Wednesday, February 11, 2009
(Cont'd from above)...

Start of Interview with
Daniel Starks, CEO
St. Jude Medical...


Jim:      Mr. Starks welcome to Mad Money...

Daniel:      We are flattered that you are giving St. Jude Medical this time in your spot light, thank you very much.

Jim: Alright, I have been struggling… we have all been struggling in the market… now I mentioned to people that in the conference call you talked about how there really is no relation at all between the economy and your stock. Can you please tell us why, in your own words, that we shouldn’t care about the gross domestic product of the United States if we buy St Jude Med?

Daniel:      Jim, it is because we are in the right market, with the right products at the right time. We not only are saving lives, but our products are also saving money. We are creating jobs, in 2008 we created over 1004 new jobs, we expect to create approximately 2000 new jobs in 2009. We are really on anybody’s short list of high spending priorities, and relatively resistant to global economic trends.

Jim:      Now, one of the things that… and this is a difficulty I have as a mass show… is that when I read thru the excellent research on you… and I go thru your unbelievable conference call… which I really recommend anybody do before buying the stock… it is difficult… I mean you are not mincing words… you do not talk about in broad sweeping terms what your products do… you get very specific… and it is hard… it is hard for a layman like me… if you had to say what are your 3 greatest new initiatives and what do they do to the human body, what would you say then?

Daniel:      One of them would be our implantable defibrillators that you mentioned. Every day in the United States between 800 and 1000 people are dying of sudden cardiac deaths. Our device can prevent many of those deaths, that is one major innovation. A second innovation, the technical term is atrial fibrillation, the upper chambers of the heart quit working, only the lower chambers beat, that leads to heart failure, it leads to an increased risk of stroke. We spend literally billions of dollars a year, poorly addressing the challenges of atrial fibrillation. St. Jude is a leader in developing technology to help cure that disease state. Perhaps, the third area would be the neuro area that you mentioned. We have a number of initiatives there. One of the very interesting ones, is stimulating the brain in a way that can help treat chronic drug resistant depression.

Jim:      Well, I have got to tell you… thank you for doing that because it is daunting… but I want people when they buy your stock to understand how integral you are to the new form of medicine… one of the things… I do some work for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson Research… can you talk about… I know it is early… we never want to give anybody false hope… but you seem to be doing some pretty break through stuff with Parkinson's?

Daniel:      We are. We are just bringing into the market in Europe this year, a technology to stimulate a portion of the brain for people that have Parkinson’s disease that can alleviate the major symptoms. So it is cost effective, it saves money. It provides more benefit than drug treatment in the early clinical experience to date, and as you say, we do not want to raise false hopes, this won’t be a treatment for everybody. But it is very promising.

Jim:      You also had a statement in your most recent conference call which is dated from Feb 6 last week… I haven’t heard this phrase about any product , anywhere in the world… you talk about the growth with supply constraint… are you telling me that you would have had even better numbers if you could produce more product?

Daniel:      Absolutely.

Jim:      Tell us what is supply constraint… because we are not used to hearing that term anymore on the show?

Daniel:      Well, this is a new technology that we began to bring into the market this last quarter. It is the smallest, longest lasting, most programmable miniature pace maker designed to alleviate chronic pain in patients that are suffering from failed back surgery, or have chronic pain from other cause. And we delivered 32% growth on a year over year basis with this new product, our new technology called our Eon Mini. Our growth would have been higher if we had been able to manufacture more of them.

Jim:      Amazing. Mr. Starks one of the things that I also wanted… because this is a segment where I am really excited about the stock… but also excited for people who rare listening… let’s say you heard any one of these things that we just mentioned… Parkinson’s… defibrillator… the device that you just mentioned… are these things that you should be asking your doctor to have?

Daniel:      It depends on… it depends. It is so specific that I cannot give you a good general answer. But there is website information available that patients and family members of the patients can look at stjudemedical.com offers a lot of good medical information, and that would be a good starting point to help guide a possible discussion with a physician.

Jim:      One last question… we mentioned about the market share thing… Wall Street they had an article about a resurgent…. Boston Scientific… are you shaking?

Daniel:      Well, Boston Scientific is a good company, it is full of good talented people. We regularly beat them.

Jim:      Man I thought you were going to be too diplomatic for me. You are a great statesman sir. Thank you very much, Dan Stark chairman and CEO of St. Jude Med.

Daniel:      Thank you, Jim.

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