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Life Science Tools & Diagnostics
Elective procedure pushouts and hospital capex spending continue to look bleak amidst the pandemic (for more color on
the latter, see our hospital capex survey)
We continue to recommend select exposure. In particular, we would avoid some dental names in light of a slower recovery
in elective procedures (i.e. XRAY), as well as radiation oncology (i.e., VAR, ARAY), which remains prone to a more lasting
hospital capex budget freeze and changing reimbursement, while we note that ISRG plans to use the balance sheet
aggressively to place capital under an operating lease model, which should offer some cushion. Lastly, we remain
constructive on HOLX, in light of the COVID-19 diagnostic tailwinds, among other things.
Outside of med tech and dental, we remain positive (and Overweight) on several diversified life science tools names
(AVTR, DHR), smid cap growth companies (ADPT, GH, NTRA, TXG) and CRO/CDMOs (CRL, CTLT, IQV, PPD). We
remain Underweight on LMNX, MYGN, QDEL, VAR and WAT.
MedTech
Managed Care & Healthcare Facilities
““Goldilocks Prevails” - 72% of those with a deferred medical procedure stated they were willing to undergo the
procedure either “now” or “within a few months as crisis eases”.
Hospitals & Providers: This seems fairly bullish for hospitals off the down 50% April lows; particularly given the
responses were collected over 5/5-5/11/20 as states were just beginning to re-open social movement and elective
procedures.
Managed Care: The data is still plenty benign for managed care medical loss ratios (MLR); 38% of previously-
scheduled cases are not willing to come back until there is treatment or vaccine development.
Two modest surprises from this same subset of patients: 1) no material skew of outpatient vs inpatient (more
positive for hospitals vs ASCs than we would have guessed), and 2) a slight skew of government vs commercial
insurance (slightly worse returning payor mix for hospitals than we would have guessed given frailty of senior
population vs younger commercial population).
With more than a third of respondents planning to wait until a treatment or vaccine becomes available, this reaffirms our
view that COVID-19 will have lasting impacts well-beyond 2Q20
Disruptions to the pipeline of patients could also stifle the recovery, with only 36% of patients currently seeing a physician
either in-person or virtually.
Sector Takeaways