Lombard Medical looks to M&A to grow beyond AorFix

Lombard Medical Technologies (NSDQ:EVAR) CEO Simon Hubbert this week said the stent graft maker is looking beyond the abdominal aortic aneurysm repair market, aiming to grow out of being a 1-product company either via acquisition or a distribution deal with a larger medical device company.

Discussing Lombard’s 2nd-quarter results July 27, Hubbert referenced the $110 million buyout of Aptus Endosystems by Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) last month, observing that the crowded and competitive abdominal aortic aneurysm repair market is driving consolidation.

“We believe this environment presents us with the opportunity to seek partners and to look for ways to combine our technology and will leverage our competencies with others to more efficiently address new segments of the market,” Hubbert said during the call. “I think we have a great base business and opportunity with Aorfix. But I’m also not ready for Lombard stay a 1-product company down the line. We have a very capable management team here, capable of managing a much bigger business than we currently have.”

Lombard could look to acquire assets in the vascular surgery market to take advantage of its existing sales force, Hubbert said.

“Something that leverages the sales team and the call point would certainly be interesting to us,” he said. “So it would need to be vascular surgeons, interventional radiologists, interventional cardiologists doing these kind of procedures.”

Partnership with a larger cardio company is not out of the question either, Hubbert added.

“Everything is on the table,” he said, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript.

Lombard cut its red ink by 26.0% during the 3 months ended June 30, posting losses of -$8.2 million, or -50.6¢ per share, on sales of $4.5 million – representing sales growth of 106.8% compared with Q2 2014.

Analysts were looking for losses of -55¢. EVAR shares gained 4.5% to close at $3.50 apiece yesterday and were up 1.4% to $3.55 in mid-morning trading today.

“We had another solid quarter of rapidly growing procedures and revenues across key markets while making significant progress on our key commercial, regulatory and strategic initiatives,” Hubbert said in prepared remarks. “In the U.S., we added new physicians and new centers to our growing list of customers. We also launched Aorfix Plus, a new addition to our portfolio that allows us to treat patients with larger aortic neck diameters that we believe expands our addressable market by about 10%. In Japan, as a result of continued strong procedural growth, we estimate that we have captured approximately 5% market share within 9 months of launching Aorfix.”

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