Alcon CEO: With strong financials, investment in vision care continues
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Alcon’s financial results for the third quarter of 2021 indicated worldwide sales of $2.1 billion, an increase of 15% over last year.
The company attributed this increase to innovation in its vision care and surgical franchises as well as recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a press release from Alcon.
Healio Optometry talked with Alcon CEO David J. Endicott about the company’s expectations regarding new products, how these products affected the growth in financial results and its strong continued investment in contact lenses.
Healio Optometry: Can you attribute the continued growth of your vision care franchise to any specific products?
Endicott: Yes, vision care was up 12% vs. 2019 in the third quarter. And when you look through that, we had growth in both our contact lens business and our ocular health products; contact lenses were up 7% vs. 2019. That’s a good bit better than the market as we see it.
The first thing to say is that our contact lens business, which is large for us, is robust and growing nicely, and it's really around our Precision1 launches. We're also beginning to get a contribution from Total30; mostly we'll see that impacting next year. But it's nice to see them adding positive momentum to the overall contact lens business.
We were also up significantly in ocular health; the Systane brand grew strong double digits, and we continue to see growth with our multidose preservative-free formulations in Europe as well as in the U.S., where we’re beginning to introduce them. Pataday (olopatadine HCl ophthalmic solution) was also very solid. So that's directionally what's driving the vision care business.
Healio Optometry: Can you talk a bit more about the company's expectations for the Total30 lens?
Endicott: We start from a position of remembering that a lot of people are wearing reusable lenses, and that the global reusable contact lens market is about $4 billion retail. We see that as an opportunity because we have a much lower share in that space, whereas in dailies, we have a very good share around the world.
Our view has been that there was an opportunity to innovate in the reusable space, especially because the category hasn’t seen meaningful innovation in years. We're excited about Total30 because we figured out how to take the Water Gradient surface technology from the Total brand and get it onto Total30. We’re excited because the lens is clinically shown to feel like nothing, even on day 30.
Healio Optometry: At a press conference Alcon hosted at the American Academy of Optometry annual meeting in Boston, an optometrist said that with more people working from home, they aren't wearing their contact lenses as often, and she's seeing that more people are wanting reusable lenses because they might be wearing them for only a few hours a day or maybe a few days a week. It will be interesting to see how that affects the growth of the lens.
Endicott: Yes, that’s a great comment. So much has changed in the past 2 years, including much more virtual connectivity. I think either way, if patients are getting a reusable fit, we've got a competitive product.
Healio Optometry: What are the company's plans for involvement in myopia control?
Endicott: Right now, we're watching it, are keen to see how the market develops and will be a fast follower in this space. Principally we’re investing in our core contact lens business: we’ve got our new reusable lens, we’ve got a new mid-tier silicone hydrogel lens and we’re looking to bring a toric to our premium daily disposable lens technology. We’re prioritizing those right now as opposed to the myopia space.
However, there are three or four big areas here. There's drug therapy, principally atropine or atropine deliveries; there’s orthokeratology; there's the peripheral defocus lenses; and then, of course, there's spectacle correction of different kinds. I think we're going to see all of those take shape over the next several years, and our interest is determining whether the contact lens space will develop for this or not, given that glasses will naturally compete with it.
Healio Optometry: What is in the works for drug development?
Endicott: Right now, we're working a lot on our eyedrop portfolio. Systane is probably our main idea right now. We're formatting it into preservative-free multidose formulations, which have been available outside the U.S. but are new here. It wasn't until just the last couple of years that anybody's tried to move the market from unit dose twist-off top bottles, which aren't very environmentally friendly or as convenient as a multidose bottle. The problem with a bottle is you have to preserve it; you can't have any backflow that could allow bacteria get in. Our multidose bottle addresses that, and that’s good news for the cornea. I think if you offer any optometrist a choice, they’re always going to choose preservative-free.
We have new products in both Systane Hydration and Systane Ultra, and a third Systane formulation will hit the market next year, and we’re excited about that.
Healio Optometry: Any final comments?
Endicott: We've been excited to get moving with our toric lenses, and the specialty lens area in particular is of long-term interest to us. As we fill out our Precision1 toric, we're exploring what we can do to advance some other toric designs and our multifocal designs. We continue to invest deeply in contact lenses and are looking for the technology that's really going to move the market into a much higher adoption of some of these specialty lenses.
It’s interesting that 47% of patients have astigmatism. Among these millions of astigmatic patients, 32% wear contact lenses, but only 10% wear toric lenses. So, there's something going on that we've got to do better with, and the same thing is true with multifocals. We lose too many lens wearers at the age of 45 because they find they're putting their glasses on for reading, and they try multifocal toric or a multifocal lens, but it just isn't working for them. We think there are some real technology ideas out there to bring forward in the future, and we're working hard on those as well.
Reference:
Alcon reports third quarter 2021 results. https://www.alcon.com/media-release/alcon-reports-third-quarter-2021-results. Published Nov. 9, 2021. Accessed Dec. 9, 2021.
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