Intuitive Surgical 3Q Earnings Hurt by Charge Despite Higher Revenue

By Josée Rose

Intuitive Surgical third-quarter profit was dented by a litigation charge, though revenue increased as the company booked more worldwide procedures.

The robotics surgery company on Tuesday said net income was $522.8 million, or $1.49 a share, compared with $704.4 million, or $1.95 a share, a year earlier. The current quarter's results included a pretax litigation charge, which amounted to 99 cents a share after-tax.

On an adjusted basis, earnings per share were $3.00. Analysts polled by FactSet expected adjusted earnings of $2.65 a share.

Revenue increased 22% to $3.05 billion, compared with FactSet estimates of $2.91 billion.

Worldwide procedures grew about 15%, driven by 31% growth in Ion procedure volume. Meanwhile, da Vinci procedure volume increased 14%.

The company placed 546 da Vinci surgical systems compared with 427 a year before. The third quarter 2026 da Vinci surgical system placements included 315 da Vinci 5 systems, compared with 240 a year ago.

The quarterly performance "was marked by broad-based adoption across our multi-port, single-port, and Ion platforms, with customers using our systems to perform, on average, over 10,000 procedures per day throughout the period," Chief Executive Dave Rosa said.

Looking ahead, Intuitive Surgical expects growth in worldwide da Vinci procedures to be in the midpoint of the 14% to 15% range.

In after-hours trading, Intuitive Surgical shares were down 10.6%, at $391.40.

Write to Josée Rose at josee.rose@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 20, 2026 16:41 ET (20:41 GMT)