Invacare Corporation Announces Financial Results For The Quarter And Year Ended December 31, 2012

Invacare Corporation (NYSE: IVC) today announced its financial results for the quarter and year ended December 31, 2012.

During the fourth quarter of 2012, the Company announced the sale of its Invacare Supply Group (ISG) medical supplies business, which was completed on January 18, 2013. Accordingly, the results for the quarter and year ended December 31, 2012, include the results of ISG as a discontinued operation. Since ISG was not sold until 2013, the CEO Summary addresses the results of the continuing operations and Invacare Supply Group as a combined operation for the year ended December 31, 2012. However, the primary text of the release, including the consolidated results, focuses on continuing operations. For more information on the Company's continuing, discontinued and combined operations, see the detailed condensed consolidated financial statements at the end of the release.

CEO SUMMARY

Commenting on the Company's focus in 2012, Gerald B. Blouch, President and Chief Executive Officer, stated, ``2012 was one of the most challenging years in the Company's history. The year was dominated by our consent decree negotiations with the United States Food & Drug Administration (FDA). Negotiations were completed and the consent decree became effective in December, necessitating a temporary cessation of production at our Taylor Street wheelchair manufacturing facility to allow time to implement compliance controls. In addition, over the past two years, most significantly in 2012, we made a concerted effort to update and implement a comprehensive portfolio of processes compliant with the FDA's Quality System Regulation. These processes will be standardized across all of our FDA registered facilities. To accelerate our progress on the remediation, we engaged third-party medical device experts and extensively engaged the entire management team. As a result, we suspended most new product development over the past year, because the majority of our design engineering team was redeployed to focus on remediation. The lack of new products coupled with uncertainty among our customers over Invacare's ability to offer continuous product supply from the Taylor Street facility resulted in a loss of market share and gross margin pressure in the North America/Home Medical Equipment (HME) segment last year.”

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