ARDEN HILLS, MINNESOTA — Minnesota-based hearing aid maker, Intricon, has beat out the likes of Target, Best Buy, 3M and others, to become the best performing publicly-traded company in the state this year. The company’s value per share has more than doubled this year to more than $14/share, reaching a market value of approximately $100 million.
Intricon has seen continued growth by pursuing the value segment of the hearing industry, rather than traditional premium products dispensed through private clinics, which that has been a major focus of the “Big Six” hearing aid manufacturers to date.
Room for Growth in OTC Hearing Aid Market
Analysts are bullish on the company’s prospects following the passage of OTC hearing aid legislation this year, with some speculating the stock could be valued upwards of $25 to $30 per share.
IntriCon, which has partnered with the likes of hiHealth innovations and the Academy of Doctors of Audiology (ADA), acquired UK hearing aid supplier PC Werth last year and will be completing its two-year acquisition of mail order hearing aid provider, Hearing Help Express (HHE) this quarter. Additionally, the company has acquired a 49 percent stake of Soundperience of Germany, which reportedly has designed the “first psychoacoustic way of analyzing peripheral hearing and central hearing processing” using the company’s software.
Mark Gorder
“Reinventing the company has taken us about 10 years. We are now seeing the fruits of our labor. We couldn’t have done this five years ago, but we couldn’t wait with our investments. The market has come to us through industry consolidation and technology that has become available for us to implement the strategy.” –Mark Gorder, Intricon CEO, in comments to Star Tribune
Intricon believes that Soundperience’s technology has the possibility to reduce the cost of hearing aids and improve access and satisfaction with amplification. According to the company, they plan to pilot the integrated cloud-based system over the next year with wireless hearing aids in the U.S. market through HHE.
Next year the company projects revenue growth to reach $104 million, an increase of approximately 15%.
Source: StarTribune
