Summary of today’s result, page-22

One more thing and a bit of a confession - some time ago I asked Paul the very same question asked in the investor conference today about the number of hospitals:

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Me: Will you be able to provide as part of future updates details on the number of hospitals that are using Novosorb BTM?

Paul B: We try to avoid the number of hospitals as people get ahead of themselves with what a hospital is “ worth”. The bottom line is the total sales figure. Hospitals are made up of lots of departments and the reps need to get into all of them not 1 department per hospital. More money to be made penetrating an account verses bragging rights on the number of hospitals. Does this make sense.? Yes we are still active in new account conquest but we must also expand the sales within existing accounts.
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His response made me think about what had happened at Nanosonics. In the early years of expansion in the U.S, they were providing figures with the number of top 50 hospitals they were in etc. But years later, they're now saying stuff like this:

"So we're actually in about 4000 hospitals now in the United States, either in one or more departments with a goal to go deep within those hospitals into all relevant departments of which there are many for the adoption." - Michael Kavanagh, CEO

This for me, validated what Paul was saying and made me think that Nanosonics made a bit of a mistake in not focussing enough in building on the relationships with the hospitals and accounts they already had to go deeper in the first place.

I had heard that phrase "go deeper" and "go wider" form Kavanagh a few times in more recent years, not realising that this was perhaps to address a significant error in sales strategy. Perhaps they would be in a much better position if they were in just 2,000 hospitals, but in all departments that could utilise their product, rather than just one or two departments in 4,000 hospitals. I'll never know for sure, but I suspect it could very well be the case. Still, a 500%+ return or so is nothing to complain about there.