Utilisation, Up Three Percent a YearNarrow moat

Intuitive reports a metric most equipment makers avoid: how much its installed machines are actually used. Utilisation, measured as procedures per system per year, rose approximately 3% in 2025 and approximately 3% again in the June 2026 quarter¹.

Three percent sounds modest until you notice what it is happening on top of. The installed base grew 12% over the same period². A fleet that grows 12% while each unit does 3% more work is one where the newest additions are not diluting the average — which is what normally happens, because a new programme starts slowly and takes years to mature.

It is also the number that converts a hardware sale into an annuity. Each machine placed generates instrument revenue in proportion to its use, so a system doing 300 procedures a year is worth roughly twice one doing 150. Rising utilisation means the annuity per unit compounds without Intuitive selling anything new.

The drivers are the ones on this facet: better-trained teams, broader regulatory indications, and more procedure types cleared for the platform. Intuitive has spent years widening the set of operations a da Vinci is allowed to perform, and each new indication makes an existing machine busier.

This one Intuitive reports directly, which is unusual. Utilisation rising while the base grows is compounding. Utilisation flat or falling while the base grows means either new programmes are underperforming or existing surgeons are splitting cases — and only one of those is Intuitive's problem to fix.