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Intuitive Surgical da Vinci SP. |

Intuitive Surgical shares are down today despite Q4 financial earnings that surpassed the consensus forecast. The Sunnyvale, California–based robotic surgery technology developer also reported COVID’s omicron wave is affecting procedure volumes.

Intuitive posted profits of $380.6 million, or $1.04 per share, on sales of $1.6 billion for the three months ended Dec. 31, 2021. This narrowly increased its bottom line by about $100,000 on sales growth of 10.5% year-over-year.

Adjusted to exclude one-time items, earnings per share were $1.30, 2¢ ahead of Wall Street, while sales beat analysts’ projections by approximately 0.8%.

Worldwide procedures performed with Intuitive’s da Vinci surgical robot increased approximately 19% compared to the fourth quarter of 2020, as last year was adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Intuitive said in a news release that the resurgence of COVID-19 late in the fourth quarter of 2021 also impacted procedures, though.

For full-year 2021, Intuitive earned $1.705 billion, or $4.66 per share, off $5.710 billion in revenue, representing a 61% bottom-line gain and 26% top-line growth compared with 2020.

Intuitive shipped 385 da Vinci Surgical Systems, an increase of 18% compared with 326 in the fourth quarter of 2020. It grew its da Vinci Surgical System installed base to 6,730 systems as of December 31, 2021, an increase of 12% compared with 5,989 as of the end of the fourth quarter of 2020.

Intuitive did not provide financial guidance for 2022. ISRG shares were down more than 7% at $276.90 per share in morning trading today.

Editor’s Note: This article was republished from sister publication MassDevice.