Intuitive Surgical Earnings Stronger Than The Bionic Man (ISRG)

Intuitive Surgical Inc. (NASDAQ:ISRG) saw shares rise a monster 8.3% to $256.44 in active trading ahead of earnings.  After the earnings report, it appears shares are trading up another 4.9% in after-hours at $269.00 to new highs.  Cramer just covered this one positively in a call-in when he was touting the other medical stocks and this was also one of his fantasy stock picks.

The company posted $1.04 EPS on revenues $156.9 million.  Analysts were looking for $0.80 EPS and $144 million revenues.  This is robotic surgical operations under the da Vinci brand that is kicking you know what.  The company is also raising guidance to 55% to 58% sales growth rather than its prior 45% to 50% projections. 

This stock is now trading above almost all brokerage firm price targets, so analysts are going to have to hike targets to keep up with it if they dont want to do the "downgrade on valuations" calls.  The valuations on this are still astronomical, so its hard to imagine with close to a $10+ Billion market cap that this can run another 200% like it has over the last year. We’ll see.

Jon C. Ogg
October 18, 2007