BY JIM HAMMERAND

Intuitive Surgical Chief Medical Officer Dr. Myriam Curet

[Photo courtesy of Intuitive Surgical]

Intuitive Surgical (Nasdaq: ISRG)+ executives say they see benefits to their business from GLP-1 weight loss drugs, even if investors aren’t quite so sure.

Intuitive’s stock slid in after-hours trading today after the company posted Q3 results that exceeded analysts’ expectations on profits but fell short on sales. Even if they had beat The Street on both counts, it’s not clear investors would have reacted any differently — just look at what happened to Intuitive’s stock price under that exact scenario after Q2.

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So it was no surprise that the very first question for Intuitive leaders from analysts on today’s Q3 earnings call focused on the impact of GLP-1 drugs on bariatric procedures.

“I think in the short term, we will see patients who are considering or are in the pipeline for bariatric surgery going to try the drug,” Intuitive Chief Medical Officer Dr. Myriam Curet said. “However, given compliance issues, cost, side effects, we expect that many of them will not stay on the drugs for longer than a year or two, and at that time will consider bariatric surgery. So I think overall we’ll see an increased interest in bariatric surgery, but that will get delayed in the short term.”

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Intuitive CEO Gary Guthart said there may be some “modest” impacts on Intuitive’s surgical robotics procedures beyond bariatrics, as well as the potential for surprising benefits.

“Here’s how we think about it: If you look at obesity and diabetes as risk factors in other domains, in other diseases for which surgery is performed, they are sometimes positively correlated risk factors for that disease. In some weird cases, they’re negative — cases [where] it’s actually protective against disease. So it’s not entirely obvious. In most of the diseases that we treat, as we look at it, it is not the dominant risk factor.”

It’s still too early to tell how GLP-1 drugs will affect patients who would be candidates for Intuitive’s procedures, he cautioned. But Guthart said Intuitive’s not yet close to tapping its total addressable market.

“If these drugs are highly effective at avoiding other types of diseases, we will cheer,” he said. “I still think we have a lot of upside opportunity to pursue.”

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