Company: INGN
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-029993
Chunk: 11

Company: Inogen Inc
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 11
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 resources to develop our products. As of December 31, 2024, our research and development staff included 28 engineers and scientists with expertise in air separation, compressors, pneumatics, electronics, embedded software, mechanical design, sensor, automation, connectivity, digital health, and manufacturing automation. The team is augmented with expertise and resources of our third-party partners specialized in medical device development. Our current research and development efforts are focused primarily on increasing functionality, improving design for ease-of-use, and reducing the total cost of ownership of our products, as well as developing our next-generation oxygen concentrators and further developing the Simeox product line. We have leveraged our 87 issued patents and intend to continue to seek ways to innovate to develop products and functionality improvements that enhance patient quality of life and to reduce costs through manufacturing and design improvements. 

Competition 

The long-term oxygen therapy market is a highly competitive industry. We compete with a number of manufacturers and distributors of POCs, as well as providers of other long-term oxygen therapy solutions such as home delivery of oxygen tanks or cylinders, stationary concentrators, transfilling concentrators, and liquid oxygen. Some of our competitors are large, well-capitalized companies with greater resources and other advantages than we have.

Our significant manufacturing competitors are Caire Medical (a subsidiary of NGK Spark Plug), DeVilbiss Healthcare (a subsidiary of Drive Medical), O2 Concepts, Precision Medical, Gas Control Equipment (a subsidiary of Colfax), Nidek Medical, 3B Medical, SysMed, iRhythm Technologies, Inc., and Belluscura. Respironics (a subsidiary of Koninklijke Philips N.V.) announced in early 2024 that it was leaving the U.S. portable oxygen concentrator market until further regulatory assessments but continues to have product in the market. This is not an exhaustive list of competitors. Given the relatively straightforward regulatory path in the oxygen therapy device manufacturing market, we expect that the industry will become increasingly competitive in the future. For example, some major competitors have implemented direct-to-consumer sales models, which may increase their competitiveness and sales to patients, and we have recently seen the cost per generated lead trend higher than historical averages that may in part be due to increased competition. However, the strategies of these major competitors are currently limited to direct-to-consumer sales and do not include direct-to-consumer rentals where they would be responsible to meet national accreditation and state-by-state licensing requirements and secure Medicare billing privileges. Manufacturing companies compete for sales to