CooperVision, a unit of The Cooper Companies (COO), a company focused on contact lens and women’s health, recently reported that it is still engaged with lens wearers, customers, distributors, eye care specialists and the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) to conclude the product recall, initiated on August 19, 2011, of select lots of Avaira toric contact lenses.
The company is committed to keep all clients cognizant of the voluntary recall and the right sources to approach for the dissemination of information. Its foremost priority remains the well-being of the customer, which is why the company initiated the recall in the first place.
CooperVision recommends that Avaira wearers, who experience symptoms, stop wearing their lenses as soon as possible and contact their eye care specialist for advice. On the other hand, the company suggests that users, who do not face problems, visit the CooperVision recall web page or contact the company on its toll-free hotline to find out if their lenses have been recalled. In case, the lenses have been recalled, they should be returned.
The company explained that it has decided on the recall due to an unintended residual presence on select lots of the Avaira torics, which may be the cause of discomfort and haziness. However, the symptoms are not uniformly experienced by all wearers. Since the start of the recall, CooperVision has received some more complaints of acute eye pain. The company wants contact lens wearers who experience any problems to immediately cease wearing the lenses and contact their eye care specialist.
CooperVision continues with its effort to identify each and every affected lot in the market. Till date, its recall has affected about 600,000 Avaira torics in the domestic market. Since the company sells its lenses through eye care practitioners and distributors, it has primarily communicated through these two channels in order to reach wearers. The company has informed its customers and eye care specialists to contact patients and tell them about the recall.
Some of the actions which the company took during the first two weeks of the recall includes communication with over 7,000 eye care specialists in the domestic market, who have either sampled or received the Avaira toric lenses; dispatch of notifications globally about the recall to over 9,000 lens customers; informing distributors to return all Avaira toric products and not just select lot numbers.
Cooper is a global medical products company specializing in a wide range of contact lenses for the vision correction market with a smaller strategic business unit for women’s health. It reportedly holds the number three position in the approximately $6 billion global contact lens industry.
Cooper is a leader in the high-margin toric lens market. It offers multiple designs of toric lenses, across a wide range of parameters, unlike some of its competitors, who offer toric lenses in a limited number of designs. The company is benefiting from strong demand for its Biofinity toric lenses.
However, Cooper faces formidable competition in each of its major product lines. Competition comes from globally well established contact lens makers such as Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Novartis (NVS). Depressed levels of consumer spending have heightened the competitive pressures on the company. We currently have a Neutral recommendation on the stock.
