Why Shares of iRobot Corporation (IRBT) Climbed

What’s more, investors should be thankful for unpredictable defense budgets, which in the end had a net positive effect on iRobot. Because of its past struggles and thanks largely to its efforts to diversify the business further into the global consumer market, iRobot stands nicely positioned to succeed with or without the support of its market-leading military bots. Now that expectations have been adjusted, any government business iRobot Corporation (NASDAQ:IRBT) is able to secure seems like icing on the cake.

Going even further, part of iRobot’s diversification efforts also involved expanding into the health-care segment with its recently announced RP-VITA medical telepresence robot, which was jointly developed with health-care specialist InTouch Health and based on iRobot’s ground-breaking Ava platform. As I wrote in January, RP-VITA is poised to benefit from its recent FDA approval, reasonable cost structure, and positive changes in legislation, which will boost federal support for telemedicine services. If the RP-VITA platform can succeed in the challenging medical arena, then it could effectively open the floodgates for iRobot Corporation (NASDAQ:IRBT) to expand its reach into countless other related markets.

Foolish final thoughts
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Given iRobot Corporation (NASDAQ:IRBT)’s massive market potential, this is one innovative company whose stock I intend to hold for decades.

In the end, its recent tagline sums things up nicely by asking, “iRobot, do you?”

The article Why Shares of iRobot Climbed originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Steve Symington.

Fool contributor Steve Symington owns shares of iRobot. The Motley Fool recommends Intuitive Surgical and iRobot and owns shares of Intuitive Surgical.

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