Years of toil pay off in 2004 Perseverance yields products, surge in profits

When it comes to medical-device makers, no other Massachusetts company has even half the revenue of the Globe 100's top-ranked Boston Scientific Corp.

But what most seem to have in common with the Natick-based cardiac stent maker is perseverance. For many, 2004 marked the year that strategies came to fruition, products arrived on the market, and higher profits flowed.

PerkinElmer Inc. of Wellesley, for instance, saw its revenue grow 10 percent in 2004, as profit margins climbed by 54 percent. The company credited gains to business areas such as medical imaging and its services unit, which maintains laboratory instruments for customers including Pfizer Inc.

Instrument sales and services once were separate organizations inside the company, but PerkinElmer chief executive Greg Summe decided to merge the two functions several years ago. Last year's results show how the decision paid off, said vice president Daniel Sutherby.

''It was the year we shifted away from just selling fragmented systems to pharmaceutical companies and really went after the integrated sale," Sutherby said.

Another devices company that reaped the payoff from years of work was Haemonetics Corp. of Braintree, a maker of blood processing systems. Its revenue rose 10 percent to $381 million.

Sales growth was driven by the launch of a new system that collects twice as many red blood cells from human donors as previous methods. That's a boon to organizations like the American Red Cross, a major Haemonetics customer. Haemonetics has also begun trials of a new system that salvages the blood patients lose during orthopedic surgery, avoiding the need for transfusions.

Haemonetics is just one of many local medical-device makers starting to gain critical mass, said Jonathan Gertler, managing director of investment banking at Adams Harkness Inc. Others in a group he called ''emerging growth" stocks include defibrillator maker Zoll Medical Corp. of Chelmsford and women's health specialist Cytyc Corp. of Marlborough, whose revenue rose 30 percent last year.

The Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council, a Boston trade group, counted 335 member companies at the end of 2004, 15 more than a year earlier. And a recent survey by Boston real estate services firm NAI Hunneman suggested the device companies may add more than 5,000 employees over the next three years to the 21,000 they now have.

''You've got the perfect combination here," Gertler said. ''A good economic cluster, with strong investors, about 300 device companies in the state, and a lot of good start-ups."

Ross Kerber can be reached at kerber@globe.com.