Edwards Stock Hits All-Time High This Year

Edwards Lifesciences' latest TAVR device, approved by FDA in June, includes a major design change to solve previous leakage issues.

Chris Newmarker

Edwards has certainly had meteoric growth since the beginning of 2014, with its stock rising from the mid-$60 range then to the $155 range in July of this year. After a 2-for-1 stock split this month, its roughly $80 per share stock is still trading 28% higher than comparable stock at the start of the year. Not bad considering the company's stock started out trading for about $3 per share in 2000.

Edwards has benefitted from solid sales of its Sapien lines of transcatheter heart valves. Sales of transcatheter valves were up 29% year-over-year in Edwards' recent quarter. The company won FDA approval in June for its Sapien 3. The Sapien 3 mostly solves previous leakage issues through a major design change--a skirt at the base of the valve. Edwards plans to have the Sapien 3 in all of its existing accounts by the end of the year, CEO Michael Mussallem said in an October 26 earnings call transcribed by Seeking Alpha.

"We remain optimistic that transcatheter valve procedure adoption is still at its early stages and the growing body of compelling clinical outcomes gives us confidence that with expanded evidence larger populations of patients suffering from aortic stenosis will be eligible for TAVR," Mussallem said.

Edwards is already on to new innovations, too. It is among a number of companies spending hundreds of millions of dollars on transcatheter mitral valve replacement technology.