Is Intuitive the Coca-Cola of Surgical Robotics?

There’s no disguising the fact that there’s a great deal of demand for Intuitive Surgical’s Dv5 platform. Executives from the Sunnyvale, CA-based company spoke about the hot demand for the fifth iteration of the da Vinci surgical platform, which received a nod from FDA in March.

News of the demand caused Intuitive’s shares to surge more than 10% last week.

The device is currently in a limited launch with a broader launch scheduled for mid-year in 2025.

Jamie Samath, Intuitive’s CFO, said Dv5 led the surge in demand, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript of the call.

“U.S. system placements in the quarter included 110 DaVinci 5 placements,” Samath said according to a Seeking Alpha transcript of the call. “As supply of Dv5 increases and we move into broad launch mid-next year, we expect that placements in the U.S. will progressively shift toward transactions. Outside the U.S., we placed 160 systems in quarter three, compared with 153 systems last year.”

Ryan Zimmerman, an analyst with BTIG, wrote about the demand and the impact it could have in 2025.

“With a growing slate of regulatory approvals for Dv5 (i.e. new geographic markets) we expect the pace of Dv5 growth to continue even into the broader launch in 2H25,” Zimmerman wrote.

The surgical robotics market is bursting with competitors – especially in the soft tissue segment of the space. Johnson & Johnson became a hot topic of discussion in surgical robotics last week when it announced it submitted Ottava to FDA for an IDE.

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The submission comes about three years after the Brunswick, NJ-based company said it was delaying its robotics program. J&J first revealed the platform in November of 2020.