Hello, everyone. Welcome. I'm Robbie Marcus, the MedTech Analyst at JP Morgan. Really happy to host Boston Scientific. We have Mike Mahoney, CEO, Jon Monson, CFO, and Dr. Stein, Chief Medical Officer. We're going to do a fireside chat here. Lots to talk about. Maybe we could just start. We're coming into. We'll get fourth quarter earnings in a couple of weeks here. Coming into 2026, you have a lot of new products launching this year. You have a lot of great products growing very healthy, great margin expansion. How are you thinking about the business? How do you feel coming into 2026?
Good morning, Robbie. Good morning, everyone. I feel great about where we are as a company. We had our investor day a few months ago, and really not much. There's some good news since then, but not much has changed. We committed to 10% growth, 10%+ growth over the three-year period, 150 basis points of margin improvement. We've consistently increased our weighted average market growth rate over many, many years to where 2025 was about 8%. We anticipate that number going to 9% over the next three years. Really pleased with the performance of the company and our setup for 2026 and well beyond. Lots of growth drivers we can talk about. You want me to talk about them now or wait?
Yeah. Well, let's go one by one. I mean, obviously, you have WATCHMAN and you have pulsed field ablation. Those are the two highlights there. And let's spend some time on those first. But there's obviously a lot more. There's a lot of investments you have and a lot in the rest of the portfolio that's grown very nicely. So maybe just top of mind for everyone is pulsed field ablation here. And this is a market that just blew wide open. 2024, you came here, you said you were real excited. And I think it's, I don't know the statistics, probably the best medical device product launch in the history of the market. So here we are now, two years on the market almost, coming up in a month. How do you feel about A, market growth?
And that's a nebulous question, given there's a lot of expanding indications and areas you're moving into and geography still. And B, Boston Scientific's position within that.
Yeah, I think we're in a great position. So I think it's just the continued progress and momentum and establishment and credibility of our team that continues to grow, and so in 2025, we'll give results in a few weeks here, but our EP business did extremely well. Clearly, the PFA market share leader. The market is undoubtedly the fastest growing market in medtech. In 2025, the market was well into its 20% growth range, and we predict a very, very healthy minimum of 15%+ over the next three years. So the market itself is growing quite quickly, much of it due to Pulsed Field Ablation and our leadership in that area, but what's most important for us is the execution of our team, starting with our global capabilities, which we really had very little of a few years ago in Japan and China.
Those teams are getting stronger and stronger. The PFA adoption of those markets is much smaller. In Europe and the U.S., we had a very small mapping footprint two and a half years ago. It's a very sizable mapping footprint that we have in place now. The mappers get stronger and better every quarter. And then on the portfolio side, we're pleased to announce we just got, you may have seen it, the FARAPOINT PFA product, which Ken can detail a bit more, was just approved yesterday, I believe. And so we have a strong cadence of products in addition to FARAPULSE to round out the portfolio to serve our physicians better. And what it also does is it puts our mappers more in the front line to closely work with the physician groups beyond using the FARAPULSE catheter today.
So we have tremendous confidence in the market growth, our leadership position, and most importantly, as it will be a competitive market for many years to come, the internal execution on our product pipeline and our people development.
So as we.
Ken wanted to. Sorry.
Yeah, maybe just, again, first just to reiterate the point. This is a market that will continue growing double digits, right? Certainly over our long-range plan and beyond. AF, incredibly common arrhythmia. 10.5 million Americans have AFib, probably about 60 million people across the globe. AF ablation is still incredibly underpenetrated. The sort of high teens probably at this point in the U.S. for paroxysmal AFib, high single digits for persistent. So there's just a lot of runway for continued growth. And PFA and FARAPULSE in particular is part of what's driven that. But I do want to emphasize it's not only the FARAWAVE story, all right? We've got a complete tool set approach. So FARAPOINT catheters, Mike mentioned, just approved in the U.S. today, approved and in limited market release already in Europe. We see that being used for arrhythmias like atrial flutter.
We're also evaluating its use for redo ablations, evaluating its use for ventricular tachycardia. We've got the FARAFLEX catheter in clinical trials already. And beyond ablation catheters, I think it's really important to realize the strength of the portfolio outside of that. Our Access Solutions with the Baylis acquisition continues to do very well. We will be entering the ICE market, intracardiac echo. We've got an ICE catheter in development. Remind everyone, that's a billion-dollar market that we haven't participated in at all. And so I think what I want to do is just highlight not just FARAPULSE and FARAWAVE as beautifully as that product has done, but highlight the overall strength of our EP portfolio.
I think it's a great point because we, on the outside, we just take all the EP numbers and add them up, and that's the market. And there's obviously a lot more in there. So you're looking at AF ablation. You're moving into other non-AF ablations, FARAPOINT, which hopefully we see soon. Feel free to comment on timing there. But ICE is adding on. So it's not just underlying volumes. It's also revenues per procedure. So maybe talk about that, where volumes are going and where you think you stand there, and then how much more is there to go on the revenue per procedure.
Sure. So just a quick one. So FARAPOINT, we got FDA approval in the U.S. yesterday. We'll be going into limited market release in the U.S. imminently. Already are in a limited market release in Europe. And you can anticipate then we'll see that scale up pretty quickly over the course of this year. And in terms of the other things that you use in a case, again, it's not just the ablation catheter. It's the transseptal access system. It's the ICE catheter. It's other diagnostic catheters. And again, the market is just so large and so underpenetrated that there is, in our view, still room, again, for just continued double-digit growth in the market over the foreseeable future.
One area that could be really interesting is moving into the ASC. I believe January 1st, there are five or six states where you can move in. Sort of how are you thinking about that? Is that going to help improve patient volumes? Does that open up EP lab capacity, maybe do more WATCHMAN? How are you thinking about that and Boston Scientific's positioning in the ASC?
Yeah, I'm thinking about it the same way you are. Again, the market is so large that unlocking capacity is really part of what's critical to that continued double-digit growth. And so getting the simpler, more straightforward cases into the ASC, keeping the more complicated cases, which include persistent AF ablation, also include concomitant procedures. And we're seeing really tremendous growth in the concomitant procedures. So FARAPULSE ablation plus WATCHMAN, right? And you open up lab space for that. And based just on the predictability, the simplicity, the fantastic safety of the FARAPULSE procedure, we really see ourselves as having a large differentiated advantage when you start moving into the ASCs. And you're right. There are a number of states that already have ASCs that are doing ablation. There are about 20 states in the United States where there's sort of limited regulations that prevent you from getting into them.
The rest of the U.S., it will take a little more time just for regulations to catch up. So build out into the ASCs isn't going to happen overnight. It's something, again, that is just going to happen with a consistent cadence really across our long-range plan.
In the U.S., where mapping is almost 100% of cases in the hospital, do you think mapping will translate into the ASC, and does the economics provide for it?
So I don't know that you need to map, and I think we'll see a divergence of approaches among physicians when you get to the ASC. Really nice thing for us, though, is we've got a very economically advantageous procedure. If you want to map with our FARAWAVE NAV catheter, you don't need to pull a second mapping catheter. And we also have the advantage that there's no installed base of competitive mapping systems in the ASC. So really, it gets us sort of a blank page to start with and compete on our own purely on the basis of the differentiated advantages that we have with FARAPULSE and OPAL.
Maybe one more here. FARAPOINT approval yesterday. Does that open up the non-AF ablations for you? Do you see that complementing FARAPULSE, FARAWAVE? And if it does open up the non-AF ablations, how quickly and how fast can that move?
Yeah, we see that opening up over the long run. So the initial labeled indication will be as an adjunct for ablation of atrial flutter during AF ablation procedures. But there's a lot of interest in using it beyond that one particular approach. So we are currently running an ongoing clinical trial looking at FARAPOINT for multiple uses for redo AF ablation procedures. We also are running a clinical trial looking at its use in ventricular tachycardia ablation. And you can sort of imagine it being used really where people today are using RF ablation catheters to sort of what we call spot welding, right? Hit a small focal point.
I think I just want to emphasize, though, is between FARAWAVE and FARAPOINT, we also do see room for a different catheter form factor, which is our FARAFLEX catheter, which really, in terms of what we've done in clinical trials right now, gives us really the only company with the full tool set for all of the different PFA approaches you might need to take for any cardiac arrhythmia that you may encounter in practice.
I lied. One more. It seems like everybody forgot about AVANT GUARD. There's a readout for first half of this year, I believe. Maybe talk to your confidence in that trial and the opportunity it could open up for Boston Scientific specifically.
Sure. So just to explain, AVANT GUARD is a trial of first-line therapy of catheter ablation in patients with persistent atrial fibrillation. Again, the goal is to prove that the earlier you intervene on patients like this, the better are the results that you get. And really to just sort of firmly say that there's not any real role except in isolated patients for a trial of drug therapy before moving to ablation. And in terms of degree of confidence, I mean, to begin with, they don't let me start the trial unless I'm relatively confident in what it might show.
On the other hand, the reason you do trials is because you never know what you're going to get until you actually get them. But there's a lot of predicate data that suggests that, again, the earlier that you intervene and the earlier that you ablate, the better patients do.
Great. Mike, overwhelming demand. I'm going to ask this question. Hopefully, you can answer. Third-party data sets are.
We're still on EP?
We're moving a little on EP, a little on the overall. So third-party data sets are showing not the best sales growth for Boston Scientific in EP and fourth quarter. And I'd say overall in December for med tech and hospital procedures in general, a big softening. And I think that's what's hitting med tech yesterday and today to an extent. Any comments on EP or just fourth quarter as you think about Boston Scientific?
Jon, you can make a comment. We are comfortable where we finish the year. We're not going to give our final results here. But we're comfortable with the finish of the year, and we'll get all the results in about three weeks or so.
Yep, three or four.
So for us, we give our investor day targets, which we've hit for the last four investor days. We're pretty consistent about hitting. We're really consistent about hitting our guidance numbers. And our company executes at a pretty high level. So there's lots of data that seems to run around that people get all antsy about. But I think we're pretty good at delivering on our commitments.
Great. Maybe we could pivot a bit to WATCHMAN. And this dovetails nicely after the OPTION trial we saw over a year ago. This goes hand in hand with concomitant procedures. And I mean, wow, was 2025 a good year off the back of that? As we think about WATCHMAN, we'll get to CHAMPION in a second. But just on the underlying data and what you have today, how do you feel about where you are in the opportunity and penetration and how much more room is there to go in keeping CHAMPION steady?
I'll give you the highlights, and Dr. Stein can fill in all my gaps. I think we're blessed to have I think the two most differentiated products in med tech. With WATCHMAN, that has a 91% share and FARAPULSE that we talked about the last 25 minutes, and then maybe the fastest growing procedure, if you look at fastest growing markets, EP, the WATCHMAN market actually grows faster, but not quite the size of it, and then concomitant. And we're blessed to have two really unique products there that our doctors are so comfortable with. And the option data, the reimbursement has put a big tailwind behind that concomitant procedure that really only Boston Scientific can deliver uniquely and safely. And we estimated, I think, at investor day about 25% of WATCHMAN patients are being used in a concomitant procedure.
We think that number could grow at least to 50, if not north of 50. And Ken can talk about OPTION and CHAMPION-AF, really important readout in a couple of months here. So the concomitant procedure is so efficient. It's very safe. It's economical. Hospitals enjoy the reimbursement benefit. We have an excellent clinical team that's very, very difficult to match to do both of those procedures. And referring physicians are very, very comfortable with it. So we continue to see that as a big tailwind for Boston Scientific.
And you have over 90% share in LAAC. So are you seeing all the vast majority of the benefits accrued to Boston Scientific, given it was also your trial?
Yeah, we have 90%. So occasionally, you will see a concomitant done with a competitor's product. But that's a small minority of the concomitant procedures you see.
As you think back to competition and PFA, how much of a competitive advantage is it to have the leading LAAC? And is bundling between the two a major differentiator for you?
Ken can speak to it clinically. But just from our business, you have the leading market share product with PFA with all the ecosystem we're building around it that Dr. Stein complemented. You have WATCHMAN and the clinical data and the moat that we believe we have with WATCHMAN, CHAMPION coming out in the next gen. And if a physician can use a company with the same clinical team and the same predictive safety outcomes, it's a difficult thing to compete with, especially if you don't have an LAAC offering.
At the AHA conference in November, there were some negative trials that came out on LAAC. I mean, I've published on these. I think they're very explainable, each one of them. How are you thinking about the applicability or non-applicability of, say, a CLOSURE- AF? And as people are obviously very excited for and anticipating the WATCHMAN trial, we should get in the first half.
Yeah. And I think CLOSURE was the only one that I felt, again, could particularly be interpreted as negative. I don't think it's as negative as you all believe it was. And I'll explain that. So CLOSURE is for very high-risk patients treated in Germany head-to-head, left atrial appendage closure against medical therapy. So first off, just note, I said I didn't say WATCHMAN, all right? And actually, the majority of devices in that trial were not the latest generation WATCHMAN. There was a lot of use of a couple of our competitors' devices, both of which are known to have a higher risk of operative complications than is WATCHMAN FLX. And the trial did not fail based on efficacy, all right? It failed based on procedural safety and procedural complications and post-operative bleeding.
And the rates of those complications that were observed in that trial are nothing at all like what we see with WATCHMAN FLX, like what we've published with WATCHMAN FLX. And so one thing I would say is it's our view that if that trial had been done completely with WATCHMAN FLX, there's a really high likelihood that it actually would have passed. And the nugget of positivity, and it's a pretty big nugget, is on efficacy, all right? The stroke rate in these very high-risk patients in this randomized trial, even with suboptimal left atrial appendage closure devices, was identical to the stroke risk on best medical therapy. That's the first time that's ever been shown in such a high-risk population, all right?
I think actually, in the long run, supports the idea that as long as you don't have these horribly high complication rates that they had with these devices in Germany, all right, that left atrial appendage closure ought to be thought of as a very good first-line option for patients who are high risk of stroke and AFib.
Are you aware if we're going to see a subgroup analysis broken out of Boston Scientific? And it's roughly 50% non-Boston Scientific devices used in the trial at any point?
Yeah. I'm not aware whether that's actually going to be presented. They did not present that when they presented the data at AHA.
Have you zoomed in on whether it'll be ACC or HRS where we're going to see the CHAMPION trial?
Not yet.
Not yet. Okay. Maybe moving off of WATCHMAN here, and obviously, such a great growth driver, but there is the whole rest of the business and growing probably high single digits when you add it all up, and in and of itself, that's a great business to have for many med tech companies, and this is plain second fiddle, so maybe we could start. The one that gets a lot of attention outside of those two is peripheral vascular, and you're the leader there. Arterial, venous, interventional oncology. How are you thinking? You've added a lot of assets here over the years. How are you thinking about the need for further innovation here, and how are you prioritizing investments? Because it feels like arterial and venous is one business, Interventional Oncology. No one else really has in the medical device world, and we all ignore the drug side.
But it's growing strong double digits for years and years now. And there's still a lot in the pipeline here. So how are you thinking about sort of the classical arterial and venous and then investment on the interventional oncology side?
Sure. And hopefully, at a time when you talk about our Interventional Cardiology division, which is actually our second biggest division, that's growing really impressively if we have time for that. So we love our Interventional Oncology business. As you said, it's not the traditional competitors in that marketplace. Like many of the strategies that we employ at Boston Scientific, we really drive for category leadership so we can provide a wide range of tools for interventional radiologists and the oncology committees. The anchor products there are really TheraSphere, which continues to do extremely well. We're broadening out with trials in Japan and China where we're very under-indexed. So we're going to make a lot of progress in those two markets, particularly China in 2026 with our Mandarin trial. We're also looking at expanding indications. We've been working on glioblastoma for a number of years now.
We continue to work with the FDA and expanding what could be a potentially remarkable indication expansion with TheraSphere in that area, and then we round out that portfolio like we do in so many of our businesses with many other products within our Interventional Oncology line, so when they're working with Boston Scientific, they like TheraSphere as the core hub, but our coil portfolio, we did an acquisition last year. We continue to round that business out to be the supply of spheres to treat liver cancer and other cancers.
And maybe just on the vascular side of it, maybe just want to point out we have now initiated a limited market release for above the knee with our Seismic. That's our intravascular lithotripsy device. We also have finished enrollment in our FRACTURE trial, which is the use of IVL and Seismic in the coronary tree. Would expect to see those results reported out second half of this year. Excited about that. Excited about the possibilities with TCAR, particularly based on the latest data with respect to coronary stenting versus carotid endarterectomy. So again, a lot of opportunities across what's a very broad portfolio in our vascular therapies division.
Maybe talk to the IVL product. Docs we spoke with think it's very good in the periphery, but very excited for it in the coronary. And we'll get that data with fracture in the second half of this year. Obviously, a very large, fast-growing market. How do you feel you compete against the market incumbent? And what's the strategy here to launch?
We're very excited about it. As Ken just said, we just finished the trial. So I think it's a 30-day endpoint. So hopefully, you'll get quite a bit more news on that in 2026. It's the faster-growing market of the two, although we think our presence in peripheral is stronger than our competitor. So I think with our IVL product in the peripheral, it'll have some advantage to us in 2026 and more in 2027 as we continue to scale manufacturing. But we know that call point better than the competition does in terms of relationships and the portfolio that you just kind of highlighted. On the coronary side, the same thing. These are our physicians that we're working with every day on our IVUS imaging platform, on our AGENT, and all our coronary products. So it's a call point that we know very well.
It's a product that we've worked very hard the last two years on scaling manufacturing and ensuring we have the supply that when we need when we launch it. And there's a lot of differentiators that Ken can detail a bit more in terms of the number of emitters. You can turn the emitters on and off. It's very highly deliverable. And in the patients that we've seen thus far, we think this will be very disruptive to the IVL market, particularly in 2027 when coronary is approved.
I don't think very many on the street have this explicitly factored into models. Do you think this can be a material contributor in 2026, or is this more 2027 and beyond?
In 2026, it'll be nice for our peripheral business. We won't have the coronary yet. And it'll be gated somewhat by ramping up the manufacturing, which we've been building upon. And so by the time we get to the coronary launch, we're confident we'll have the scale of manufacturing that we need to do a significant launch, not a soft launch in 2027. So there'll be some benefit in 2026 and much more so in 2027.
You mentioned Interventional Cardiology, second largest business. Hard to pass it up. I just wanted to touch on peripheral first. You do have a number of drivers here. AGENT has obviously been a huge success here. And you have a renal denervation asset in development here. Let's touch on those two and if anything else you want to highlight. But AGENT has just been a rocket ship straight up. You are having more competition coming out across the market with a different drug coating. How do you feel about AGENT's ability to continue to grow in the face of new competition?
Ken, you can detail more the paclitaxel topic. I think when you look at, I'm really proud of this division. It's like many of our divisions. They continue to transform year over year their portfolio mix into faster-growing markets. DES is such a small piece of our. I think it's like 2% of overall Boston Scientific now. The team created our IVUS imaging platform, which is growing strong double digits. AGENT, they did a remarkable job on the design of the product, the clinical work, and establishing reimbursement, which there's some additional reimbursement recently in good news where physicians, I'm sorry, in the ASCs and the outpatient settings get paid even more for AGENT. They did an excellent job of execution, what it's really all about. They have the richest pipeline. Ken will talk more about your direct question.
If you look at Seismic, which we just talked about, IVL in 2027. If you look at the hypertension, which we're in a clinical trial now, which we're excited about that market. I think there's still a lot to prove out in that market, but I think our timing is ideal, and we're also excited about VITALYST, our support platform, which is our largest organic R&D investment in the company, which we're starting clinical trial in the first quarter here as well.
It'd be interesting to just compare your first JP Morgan stents as a percentage of Boston Scientific sales versus 2% now. Probably 25%-30%.
Just to maybe tie the bow around AGENT, I want to talk about two things. So first off, there are competitive products. They're limus-based. AGENT is paclitaxel. And there are a lot of really good fundamental reasons just in terms of the biophysics and the pharmacokinetics of drug delivery and duration of drug delivery that makes us think the paclitaxel is the better option for this use case. And then also just some numbers to throw out, right? So current indication for AGENT is in-stent restenosis. It's about 10% of PCIs today in the United States. If we look elsewhere, where DCBs have been used for a longer period of time, right, use can go well beyond in-stent restenosis to a variety of different de novo lesions, small vessel bifurcation, maybe even acute coronary syndrome.
We are studying the use in de novo in our AGENT stents trial, and if that's positive when we get the indication expansion, right, that takes you up from 10% of PCIs today to 30% of PCIs that are done in the United States, so to get back to your question, there's a huge potential runway for DCBs in general and for AGENT in particular if the stents trial is positive.
I don't want to leave Jon quiet all at the end. But before I get to you, Jon, one for you, Mike, on just capital allocation strategy. And I feel like this is a real differentiating factor for Boston Scientific. Not only do you invest a lot in internal innovation, you spend a lot on external innovation. You do early venture investing.
You spend appropriately.
Yeah, appropriately. By my math, if I think about internal and external and I try and amortize what's off the balance sheet, I'm coming out to low double-digit % of sales, which is well above what most other peers are spending, and it helps drive an above-peer top line, so here we are over 10 years since you stepped into the CEO role and transformed from 25%-30% stents probably up to 2% diversified the business and massively improved the top and bottom line growth. How are you thinking about Boston Scientific's ability to continue that strategy, strong internal investment, but also supplementing with a lot of external investment?
That's the DNA of the company. And it's across our global leadership team, the teams underneath them. We have an excellent innovation ecosystem that can always get better. We can always be more effective in R&D. We can globalize R&D more. So we're always looking at ways to improve and working with many third parties as well. So we never have our last good idea. But I think that's really what's great about the company. We have a very aligned leadership team that knows these businesses so well. I believe we have the most exciting pipeline in med tech. And I say confidently that we have the strongest venture portfolio in med tech that we've been working on for many, many years. And you've seen the history. We traditionally buy 25% of our M&A or so. That's come from our venture portfolio.
So it's really a combination of all those threes: our organic R&D, the clinical science that Ken and the team push for to keep advancing us further, and then the combination of M&A and venture. And you know our aim is to continue to nudge up our WAMGR and continue to highly differentiate our financial results versus our peer group and grow faster than the market. At the same time, we have a history for the last 13 years of improving margins at least 50 basis points per year every year. So it's not as if we're doing this recklessly. We have the discipline to improve margins. We're a pretty agile company given our size. And our balance sheet's never been stronger.
I think that's a really important point because when med tech investors see a company doing a lot of M&A, they think, oh, they're just buying growth. Yet Boston Scientific's return on invested capital throughout this period has continued to go up. We don't see the returns on any one given deal. But you're doing so many deals, the overwhelming amount must be positive in contributing and generating above your cost of capital. So is that a fair statement to say that you are seeing a lot more wins on your acquisitions and just maybe something on how you think about returns on your investments?
Yeah. No, thanks, Robbie. We take a portfolio approach, and I think that is fair to say. We don't win them all, but I think if you look at the basket of deals that they've done, it's helped to increase our WAMGR, as Mike said, and drive differentiated growth. We look at a number of financial metrics as we're analyzing M&A. Obviously, we start with FIT, but then from an ROIC perspective, we target a high single digit by year five or sooner if we can.
50 basis points plus of operating margin expansion, I believe, is the commitment in the long-range plan. How should we think about new product contribution versus internal operational improvements?
It's a little of both, Robbie. I think with new products, we've done a great job broadly on pricing as an industry within Boston Scientific that used to be a 3%-4% headwind each year. We target flat each year, maybe it's flat to down 1%. And in the margin profile, you look at FARAPULSE's and WATCHMAN gross margin accretive and our two fastest growing segments. So that helps to drive the 150 basis points of operating margin expansion that we're looking to drive over the LRP. But then we have a number of programs in place focused on operational efficiency. SG&A in particular, we like the R&D investment between 9%-10% of sales. It's approximately where we are today. So we wouldn't expect to see that change much over the LRP. But within SG&A, we continue to scale our centralized shared services.
We're implementing a new ERP system that will drive enhanced efficiency and automation. I'm working across the leadership team on a number of AI initiatives that we have to drive efficiency and productivity. And I think the company's done a great job of being very disciplined with discretionary SG&A spend as well. So if you go back 10 years ago, our SG&A was 37% of sales, it's around 33% today. We've got line of sight to continue to drive improvement there, Robbie. So I think it's the combination of new product launches and operational efficiency give us confidence in the 150 basis points over the LRP.
One of the other things throughout all this, M&A is free cash flow has gotten materially better. What have been the key improvements over the last several years, and what are the key improvements as we look forward?
Yeah, it's strong working capital discipline. So we've done a nice job of improving working capital. The focus on operating margin, as we have higher OI, that helps to drive free cash flow conversion and efficiency. So it's largely that same formula going forward, Robbie. So we're targeting 70%-80% free cash flow conversion, which is right in line with the peer set and an area where we've made very strong improvement.
What about pricing? We got a big bump in the industry following the inflationary spike in 2022. You think it's been flattish, I'd say, some areas above, some areas modestly below. But overall, I'd say med tech pricing has been flat. How do you feel about the ability for Boston Scientific and the market as a whole to keep pricing where it is?
It's a big focus of ours. Our goal is flat each year, Robbie. I think as you look at some of our more mature segments, China with VBP can be an area of price headwind. So if you put that all together, I like where we sit. Again, target of flat, but flat to down one, I would say, is what you should expect on a go-forward basis.
One of the areas that stood out versus other companies in medical devices is your performance in China and the ability to grow sustainably throughout the past half-decade there where it's been a tough market for many. What differentiates Boston Scientific as you've really just continued to grow with innovative products there?
Yeah, we could talk forever about our pipeline and our venture investments. But the real credit gets to the quality of the team and the execution. And so we feel like we do a pretty good job of executing the near term and putting a lot of energy into the long term of the company. And our China team has done just that. We have an excellent team there. We have a very diversified portfolio there. We've been able to manage VBP. So it's not going to grow the 20% it used to, but we're confident it's going to grow in the teens going forward despite the challenging market. Now it is quite scaled. So we have an excellent team there. And we also are using China much more as an innovation ecosystem to assist us in certain parts of the world than we used to.
So we think it's quite a strategic market. It's very competitive, very challenging, which makes it fun. But we have an excellent team there. And our outlook for China, although it's a very difficult market, remains quite bullish. One quick thing I want to say, you didn't ask me about Neuromod, but my ADD is kicking in. I think it's just important maybe just for a feeling of Boston. So you would look at Neuromod and say, not a huge business for us. A couple of years ago, you'd say, this thing's kind of lagging. But it shows the execution focus beyond the long-term planning that we do is that business really continues to grow momentum. We expect to have a strong 2026. Our spinal cord stimulation platform, there'll be a new platform coming in about 12 months.
But the combination of, again, the category leadership of Relievant, which has more than exceeded expectations since the acquisition we've done, our radiofrequency portfolio, and this new peripheral nerve stim company that we just announced. Really, again, it's similar to our strategy in Interventional Oncology and Urology. It's having the widest portfolio. So pain physicians can count on Boston Scientific to meet any point in the customer journey and [that] allows us to do contracts that are unique. And so I think it's a good example. Similar to Interventional Cardiology, it doesn't get all the spotlight. But we have the ability to improve and strengthen businesses through our innovation and through our focus on commercial channels. So we expect that division to do well in 2026.
I have a big question for a little amount of time. Let me squeeze it in here. You have a great pipeline. I think we've seen something like three years of pipeline at the analyst day. How do you feel about Boston Scientific in the three to seven, 10-year time frame?
I don't know if anybody else cares. We spend a lot of time on it. Our goal is to make the company everyone loves who they work for. Maybe I love too much, but we think about how to make Boston Scientific differentiated and to be the employer of choice. The employer of choice typically has a great culture component, but you also want its financial success to reinvest so we think about the company in that time period you talk about. That's why we have venture portfolios. That's why we can improve margins 50 basis points per year. We're spending a significant amount of money on products that aren't going to launch until 2029, 2030, and 2031, and so we really do think about making each quarter but how do we continue to invest to the same formula that we've talked about?
So we spend a lot of time in those areas.
That's a great place, Mike. Thanks for a great discussion. Thanks, everybody, for joining.
Thanks, Robbie.