In afternoon trade on Wednesday the ResMed Inc. (ASX: RMD) share price is pushing higher with the market.
At the time of writing, the medical device company's shares are up 1% to $23.83.
Despite this gain, the ResMed share price is down almost 19% from the 52-week high it reached in July.
Is this a buying opportunity?
I think the recent pullback in the ResMed share price is a buying opportunity for long term focused investors.
While its shares are still not cheap, even after this decline, I believe they offer a lot of value for investors that plan to make a buy and hold investment.
This is due to its focus on the lucrative sleep treatment market.
ResMed designs, develops, and manufactures masks to treat sleep disorders such as sleep apnoea. It also has a growing software business which provides solutions that support sufferers of sleep disorders.
Management estimates that there are currently 936 million people with sleep apnoea globally. There are also over 380 million people who suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and more than 340 million people living with asthma.
Due to its industry-leading products and wide distribution network, I believe ResMed can win a growing slice of this market over the next decade.
Management certainly believes this to be the case. It is aiming to improve a total of 250 million lives by 2025. This compares to the 16 million lives it improved in FY 2020 by providing them with a device or complete mask system to help them breathe.
Another part of the company which I'm positive on is its software solutions business. At the end of FY 2020, ResMed's digital health ecosystem had grown to over 12 million cloud connectable medical devices. It also had ~14 million patients enrolled in the AirView software solution.
This gives ResMed a significant amount of high quality data to perform sophisticated analytics and drive actionable insights.
Foolish Takeaway.
ResMed shares have been market beaters over the last 10 years and I believe the stage is set for them to repeat these heroics over the next decade. This could make the company one of the best buy and hold options on the ASX today.
