周末医疗脉搏：死科技永远吗？医疗技术能恢复吗

Lee Hambright+1 917 344 8429lee.hambright@bernsteinsg.comCourtney Breen+1 917 344 8407courtney.breen@bernsteinsg.comNandan Kulkarni+91 22 6842 1436nandan.kulkarni@bernsteinsg.comDelphine Le Louet+33 1 42 13 92 93delphine.le-louet@bernsteinsg.comRebecca Liang, Ph.D.+852 2123 2656rebecca.liang@bernsteinsg.comSusannah Ludwig+41 582 723 127susannah.ludwig@bernsteinsg.comWilliam Pickering, MD+1 917 344 8340william.pickering@bernsteinsg.com Specialist Sales U.S. Medtech stock performance has been abysmal. Our coverage has underperformed the S&P by 4600bps over the past year (Exhibit 1),and the medtech sector multiple has compressed by 30% since November (Exhibit 2). While investors worry about several macro factors(slowing utilization, margin pressure, GLP-1 impact), we believe medtech weakness is more about single-stockstoriesthat have gotten morecomplicated. In today’s note, we reflect on some of the complications that have crept into medtech stock stories. Medtech fundamentalsremain solid, in our view, and per Exhibit 4, valuations have come in dramatically for most of our coverage. For investors who are willing to live - By Lee Hambright and Adam Chow Over the last 12 months, U.S. Medtech has underperformed the S&P (by 4600bps!) and has lagged all otherhealthcare subsectors U.S. Medtech stock performance has been horrendous. Over thelast year, U.S. Medtech has underperformed the S&P 500 by justunder 5000 bps (see Exhibit 1), making it the worst subsectorwithin healthcare by a wide margin. The P/E multiple for the sectorhas been slashed by 30% over the last ~6 months (see Exhibit 2).Within our coverage, most stocks are down significantly year to have been questioning whether something is fundamentally wrongwith the sector. Could procedure growth be slowing down? Willinflation (e.g., oil, resins, memory/semiconductors) put pressure on These are all red herrings, in our view. We see nothing wrong withmedtech fundamentals. The problem for medtech, in our view, ismore aboutstories. As investors remain captivated by AI-relatedstories, the stories for historically strong medtech stocks havegotten increasingly complicated. And in a world where a narrow set INCREASINGLY COMPLICATED STORIES Stories have become increasingly complicated for many medtechstocks. Boston Scientific (BSX) has had a particularly dramatic fallfrom grace, and we attribute a fair amount of sector weakness toBSX’s collapse. But sadly, BSX is not alone. Below, we summarize Boston Scientific (BSX).BSX’s P/E multiple has been slashedfrom a high of over 36x in early 2025 to 12.5x today. Afterestablishing itself as a reliable high-single-digit grower, BSX’sorganic growth shot up to 16% (!) in both 2024 and 2025, drivenprimarily by two key franchises: Farapulse (PFA) and Watchman(LAAC). Watchman revenue doubled from ~$1bn in 2022 to ~$2bnin 2025, and Farapulse drove BSX’s EP business to quadruple from$800mn in 2023 to $3.3bn in 2025. After CMS reimbursementcoding for concomitant Farapulse+Watchman procedures wentlive Oct 2024, concomitant procedures drove Watchman organicgrowth from 18% in 3Q24 to a peak of 35% in 3Q25. Investorconcerns about PFA competition started to percolate during thecourse of 2025 as BSX EP growth began to decelerate. Then in4Q25, BSX U.S. EP sales missed consensus by 6%, and Watchmanorganic growth inflected from its peak of 35% to 29%. Bothfranchises continued to decelerate in 1Q26 and Urology growthwas weak on Axonics integration hiccups, leading to a dramaticguidance cut after Q1, where FY26 organic growth was cut from10%-11% to 6.5%-8.0% (see our 1Q26 recap). It was a gutsy Source: Bloomberg (S&P 500 Health Care Equipment Index; cap-weighted average ofABT, BAX, BDX, BSX, DXCM, EW, GEHC, IDXX, ISRG, MDT, PODD, RMD, STE, SYK, ZBH) Abbott (ABT).In 4Q25, sales growth slowed to 3.0% organic (a3% miss), driven largely by an unexpected 9% decline in ABT’sNutrition business (missed by 12%) (see our 4Q25 recap). Thedecline was driven by price cuts (primarily in the Adult segment)and infant formula market share losses stemming from the loss of HOW DID WE GET HERE? What’s driving this weakness for medtech stocks? What haschanged? As medtech multiples plunge to 10-year lows, investors a large WIC contract in 3Q25. Abbott had been raising Nutritionprices since 2022 in an attempt to offset higher manufacturingcosts, but those increases began to weigh on volume. Managementtook price down in the quarter to address this and guided theNutrition business to a challenged 1H26 with a return to growthin 2H26. The story did not get any cleaner in 1Q26, as sales ex-Exact acquisition and other adjustments continued growing slowlyat ~3.0% organic. ABT’s continuous glucose monitor (CGM) sales EBITDA miss carried outsize weight given market expectationsthat companies should execute cleanly in their first full quarter as apublic company, and MDLN shares plunged by 12% before settlingat -7.3% on the day. An FDA recall on April 17, FDA warni