The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.
(Questions from industry analysts are provided in full, but answers are omitted - download the transcript to see the full question-and-answer session)
Question: Thomas M. Jones - Joh. Berenberg, Gossler & Co. KG, Research Division - Analyst
: Good. Lovely. I had one for Skip and one for you, Graham. Skip, I wanted to come back to the dual mobility hip issue, or question, really. I mean I'm
somewhat surprised that this has become such an important product for orthopaedic companies in recent years. It's not as if they're a new concept.
I think the first dual mobility hips were introduced some 40-odd years ago. And there does seem to still be some significant clinical debate about
the utility of dual mobility. I guess that they're primarily aimed at those patients that are at risk of instability but then you carry the risk of having
2 bearing surfaces rather than 1, so potentially 2 -- 2, or twice as much risk of wear debris. So I guess my questions are, why do you think it's gaining
so much attention now? From your perspective, what part of the overall -- what percentage of overall hip procedures do you think are genuinely
amenable to a dual mobility hip?
And then the sort of follow-on question is, one of the purported risk mitigation strategies for dual mobility hips is to use a ceramic or a ceramicized
head. How do you feel your OXINIUM head positions you relative to the competition in that context? I'm sorry if it's a bit of long-winded one, but
it's quite a technical area. And then question for Graham. I noticed your interest expense guidance has ticked down just a notch between Q3 and
Q2. Is this just lower debt balances? Or are you seeing some improvement in your cost of debt? And I guess the question really that follows on from
that is how should we be thinking about the cost of debt, not so much interest expense, that's clearly dependent on what you spend, but the cost
of your debt 2020 versus 2019 as you sit today?
Question: Thomas M. Jones - Joh. Berenberg, Gossler & Co. KG, Research Division - Analyst
: Okay, I'll wait until then.
Question: Thomas M. Jones - Joh. Berenberg, Gossler & Co. KG, Research Division - Analyst
: Do you think that surgeons -- we've seen a couple of instances in the last sort of 10, 15 years where orthopaedic companies and surgeons together
have gotten quite excited about new technologies thinking metal-on-metal, modular systems and they've got their fingers burnt. We had the
[suture turner] issue with metal-on-metal and then we had the taper corrosion issues with the modular systems. Do you think that the experience
of those kind of exciting new products, for want of a better way of putting it, that subsequently turned out to be a bit less exciting than originally
thought, are going to make it a little bit more difficult for you to convince surgeons to switch over to the latest new technology?
|
