Cordis hopes to win back share of the stent market with the launch of a new raft of products

Executive Summary

Johnson & Johnson investors have been waiting more than a year for its Cordis interventional cardiology business to launch new stent products. In late 1997, Cordis lost its position as the supplier of the world's favourite coronary stent as competing products began hitting the market. Now, despite the launch of a balloon-expandable version of the device in 1998, sales of the Palmaz-Schatz stent have been lost almost entirely to Guidant, Boston Scientific and Medtronic (AVE). Since then, all has been relatively quiet on the stent front at Cordis.