TERUMO CORPORATION

Business Description

The Cardiac and Vascular business supplies roughly three-fifths of revenue and covers the catheters, guidewires, stents and accessories used in interventional cardiology and radiology — procedures carried out through a blood vessel rather than by opening the chest. Terumo pioneered and popularised the transradial approach, entering through an artery at the wrist instead of the groin, now standard practice in catheter laboratories worldwide and the clearest example of a technique the company itself established. Blood and Cell Technologies, about a fifth of sales, makes the blood-collection and apheresis systems used by blood centres and in cell therapy, a field with high regulatory barriers and recurring consumable demand; Medical Care Solutions, a similar share, covers syringes, infusion pumps, needles and diabetes care, with a small Organ Technologies arm alongside.

Almost everything Terumo sells is used once and discarded, so revenue tracks the number of procedures performed rather than hospital capital budgets. That makes earnings steadier than those of a maker of scanners or surgical robots, and it is why the business recovers as soon as elective procedure volumes return. Most sales are outside Japan and production has been expanded in the United States, China and Europe, so the yen's level and hospital demand abroad matter more than the domestic market. The company's origins are unusual: it was founded in 1921 by a group of physicians, the bacteriologist Shibasaburo Kitasato among them, to make clinical thermometers in Japan after the First World War cut off imports. It reports on a March fiscal year.

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