UPDATE: Citigroup Downgrades Stryker to Neutral, Maintains Target at $55

Citigroup lowers its rating on Stryker

as preliminary 4th quarter results provide a disappointing outlook. Citigroup says, "SYK's 4Q11 sales of $2.2B (11.0%) is only about $5-10MM below our forecast but the mix was worse in Recon which only grew 0.5% organic vs. 6-7% the prior two quarters. This suggests: 1) the hip and knee markets overall are not likely to have shown much improvement in 4Q11 and 2) SYK lost share, primarily in Hips. In contrast, we expected SYK to be in share gain mode for both Hips and Knees." SYK closed at $53.02 per share on Wednesday.