Avinger shares rise despite Q4 earnings miss

Shares in Avinger (NSDQ:AVGR) have risen today despite the medical device maker posting fourth quarter earnings that missed expectations on Wall Street.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based company posted losses of $6.9 million, or 31¢ per share, on sales of $2 million for the three months ended December 31, seeing losses shrink 31.8% while sales grew 6% compared with the same period during the previous year.

Losses per share were just behind the 29¢ consensus on Wall Street for the quarter.

For the full year, Avinger posted losses of $35.7 million, or $3.34 per share, on sales of $7.9 million, seeing losses shrink 26.8% while sales shrunk 20.3% compared with the prior fiscal year.

“We are excited with the continued momentum for our next-generation Pantheris atherectomy device, including treatment of our 500th patient in December. Pantheris fourth quarter revenue increased 18% quarter-over-quarter, with more than 65 of our Lumivascular centers now using the next-generation device. Feedback from the field continues to be excellent, with clinical results, product reliability and case volume all tracking positively for the next generation device. We continued to build our sales organization in the fourth quarter and expect to increase sales headcount in 2019 as we scale utilization and drive revenue growth. On the new product front, we remain enthusiastic about the potential for Pantheris SV to expand our available market with the first-ever image-guided atherectomy system for the treatment of small vessels. We received CE Marking for Pantheris SV in October and completed our first clinical cases in the fourth quarter. We were excited to have Pantheris SV featured in a successful live case transmission at LINC 2019, one of the top global forums for thought leadership in the field of vascular medicine. Our 510(k) application for U.S. pre-marketing clearance of Pantheris SV is pending and we have now submitted all additional data requested as part of the review process. By allowing for the treatment of lesions in smaller diameter vessels, we believe Pantheris SV has the potential to expand our available market by as much as 50%, which should allow us to address a significantly larger portion of the estimated $500 million atherectomy market. As we look to 2019, we intend to focus on five strategic goals as the pillars of our growth strategy. These include driving utilization at current sites and in current markets, launching new sites in underserved areas with high rates of PAD, launching new devices to expand our addressable market and revenue per site opportunity, continuing to produce compelling clinical data confirming the unique benefits of Avinger’s Lumivascular platform and maintaining a lean operating structure as we push to scale the business. We look forward to reporting our progress on these initiatives in the quarters ahead,” prez & CEO Jeff Soinski said in a press release.

Shares in Avinger rose approximately 7.2% today, closing at 63¢.

In December, Avinger released preliminary analysis results from its SCAN post-market study comparing optical coherence (OCT) to intravascular ultrasound (IVUS), touting that data indicated that OCT imaging with its Pantheris system showed statistical superiority or equivalence to IVUS.

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