Waiting for Medtronic's Next Hit

Medtronic(MDT - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) approaches its fourth-quarter financial report with a big fan club on Wall Street and an uncanny ability to produce financial results that meet Wall Street's expectations.

The Minneapolis-based company will announce fourth-quarter results on Monday after the markets close, putting on the line a string of eight consecutive quarters in which its earnings per share matched the consensus view of analysts polled by Thomson First Call.

For the fourth quarter, which ended April 30, analysts are looking for earnings of $561.3 million, or 46 cents a share, on revenue of $2.46 billion. For the same period last year, Medtronic earned $487.1 billion, or 40 cents a share, on revenue of $2.15 billion.

The consensus for the fiscal year ended April 30 is for a profit of $1.97 billion, or $1.62 a share, on revenue of $8.88 billion. For the previous fiscal year, Medtronic earned $1.6 billion, or $1.30 a share, on revenue of $7.67 billion.

With a market capitalization of $59.7 billion, Medtronic is twice as big as its nearest competitor. The company has strong Wall Street support with 27 buy recommendations (vs. four holds and two sells). But Medtronic's stock has vacillated over the past 12 months, with the net result being that it has barely budged.

The stock performance should be one of the issues addressed by analysts Monday, especially how the stock price will be affected by an experimental product. Analysts will try to extract more insight into the prospects for Medtronic's drug-coated stent, a wire mesh tube inserted into arteries. The stent facilitates blood flow in patients who have undergone a procedure to disperse vessel-clogging plaque.

Medtronic's financial report is due one day before results are scheduled to be published in Paris for a European clinical trial of the company's stent. The test is a 12-month follow-up to a previous study of the device, also called a drug-eluting stent because it periodically releases medication to help keep arteries clear.