TMDX competitor sets record for furthest organ travel

Investment Analysis Clubs Saul’s Investing Discussions
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2,506 miles from Alaska to Massachusetts. The company is Paragonix, a private firm outside Boston. It’s too bad it wasn’t TransMedics getting this attention, but there’s nothing wrong with additional visibility for the technology as long as TMDX can keep knocking down wins.

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Yeah… I saw that article as well and my first thought was “Whoops! This is sort of a hit on how unique and valuable TMDX may be.”

Fortunately, I’m down to a 1.5% position and I’m willing to hold it at least through 2Q earnings. After this article… I’ll be thinking about whether I keep even that. Note that the subject company was able to achieve this without owning their own Air Force. :wink:

Rob
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

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It’s an interesting dilemma for the industry. As TMDX’s CEO has stated and the article shows, the ability to preserve organs has literally changed organ donation from a regional program to a national one. That has created a bottleneck until the transportation network catches up.

For the sake of patients and doctors, I hope a solution is found. In the meantime, it certainly complicates the investment thesis a bit.

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TMDX did achieve a 4700 mile transplant before in 2019 - 4 years lead!!

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Paragonix is a legitimate concern. Their device is much cheaper than the TMDX OCS device. But I think price is their only advantage.

Advantages of OCS are:

  • ability to monitor/test organs to know how they are functioning prior to transplant
  • ability to use medications, or solutions containing medications/nutrients while the organs are on the OCS machine.
  • TMDX has the NOP network, which I think is a big selling point to hospitals. I don’t know paragonix very well, but I assume hospitals mostly need to use their device with their own staff to go collect organs. TMDX changes that paradigm. Will that be enough to overcome the price different between the devices? I don’t know, but I think TMDX will have the advantage.

Either way, competition comes to all great companies. We will have to wait to find out if this is a serious challenge, and how TMDX responds.

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