JPMorgan analyst Michael Weinstein says that the instability of U.S. hospitals and the slowdown of equipment purchases will continue to drag down the a number of companies until next year. Hospitals will continue to find it difficult to justify purchases of higher end equipment, and even relatively inexpensive low tech items, such as beds, according to Weinstein.
He warns that several hospital equipment makers are likely to be affected by the trend, including Intuitive Surgical, Hill-Rom Holdings Inc., Conmed Corp., Steris Corp., SonoSite Inc., Hologic Inc. Kinetic Concepts Inc., Smith & Nephew PLC, Stryker Corp. and radiation-therapy companies Varian Medical Systems (VAR), Accuray (ARAY) TomoTherapy and Zoll Medical.
For more:
- see this Wall Street Journal article [1]
Links:
[1] http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090401-710454.html?mod=wsjcrmain