To Our Stockholders,
At Edwards, we are committed to helping patients and being a company that physicians can trust. Working with our clinician partners, we focus on developing differentiated technologies that we believe have true leadership potential and may even change the way medicine is practiced.
By following this strategy, Edwards Lifesciences has established an impressive track record over the last six years, and in 2006 we once again delivered solid overall performance. We demonstrated our financial strength by achieving strong gross profit margin growth and generating record free cash flow. In addition, we met our goal for profitability for the year.
We achieved our overall goal for total sales in 2006, although a competitor’s recently introduced valve in the U.S. caused sales of our market-leading heart valve product line to fall short of our growth expectations. One of our top priorities for 2007 is to improve the growth rate of this core franchise. Aided by several expected new product introductions and additional sales resources, we are confident in our ability to do this. Our Critical Care and Vascular product lines continued to transform into faster growing and more profitable businesses, and both were strong contributors to sales growth for the year.
At Edwards, we are committed to helping patients and being a company that physicians can trust. Working with our clinician partners, we focus on developing differentiated technologies that we believe have true leadership potential and may even change the way medicine is practiced.
By following this strategy, Edwards Lifesciences has established an impressive track record over the last six years, and in 2006 we once again delivered solid overall performance. We demonstrated our financial strength by achieving strong gross profit margin growth and generating record free cash flow. In addition, we met our goal for profitability for the year.
We achieved our overall goal for total sales in 2006, although a competitor’s recently introduced valve in the U.S. caused sales of our market-leading heart valve product line to fall short of our growth expectations. One of our top priorities for 2007 is to improve the growth rate of this core franchise. Aided by several expected new product introductions and additional sales resources, we are confident in our ability to do this. Our Critical Care and Vascular product lines continued to transform into faster growing and more profitable businesses, and both were strong contributors to sales growth for the year.
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