“In two or three years, Insightec can make a profit,” Dr. Maurice Ferré, CEO of a veteran Israeli medical device company, told Globes recently. Is Insightec profitable? Let’s take a look. According to Startup Nation Central’s startup database, this is a company that has raised more than $600 million over the course of its existence than any other privately held company in Israel. Money funds the development of outstanding technology, and although the company has even had impressive revenues, it continues to bring about huge losses.
Ferre, who has been in the CEO post for 10 years, is unclear whether he will continue that way in the current state of the market.
“It was okay for a company to lose a lot of money a few years ago when money was easily available and the ratings given to a growth company were high,” he says. “With interest rates rising today, investors find it difficult to tolerate the model, driving companies towards profitability. We hear what the market is looking for, and we are looking in that direction too.”
In the last round of funding last year, Insightec was rated at just $515 million. This comes from the finances of Elbit Medical, a publicly traded company that owns 2% of Insightec.
It’s starting to happen
Of course, it’s best to make a profit, but can Insightec do that? This week, the approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to use Insightec devices for new indications of Parkinson’s disease patients represents one building block of the structure Ferre is about to build, expanding the addressable market. By concentrating ultrasound energy from several directions under MRI guidance, the product deals with non-Parkinson tremors, and in recent years it has also dealt with a variety of Parkinson’s disease. “The competing technology is brain stimulation using electrodes. This is a procedure that involves opening the skull, not a growing market. We don’t expect competition for our technology because of the high barrier to entry,” says Ferre.
The company’s products are very expensive. The system itself costs around $2 million, and treatment is priced at thousands of dollars per patient. You can’t afford these treatments unless your insurance company covers them. Until now, insurance coverage for the company’s products has been fairly thin, but the new product is better in that respect than its previous products.
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“The pieces of this puzzle are approaching,” promises Ferre. “We recently demonstrated that five years after being treated with the product of the first non-Parkunson tremor, 73% of patients are still in better condition than before the procedure. These are the types of data that insurers want to see, along with data showing that patients are more active, sedentary and less diabetic.”
In 2024, Insightec revenue rose to $110 million from $83.5 million in 2023, and its annual net loss shrunk from $107 million to $68.5 million. In the first quarter of 2025, the company announced a loss of $18 million, with $148 million in cash at the end of the quarter. ”
Can you maintain the company without raising more money?
Ferre: “I don’t know, but after lowering the burn rate, I’ll keep my cash so that it’s enough for a long time.”
Published by Globes, Israel Business News -en.globes.co.il- July 10, 2025.
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