Cochlear 'well positioned' for growth

From: The Age, Australia - Sep 19, 2005

Hearing implant company Cochlear Ltd reiterated it is well positioned for sustainable growth and aims to grow core earnings by more than 20 per cent per annum.

"Cochlear is well positioned for sustainable growth," chief executive Chris Roberts said in the company's 2005 annual report.

"Our new products have been enthusiastically received, market share has been gained, and we have added a substantial product line while maintaining financial discipline.

"On the financial side, we aim to continue growing our core earnings at more than 20 per cent per annum in line with our long-term incentive targets."

In August, Cochlear booked a 48 per cent rise in 2004/05 net profit to $54.52 million, helped by record implant sales and strong performances in Europe and America.

Dr Roberts said leadership in technology was fundamental to ongoing growth and market strength.

"While the focus for 2005 was launching the Nucleus Freedom (cochlear implant system), Cochlear maintains a long-term view, and considerable work continues on future generations," he said.

"Improvements in performance through speech coding and simplification of the device together with further miniaturisation remain important goals."

Dr Roberts said Cochlear continued to advance new ideas through its joint venture with Phonak, which is focused on developing a new implantable hearing device for a segment of the market for which current hearing devices are inappropriate.

The annual report showed that Dr Roberts, who was appointed chief executive in February 2004, received a total remuneration for 2004/05 of $1.5 million, including a base salary of $719,000.

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