How Will Intuitive Surgical Stock React To Its Upcoming Earnings?

Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG) is set to report its earnings on Tuesday, October 21, 2025. We expect the company to post quarterly revenues of around $2.5 billion, driven by continued growth in procedure volumes and strong demand for its da Vinci surgical systems. However, we expect margins to face mild pressure from higher component costs and increased R&D spending. While recurring instrument and service revenue remains a key profit driver, hardware sales mix and pricing dynamics may temper near-term profitability. Expanding adoption in general surgery and international markets continues to support growth, but sustained margin improvement will depend on cost leverage and product innovation over the next few quarters.

The company has $156 Bil in current market capitalization. Revenue over the last twelve months was $9.1 Bil, and it was operationally profitable with $2.6 Bil in operating profits and net income of $2.6 Bil. While a lot will depend on how results stack up against consensus and expectations, understanding historical patterns might just turn the odds in your favor if you are an event-driven trader.

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There are two ways to do that: understand the historical odds and position yourself prior to the earnings release, or look at the correlation between immediate and medium-term returns post earnings and position yourself accordingly after the earnings are released. That said, if you seek upside with lower volatility than individual stocks, the Trefis High Quality portfolio presents an alternative – having outperformed the S&P 500 and generated returns exceeding 105% since its inception.

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Intuitive Surgical’s Historical Odds Of Positive Post-Earnings Return

Some observations on one-day (1D) post-earnings returns:

• There are 19 earnings data points recorded over the last five years, with 10 positive and 9 negative one-day (1D) returns observed. In summary, positive 1D returns were seen about 53% of the time.
• Notably, this percentage increases to 58% if we consider data for the last 3 years instead of 5.
• Median of the 10 positive returns = 9.2%, and median of the 9 negative returns = -2.4%

Additional data for observed 5-Day (5D) and 21-Day (21D) returns post earnings are summarized along with the statistics in the table below.

1D, 5D, and 21D Post Earnings Return

Correlation Between 1D, 5D, and 21D Historical Returns

A relatively less risky strategy (though not useful if the correlation is low) is to understand the correlation between short-term and medium-term returns post earnings, find a pair that has the highest correlation, and execute the appropriate trade. For example, if 1D and 5D show the highest correlation, a trader can position themselves “long” for the next 5 days if the 1D post-earnings return is positive. Here is some correlation data based on a 5-year and a 3-year (more recent) history. Note that the correlation 1D_5D refers to the correlation between 1D post-earnings returns and subsequent 5D returns.

Correlation Between 1D, 5D and 21D Historical Returns

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