Topic: How To Invest

Good day, Pat: Can you please provide your opinion on Edwards Lifesciences? Thanks.

Article Excerpt

Edwards Lifesciences, $101.39, symbol EW on New York (Shares outstanding: 106.0 million; Market cap: $10.8 billion; www.edwards.com), develops technologies for treating heart disease and monitoring critically ill patients’ cardiovascular systems. The company operates in three segments: Surgical Heart Valve Therapy (42% of revenue): Edwards makes a range of heart valves and other products that are used to replace or repair a patient’s diseased or defective heart valves. These products include pericardial valves from biologically inert animal tissue sewn onto wireform stents. Transcatheter Heart Valves (29% of sales): Transcatheter valve technology offers a less invasive means of treating heart valve disease. It’s designed to let physicians deliver replacement valves via a catheter through the body’s cardiovascular system, eliminating the need to open the chest. Critical Care (29% of sales): This division’s products focus on hemodynamic monitoring, which aims to assess a critically ill patient’s cardiovascular system and its response to tissue oxygen demands. Hemodynamic monitoring measures the blood pressure inside the veins, heart and arteries…