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03 Apr 2013
Business grows overall, but ophthalmic systems division is running below levels seen last year.
Carl Zeiss Meditec, one of the world’s leading providers of photonics-based medical instruments, says that its sales for the first half of its latest fiscal year are up 3% on the prior year.
In a preliminary announcement for the first six months of the financial year 2012/2013 (covering October 2012 through March 2013), the Germany-headquartered company said that it expected to post a turnover of around €442 million, up from €431.8 million for the first half of 2011/2012.
When adjusted for currency effects, the rate of revenue growth is slightly higher, at approximately 4%.
Visualization with fluorescence
The fastest growth is currently being seen in the company’s “microsurgery” business unit, whose sales have grown by about 6% compared with last year to reach approximately €207 million. Instruments sold by this unit include the OPMI Pentero microscope used in brain surgery, and the OPMI Lumera, which is used in ophthalmic procedures.
The Pentero uses fluorescence and apochromatic optics to aid surgeons’ visualization of diseased tissue and blood flow dynamics, with fluorescence options ranging from the blue to infrared spectral regions.
Zeiss Meditec’s “ophthalmic systems” business unit has seen a slight decrease in sales, however. At approximately €176 million, they are down 5% from last year’s half-yearly mark of €184.8 million.
The company says that although order intake in this business unit remains strong compared to last year, revenue generation in the quarter since Christmas was “somewhat slower than expected”.
“It remains uncertain whether the target of at least equaling market growth can be achieved by the end of the current financial year,” reported the firm in its announcement.
Sales within the company’s “surgical ophthalmology” business unit grew fastest of all, up by around 16% compared with the previous year at close to €60 million.
Carl Zeiss Meditec will release full details of its half-yearly financial results next month. The latest sales update comes after the company reported very strong increases in both sales and profits for the year ended September 30, 2012, although in February it said that demand in the US had taken a dip, in part because of changes to funding models for disease diagnostics.
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