Straumann Offers Cautious Forecast: Is the Financial Crisis Hitting Dental Implants?

Summary:

Today, Straumann, a world leader in dental implants, announced quarterly earnings and provided a cautious financial outlook for the remainder of the year.

Full Article:

Today, Straumann, a world leader in dental implants, announced quarterly earnings and provided a cautious financial outlook for the remainder of the year, suggesting that the financial crisis maybe effecting the dental implant market.

Though Straumann posted double-digit top-line growth in the third fiscal quarter, the company warned that:
"The exceptional current economic environment makes near term forecasts difficult. Taking this and a sluggish October into account and on the basis of softer growth in the third quarter than in the first six months, Straumann foresees full-year net revenue growth of around 15-17% in local currencies."

The question, of course is whether Straumann's cautious outlook is reflective of the dental implant market as a whole or whether the competition in the dental implants market continues to take a toll on the market share of larger implant manufacturers. In either case, Straumann still has a very bullish outlook on the dental implant market on a long-term basis. Global demographic trends, and still low penetration rates continue to suggest that the market for implant dentistry has exceptionally strong long-term growth potential.

Importantly, Straumann has recently announced several new initiatives that should help the company deliver strong results in future periods. Specifically, at the recent meeting of the European Association for Osseointegration (EAO), Straumann presented a new material, called Roxolid, that it claims could make dental implants smaller, stronger and safer. Roxolid, is currently undergoing clinical trials in six countries. Preliminary (6-12 month) clinical observations showed: "very promising implant survival rates, while exciting results from a preclinical study demonstrated that Roxolid integrated with bone better than pure titanium". Roxolid implants are expected to become available in initial markets in the course of 2009.

Additionally, at the same meeting, Straumann presented results which compared Straumann’s third generation implant surface on titanium implants with Nobel's TiUnite® surface. SLActive demonstrated higher mean shear strength values, which were statistically significant at both 3 and 6 weeks. The investigators concluded that SLActive was more effective in enhancing interfacial shear strength.

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OsseoNews.com Editors