Paradigm Completes Private Placement. With the aid of Win Capital Corp. (Bayville, NY), Paradigm Medical Industries Inc. (Salt Lake City, UT) completed a $5-million private placement with private investors. Paradigm sold 50,000 shares of Series E convertible preferred stock, $0.001 par value, for $100 per share. Holders may convert shares into common stock at $1.875 per share at any time. According to Paradigm's chairman and CEO, Thomas F. Motter, “The bulk of the proceeds of this transaction will be used for selling, general, and administrative expense and for the production of additional blood flow analyzers (BFAs).”
In other news, Paradigm received ISO-900 certification for its San Diego, CA, manufacturing plant. The company will have the capacity to produce more ocular BFAs. Notes Motter, “The demand for BFAs has been overwhelming following authorization to use a common procedure terminology code from the AMA this April.”
Biolase Obtains FDA Waterlase Clearance. Biolase Technology Inc. (San Clemente, CA) received clearance to market its Waterlase dental-laser sulcular debridement, a treatment for periodontal disease and for implant recovery, a common cause of tooth loss. With regard to sulcular debridement, private-practice physician Joe Travato notes, "The Waterlase is indispensable for soft-tissue management and is much more comfortable for the patient." In other news, Biolase named Dr. Chris Owens as director of sales and marketing for the LASERSMILE/Twilite whitening and soft-tissue system.
Surgilight Gathers New Board Members. Colette Cozean, former CEO of Palomar Industries and present general manager of EnOVision, joins four others as board members for SurgiLight Inc. (Orlando, FL). Joseph Allen, Robert Freiberg, Stuart Michelson, and Louis P. Valente join the ranks of J. T. Lin, J. S. Yuan, and Lee Chow. Cozean will be the first chairwoman on the board of directors of the ophthalmic-laser diagnostic and treatment company.
LCA-Vision Procedures up in Q2. LCA-Vision (Cincinnati, OH), reported that it has performed 22,940 laser vision corrections in Q2, an increase of 65% over the 13,888 procedures one year ago. Average price per procedure has also increased from $897 to $933 in the second quarter. Says Tom Wilson, LCA-Vision CEO, "Our first center opening of 2001 will occur later this month." He further added that over the next year the company will focus on "improving financial performance of existing centers and on growing our market share."
Sunrise Hyperion LTK Placed at 138 Sites. Sunrise Technologies International Inc. (Fremont, CA) has shipped 138 Hyperion LTK systems since its FDA approval in June 2000. According to C. Russell Trenary III, chairman and CEO, “The company has had to face many challenges, including a softening economy . . . but was able to place what, we believe, is a record number of refractive laser vision-correction systems in the first year following FDA approval.”
In other news, Sunrise secured $1.1 million in its second round of loans proceeds from International Mercantile Holding Group Inc. (New York, NY). The term of the loan is five years and is repayable on May 31, 2006, at the rate of 25 basis points below the prevailing one-month London Interbank Offered Rate, or approximately 3.75%.
ESC Revamps Lumenis Structure. ESC Medical (Yokneam, Israel) finalized its integration of Coherent Medical Group through reorganization of former management and division of the ESC workforce into three business units addressing ESC's primary markets. In the top positions, Yacha Sutton is CEO and president, Sagi A. Genger is COO, and Asi Fadil is CFO.
The three business units include aesthetic, surgical, and ophthalmic. The aesthetic unit will focus on photorejuvenation, hair removal, vascular and pigmented lesions, and other dermatological applications. It will be headed by Alon Maor, executive vice president of aesthetic business, who is working with Jim Holtz, executive vice president of aesthetic technologies. The surgical unit will focus on hospital and in-office medical procedures and will be headed by Robert Grant, executive vice president of surgical business. The ophthalmic business will continue to operate under the leadership of Tom Brunner.
American sales will be headed by Bo Di Silvio, Mike Terry will lead the European sales force, and the Asia-Pacific business will have Jon Pearson as its head. Additionally, Raphi Shavit is the new CEO at OpusDent, and Dr. Mark Greenwood remains the managing director of Spectron Lasers.
Trimedyne Lasers Going to the PRC. Trimedyne Inc. (Irvine, CA) received clearance form the People's Republic of China to sell its holmium-laser systems in mainland China. According to the company, two lasers have been sold to a major university hospital in Beijing. One will be used in the orthopedic department to reduce back pain; the other will be used in the urology depart to fragment stones in the urinary tract. In other news, the company also announced that its chairman and founder, Marvin P. Loeb, has resumed his duties of president and CEO following the resignations of William J. Schubert, acting CEO, and Shane H. Traveller, president and COO. Coincident with but not perhaps a result of the management changes, Trimedyne announced that the US District Court in Oklahoma dismissed the complaint of Royice B. Everett, M.D., who claimed that Trimedyne had been involved with a breach of contract made for a nonexclusive license for Trimedyne's Uroloase products.
Sight Resource Closes Merger. At the Sight Resource Corp. (Holliston, MA) annual meeting in July, shareholders authorized an increase in number of common stock from 20,000,000 shares to 50,000,000 shares. This allowed the company to close its merger with eyeshop.com inc. and two equity financings, raising a total of $2.1 million. When combined with previous funding of $250,000, coinciding with the merger announcement in May, total funding is now $2.3 million.
VISX Tightens Grip on Excimer-Laser Market. VISX Inc. (Santa Clara, CA) added another cross-licensing agreement for the manufacture and use of lasers when it settled litigation with LaserSight Inc. (Winter Park, FL). The lawsuit filed by VISX in November 1999 charged the Florida company with infringing several patents relative to refractive lasers, according to VISX spokesperson Lola Wood. Both parties to the lawsuit stipulated that LaserSight will pay a royalty to VISX for each procedure performed with the LaserSight LaserScan LSX precision microspot beam-scanning system.
In other news, the seven-year patent battle between VISX and Nidek (Gamagori, Japan) appears to have no end in sight. The latest round has VISX and Nidek once again each claiming separate victory in a court ruling-this time in Canada. Nidek announced on July 10 that the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal upheld a 1999 ruling in favor of Nidek saying that the company's EC-5000 system does not infringe on three Canadian patents (#1,243,732, #1,271,813, and #1,254,658) held by VISX.
VISX, on the other hand, holds that the ruling was a nonevent, neither side gained from the decision. VISX's revenues and stock price have since fallen steadily, with some occasional corrections; as of July 24, the company's stock stood at 15 3/4, down from a 12-month high of 30 last September and record highs of over 100 in September 1999.
Financial Scoreboard:
• Laserscope (San Jose, CA) reported 2001 Q2 revenues of $17.5 million compared to $17.9 million in the first half of 2000. Net income was $182,000, compared to $303,000 for the same period last year; net loss was $303,000, compared to "break even" results in 2000. The company attributes the loss to heavy investment and marketing material to support its new partnership with McKesson/HBOC, an additional aesthetic- product distributor.
• Biolase (San Clemente, CA) reported sales of $4.3 million in the second quarter, an increase of 91.9% over the $2.1-million sales in 2000. Net loss for this period was $147,462, compared to $887,776 in the second quarter of 2000.
• Surgical Laser Technologies Inc. (SLT; Montgomeryville, PA) posted Q2 2001 revenues of $2.7 million, a 33% increase over sales of $663,000 in 2000 and an 18% increase over Q1 2001 sales. Net income for Q2 was $36,000 compared with net income of $42,000 in the same period last year. Michael R. Steward, SLT president and CEO, said that the revenue increase in Q2, “was fueled by an 18% increase in our contract-services business and by the initial sales of the new holmium laser LaserPRO CTH.”
• Spectranetics' (Colorado Springs, CO) second-quarter revenues were $7.4 million, up 9% from $6.8 million in Q2 2000. Net profit was $182,000, compared to net losses of $977,000 in the same period last year.
• VISX (Los Angeles, CA) reported revenues of $49.4 million in the second quarter compared with $48.0 million in the second quarter of last year. The company reported a $10.7-million loss for Q2 after recording $37.8 million in charges to settle long-standing antitrust litigation. This loss compares with income of $5.15 million in Q2 2000.
Source: Medical Laser Report, July 2001
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