Welcome to Spring!  Let’s see how the new season is treating Boston Scientific.

So one thing we noticed in February was that the stock prices for Boston Scientific were falling and in fact, fell 11% in that month.  Performance in March wasn’t exactly stellar either.  Starting at $15.99 on March 2, the stock price closed at $14.79 on April 3.  The price hit a low of $14.22 in April.  While the stock price seems to be on a declining trend, there was an upswing during the last week of March.  The stock took a rather large drop on March 26, opening at $15.22 and closing at $14.22.  What’s going on?

Business Week published an article on March 26 that sheds some light on what’s happening with Boston Scientific’s stock prices.  It turns out, the previous weekend at a conference for the American College of Cardiology, competitor Abbott Laboratories presented information on its heart stent, Xience, that show the Abbott stent could actually be better for patients that the Boston Scientific stent.  I looked for more information about the conference and Abbott’s findings on the ACC site, but it was a little over my head.

We found in February that the Guidant Corp. acquisition could also be a contributor to the falling stock prices.  Well, things seem to be settling down there, but the amount of debt required for the acquisition continues to be a problem.  To counter that debt, Boston Scientific announced it will begin reviewing the option to sell a minority stake in its endosurgery group of products.  The company also noted that the endosurgery group is not as visible in the market because of all the growth in and focus on the cardiac business, mainly drug eluding stents.

Is there any news that isn’t related to DES?  Well, sort of.  Japan approved an implantable defibrillator for treating irregular heart beats, according to this news release.  According to the release, VITALITY DR is the “smallest dual chamber ICD currently offered in Japan.”  The small size makes the devise easier to implant and it also contains proprietary technology to help regulate the heart called AV Search Hysteresis.

So while the stock prices still dropped some in March, it seems there are still some good things happening at Boston Scientific.  We’ll check out April in a month to see if they’ve continued coming up with high quality products that the competitors can’t beat, and if there has been a positive turnaround in the DES market.