Medtronic races for market share in fast-growing treatment of irregular heartbeats

Medtronic had to overcome a major supplier glitch in its latest quarter as it tried to keep pace with other large medical-technology companies racing to commercialize new catheter technology that doctors say makes treating atrial fibrillation safer and quicker.

Treatments for AFib comprise a multibillion-dollar market for Medtronic and its competitors. Medtronic CEO Geoff Martha said his company has ramped up its manufacturing capacity of “pulsed field ablation” products, which treat AFib by applying electric pulses instead of heating and cooling technologies to cardiac tissue. The company more than doubled the number of patients treated with its catheter in the second quarter, Martha said.

A now-resolved issue with a third-party component supplier led the business segment to accelerate at a slower pace than the company expected, Martha said Tuesday during Medtronic’s quarterly earnings call with investors. It was a red mark on expectations-beating results that the company, based in Dublin and with operational headquarters in Fridley, reported on Tuesday.

“We expect to reach and then exceed market growth in this large and fast-growing $9 billion cardiac ablation space,” Martha said. This growth is steep for other companies: Evercore analyst Vijay Kumar previously said that pulsed field ablation system products drove more than half of Boston Scientific’s organic growth of 18.5% in the third quarter.

Medtronic narrowed its sales growth outlook on Tuesday as the medical device company reported revenue that beat Wall Street’s expectations, including strong sales of diabetes devices.

Martha said during a call with investors that the company’s momentum is building, as the most recent quarter marked the eighth in a row of organic revenue growth in the midsingle digits.

“We know that innovation matters, and innovation is what really is driving our growth today across multiple areas,” Martha said.

Medtronic, which employs about 10,000 people in Minnesota, reported an adjusted net profit of $1.62 billion on $8.4 billion in sales for its second quarter, which ended Oct. 25. Revenue grew by 5% on an organic basis since the same time last year.

Company stock closed down nearly 3% on Tuesday. Joanne Wuensch, a Citi research analyst, attributed the drop partly to volatile postelection health care trends in the stock market and investors who just may have expected more.

“I think there were high expectations going into the quarter and they [Medtronic] delivered a nice beat and raise, but expectations may have been higher,” Wuensch said.

The company’s diabetes group grew the most, generating $686 million in revenue, up 12.4% over the same time last year.

Sales for the company’s largest group, cardiovascular devices, rose by 6.1% to $3.1 billion. At the end of the quarter, the company announced the Food and Drug Administration approved its Affera system, which maps the heart and treats AFib, the most common sustained heart arrhythmia, through radiofrequency ablation and pulsed field ablation in a single catheter. The company sold every pulsed field ablation unit it had in Q2, Martha said.

Large medtech companies such as Boston Scientific, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic are commercializing pulsed field ablation products, which physicians say is a safer and quicker treatment than traditional radiofrequency ablation that uses heat to treat AFib and can rarely lead to potentially fatal side effects.

“Our technology is helping to drive the rapid shift of the market to pulsed field ablation,” Martha said. “We’ve been significantly expanding our manufacturing capacity to meet this growing demand, and we’re well-positioned as the only company with both single shot and focal PFA catheters.”

Aside from the supplier issue, decelerating sales of cryoablation catheters, which use extreme cooling to ablate the heart and treat atrial fibrillation, offset pulse field ablation products’ revenue boost as demand of the new procedure has increased, Martha said. Sean Salmon, who leads the company’s cardiovascular group, said cryoablation procedures draw the company less revenue per case than PFA procedures.

Medtronic’s adjusted net profit rose to $1.26 per share, a cent higher than the adjusted net profit of $1.25 reported for the same quarter last year, beating expectations of analysts polled by Yahoo Finance by a penny per share.

Medtronic narrowed its organic sales guidance for fiscal year 2025 to a range of 4.75% to 5%, from its previous range of 4.5% to 5%. It also narrowed its guidance for diluted adjusted EPS to $5.44 to $5.50, from a previous range of $5.42 to $5.50.

Martha said on the call that it’s too early to speculate on how potential tariffs during the next presidential administration would affect Medtronic, but the company is “preparing for different scenarios.” Less than 1% of Medtronic’s revenue comes from China imports, he said. Tariffs on China would have a manageable effect on the company, Kumar said in an interview.

Boston Scientific and Abbott Laboratories lifted their outlook for adjusted profit last month. The medtech market is healthy, Martha said.

“We’re seeing good procedure growth and we think that’s steady going forward, really driven by innovation,” Martha said.