“A pivotal moment for our company has arrived. We have developed best-in-class technologies that enable us to evolve and work toward our vision of endovascular excellence. We now stand on this foundation, united in our intent to help patients embrace the gifts of health and life by providing physicians with an unrivaled offering of endovascular therapy tools.”
Robert J. Palmisano, President & CEO
To our valued shareholders, customers, and employees:
All of us at ev3 are delighted to be coming off a very successful year, and we are completely focused on continuing our growth.
Over the last several quarters, we have built great momentum and demonstrated our ability to grow at or above market rates and deliver consistent operating and financial results. We achieved this through world-class levels of customer satisfaction in 2009, with a historically high score of 92% of our physician customers willing to recommend ev3 to their colleagues and peers. In addition, our employee satisfaction level and willingness to recommend ev3 as a place to work improved significantly to 84% in 2009. Together, these accomplishments resulted in the robust financial results and stock price appreciation of 119% that we saw in 2009. We believe that strong customer and employee willingness to recommend metrics are the underlying leading indicators for shareholder value creation.
Our full-year 2009 net product sales were $449.1 million, an increase of 12% compared to the prior year. We made significant progress in improving gross margin, which was up 700 basis points in 2009 versus the prior year. For the first time in ev3’s history, we achieved profitability, with 2009 diluted earnings per share of $0.38. We believe these results reflect ev3’s leadership position in our peripheral vascular and neurovascular markets and our ability to execute.
In 2009, we also added several breakthrough products—such as the Pipeline™ Embolization Device and TurboHawk™ Plaque Excision System—to our extensive endovascular portfolio to improve patient outcomes and expand our procedural penetration. We believe that these new products, as well as the clinical studies that are underway, will drive continued growth and deliver enhanced value to our shareholders.
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