Zimmer ditches slow-growing business to refocus

Zimmer Biomet has had a pretty tragic year. Deferrals and cancellations of the elective orthopaedic procedures in which its products tend to be used meant that its 2020 sales came in at just $7bn – nearly $1bn below 2019's number. 

With Covid-19 vaccines beginning to roll out, 2021 and the years beyond ought to be rosier for the company. But Zimmer is helping the recovery process along by spinning out its slow-growing spinal and dental businesses, allowing it to sharpen its focus on hip and knee implants, which are seeing greater demand. Zimmer’s Rosa range of surgical robots is also expected to provide a boost in the months to come – though it appears that one of these will also be spun out.

In common with all the ortho specialists, Zimmer had a poor first quarter and a dreadful second (Orthopaedics companies’ nightmare quarter, August 25, 2020). A brief return to the sun in the form of 2% third-quarter sales growth was followed by another dip in 2020’s last period as another wave of Covid-19 infections swept the globe. Zimmer recorded a 12% sales slide and a net loss of $137m across all of last year.

Thanks to the advent of vaccines the fight back against the pandemic is under way, and Zimmer expects to see a recovery in the summer; if elective procedures are given the go-ahead by hospitals, the backlog of untreated patients could give sales a bump. 

Bone structure

But any potential recovery will not be enough long term, the company seems to have decided. By 2022 it is to divest its dental and spine businesses into an independent, publicly traded company, the idea being that the sharper focus of both companies will allow faster growth and more targeted business development activities, including tuck-in acquisitions. 

Zimmer’s dental, spine, craniomaxillofacial and thoracic business unit had sales of just over $1bn in 2020, though this represented a 10% fall. Craniomaxillofacial and thoracic will be staying with Zimmer. 

The decision has “clear positive implications for both growth and margins”, Stifel analysts wrote, and could accelerate Zimmer’s plan to achieve 4-5% topline growth and 30% operating margins by 2030. 

There are also implications for Zimmer’s involvement in the robotics arena. Its Rosa Knee machine was one of the stars of the fourth quarter, with 115 placements; over the entire year sales of the system topped $100m. The system is used for total knee replacement, and competes with similar offerings from Smith & Nephew and Stryker, as well as Johnson & Johnson, whose Velys system was launched last month. 

Future Rosa applications for hip and partial knee replacements are expected to come in 2021. According to Zimmer’s chief executive, Bryan Hanson, the launch of Rosa Hip will allow the group to grow faster than the rest of the hip market.

Two other versions of Rosa are on the market. The one used for spinal surgeries will become part of the spin-off company, whereas the neurology one will stay with Zimmer. 

J&J is also planning additional indications for its Velys robot. Currently this may be used by surgeons to plan and perform knee replacements, but J&J hopes to expand into hip, shoulder, trauma, spine and cranial maxillofacial procedures in future, putting it on a similar footing to Zimmer’s Rosa franchise. 

Leerink analysts believe that Velys’s approval for spinal use could be two years away. By that time the Zimmer spinout will be concluded, that new group, along with Medtronic and Globus Medical, will be J&J’s competition.