Thoughts and Observations from the 2021 Top Companies Reports

The annual Top Companies Report issue is always a fantastic way to catch up with what was happening at the leading firms in the industry in their most recent fiscal. During a typical year writing the reports, my fellow editors and I are reminded of many of the big stories regarding M&A activity, leadership changes, substantial product announcements, and other news involving these major firms. The last fiscal year for these companies, however, was anything but typical.

For the first time since I’ve been a part of producing this report (heck, perhaps for the first time since anyone has been involved with the MPO Top Companies report), one single item dominated the news during the reported year. The words “pandemic,” “COVID,” and/or “virus” were included in every single company report, bar none.

With the pandemic affecting every single industry worldwide, it’s no wonder a report of the top 30 medical device firms, many of which produced products used by frontline healthcare professionals in their fight against the virus, would feature the topic so prominently. And with that, comes a number of challenges.

In my contributions to the report (if it wasn’t apparent by the three distinct writing styles, we each take 10 companies and author those reports), it was difficult to find something other than the pandemic to write about regarding the financials for a company’s latest fiscal or most relevant news for the year. That said, the COVID-related news coming from each company was certainly unique to each organization. Some companies were adversely impacted by the pause put on elective surgeries more so than their peers. Others saw decreases due to patients being unable to see their doctors to gain access to new devices to address a medical condition.

Regardless of the reason for a company’s losses, something from Smith+Nephew’s report caught my eye—the phrase “no excuses.” As the father of a daughter whose senior year of high school will forever be remembered for her classes at home via a computer instead of the cherished moments so many enjoy during a more typical final year of grade school, I grew quite tired of hearing what couldn’t be done because of the pandemic. That was essentially the message shared by Robert Rahal, Veterans Patient Experience Officer at the VA Central California Healthcare System in that report. “Understandably, there are reasons for not being able to do certain things…As organizations, let’s stop making excuses. Stop blaming COVID,” he was quoted as saying.

Fortunately, when it came to the employees at the leading firms of the medical device industry, “can’t” didn’t seem to be in the vocabulary of many. Instead, partnerships were forged to boost productivity of critical healthcare needs, such as ventilators and personal protection equipment. Necessity spurred rapid development of diagnostics to help track the virus. Still other organizations pushed ahead with the manufacture of drug delivery technologies to help support vaccine distribution once those were ready. The medtech industry didn’t say “can’t”; rather it found a way to do what it could to support the fight, regardless of bottom lines and financial reports.

Of course, there were companies who saw substantial financial gains as a result of the pandemic. I know for me personally that created another challenge in writing this year’s reports. Typically, financial gains among the top firms is great news. Unfortunately, in this case, it was often a result of selling critical products to help fight the pandemic, which as of this writing, has resulted in more than 4 million deaths worldwide. Pretty hard to get excited about positive financial gains when it’s presented against that backdrop.

In doing my research for one of the reports, I did come across a statement made by an executive I thought put as positive a spin on the situation as I could find. Unfortunately, I don’t recall the executive’s name or even which firm he worked for, but he essentially said the financial gains realized from the pandemic will enable his firm to reinvest in new innovations that will help many others post-pandemic for years to come. While the loss of life from COVID has been a tremendous horror, perhaps we can honor them with life-saving technologies that will exist because of the positive financial gains these companies saw in 2020. I realize it’s not the best silver lining, but as far as I can tell, it may be the only one we have.

In the meantime, thank you for taking the time to review the top company reports contained within. As always, feel free to reach out to me with your thoughts and comments on any of the top firms you read about in this year’s report. 

Sean Fenske, Editor-in-Chief
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