (+18%).
