Healthcare Expertise of Edwards Lifesciences’s Board of Directors Likely to Instill Investor Confidence

While most of Friday’s business news was dominated by the seemingly never-ending gloom of the subprime mortgage crises, sunshine broke through in the biotechnology sector with a phenomenally optimistic revenue-growth forecast by Edwards Lifesciences Corporation (EW).

A world leader in products and technologies to treat advanced cardiovascular disease, the number-one killer disease in the United States, Edwards Lifesciences announced that the company expects to deliver earnings per share growth of 11 to 14 percent. 

More specifically, Edwards said that it is projecting total sales between $1.16 billion to $1.21 billion, increasing gross profit margin by 100 to 150 basis points.

“We expect 2008 to be a very successful and important year for Edwards Lifesciences," said CEO/Chairman Michael A Mussallem in a company press release. “Our market-leading heart valve and critical care franchises provide a strong foundation for continued growth.”

“We expect our strategic portfolio changes and sales of new products to drive greater profitability and grow earnings.  Our market-expanding transcatheter valve technologies are expected to generate more than $20 million of sales next year,” he added.

NewsVisual created an IntellectSpace Knowledge Map in order to investigate how knowledgeable the members of Edwards’s Board of Directors are in the areas of medical science and the business side of the healthcare industry in general.

The Knowledge Map illustrates results that are likely to instill investor confidence in the company’s governance.

In particular, we can see from the map that several of the Directors have strong medical or medical-industry related backgrounds.  In terms of medical science, Director Barbara J. McNell, M.D., Ph.D., brandishes the most prestigious credentials and professional affiliations, because she is on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital as well as a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

The following Directors have strong business experience and connections with healthcare-related companies:

The company’s CEO/Chairman Mussallem also serves on the boards of Advanced Medical Optics, Inc and the Advanced Medical Technology Association; Director Robert A Ingram also serves as the Vice Chairman for GlaxoSmithKline Plc as well as on the boards of the OSI Pharmaceuticals, Inc, Allergan Inc, and Valeant Pharmaceuticals International; and Director David E I Pyott serves as the President/CEO/Chairman of Allergan Inc, a pharmaceutical and medical-device company.

(Note: the information contained and presented in Knowledge Maps is public information from the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States of America).

Click here or copy this link into your Internet Explorer browser for an interactive version of this IntellectSpace Knowledge Map: http://nv.intellectspace.com/ispace/GuestMonitor.aspx?id=088fe8e4-6413-4b27-8080-2c0cf500517b