One-glance verdict
Within fair range
$182.67 our estimate vs market $185.92
Wall Street consensus: $195.67 (7.1% higher than our fair-value estimate)
2% above our estimate
Fundamentals snapshot
Becton, Dickinson and Company
BDX · NYQ · Healthcare · Medical Instruments & Supplies
Current price
$185.92
52-week range
$127.59 - $193.07
Market cap
$50.64B
Balance sheet
Watch
4.87x Stretched
Net debt $16.10B. Interest coverage shows how many times profit covers the interest bill.
What stands out
3 Rewards
2 Risks
3 rewards · 2 risks
- Reward Returns 6.6% on equity, ahead of 16% of its peers.
- Reward Free cash flow was positive in 10/10 years.
- Risk Net debt grew 23.1% over 3 years.
- Risk Insider ownership is only 0.4% (peer median: 0.5%).
What this company does
Becton, Dickinson and Company
Becton, Dickinson and Company (BDX) is a large medical technology company that makes the everyday tools hospitals and labs rely on, such as needles, syringes, and equipment for testing blood. Because many of these products are disposable and must be constantly reordered, the company generates steady recurring revenue (predictable sales that happen over and over from the same customers). This makes BDX a fundamental and consistent part of the healthcare system.
How the company got here
Becton, Dickinson and Company, known as BD, was started in 1897 by two traveling salesmen, Maxwell Becton and Fairleigh Dickinson. They began by selling medical thermometers and syringes. Over many decades, the company grew by inventing and acquiring new technologies, like the first patent for an all-glass syringe and sterilization technology for medical devices. Major turning points included buying CareFusion in 2015, which expanded its business into medication management systems, and acquiring C.R. Bard in 2017, which made BD a major player in devices for surgical procedures. These moves transformed BD from a seller of basic hospital supplies into a large, diversified medical technology company.
What it actually does
Think of almost any disposable item you might see in a hospital or a doctor's office, and there's a good chance BD makes it. The company produces billions of essential items like needles, syringes, and IV catheters that are used every day to deliver medicine and draw blood. It also makes more complex equipment, such as automated systems that dispense medication in hospitals and instruments that help laboratories diagnose diseases. Essentially, BD provides the tools healthcare workers rely on to care for patients, from simple injections to advanced surgical procedures and disease testing.
BD Medical
This is BD's largest business, making up about half of the company's total sales (revenue, or the money brought in from sales). It's focused on the tools needed to deliver medication to patients. This includes everyday items like syringes, needles, and IV catheters, as well as more advanced systems like infusion pumps that control the flow of medicine into a patient's body. This segment also sells pre-fillable drug delivery systems directly to pharmaceutical companies who then fill them with their medicines.
BD Life Sciences
This part of the company provides the equipment and supplies that clinical laboratories use to test patient samples. It makes things like blood and specimen collection tubes, as well as automated systems that help identify bacteria and viruses to diagnose infections and other diseases. This segment also creates tools for scientists who are researching cells to better understand diseases like cancer. While a smaller part of the company, it plays a critical role in medical diagnosis and research.
BD Interventional
This segment, which became a major part of BD after the acquisition of C.R. Bard, focuses on devices used in more specialized, often minimally invasive, medical procedures. Its products are used in areas like surgery, cancer treatment (oncology), and urology. For example, this division makes products for hernia repair, catheters for draining fluids, and devices used to treat diseases in blood vessels outside of the heart. This business represents about a quarter of BD's total revenue.
What management is betting on now
The company's leadership is focused on a strategy to drive growth through innovation in specific, high-impact areas. One major priority is developing "smart connected care," which involves creating medical devices that can share data to help reduce errors and improve patient outcomes. They are also investing in products for new healthcare settings, like clinics and at-home care, and technologies to better manage chronic diseases. To achieve this, the company is simplifying its operations and making targeted acquisitions of smaller companies with promising new technologies.
Price history
How the share price has moved
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Loading price history…
Earnings history
Last 8 quarters — what happened
Click any quarter to read the call summary and what the numbers say.
FY2024 Q4
$882.00M
FY2025 Q1
$588.00M
FY2025 Q2
$35.00M
FY2025 Q3
$1.04B
FY2025 Q4
$1.00B
FY2026 Q1
$549.00M
FY2026 Q2
$1.20B
FY2026 Q3
$633.00M
Revenue
$4.98B
Net income
$377.00M
Diluted EPS
1.37
Operating cash flow
$776.00M
Free cash flow
$633.00M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$4.71B
Net income
$-311.00M
Diluted EPS
-1.11
Operating cash flow
$1.33B
Free cash flow
$1.20B
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$5.25B
Net income
$382.00M
Diluted EPS
1.34
Operating cash flow
$657.00M
Free cash flow
$549.00M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$5.89B
Net income
$493.00M
Diluted EPS
1.71
Operating cash flow
$1.35B
Free cash flow
$1.00B
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$5.51B
Net income
$574.00M
Diluted EPS
2.00
Operating cash flow
$1.22B
Free cash flow
$1.04B
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$5.27B
Net income
$308.00M
Diluted EPS
1.07
Operating cash flow
$164.00M
Free cash flow
$35.00M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$5.17B
Net income
$303.00M
Diluted EPS
1.04
Operating cash flow
$693.00M
Free cash flow
$588.00M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$5.44B
Net income
$400.00M
Diluted EPS
1.37
Operating cash flow
$1.18B
Free cash flow
$882.00M
Fetching…
Sources
Is it cheap or expensive?
Fair value $182.67 vs current price $185.92
Wall Street consensus is the average analyst price target: $195.67 (7.1% higher than our fair-value estimate).
Our most-likely fair value is $182.67 a share — about 1.8% away from today's price of $185.92, so the stock currently looks fairly priced.
Is it drowning in debt?
Watch
Net debt $16.1B. Interest coverage 4.9x.
Net debt
$16.10B
Interest coverage
4.87x
Becton, Dickinson and Company's profit covers its interest bill about 4.9 times over. and 1 peers sit below 1x, which is the danger zone where profit does not fully cover the interest bill.
Watch
Worse cushion
Baseline
Better cushion
BDX
BASELINE
Becton, Dickinson and Company
Total debt $16.81B Interest coverage 4.87x This is the baseline the peer rows are being compared against.
Total debt $28.15B Interest coverage 9.55x +96% vs BDX Carries about 2.0x more debt cushion than BDX.
Total debt $15.45B Interest coverage 8.33x +71% vs BDX Carries about 1.7x more debt cushion than BDX.
Total debt $32.72B Interest coverage 16.33x +235% vs BDX Carries about 3.4x more debt cushion than BDX.
Total debt $27.86B Interest coverage 17.70x +263% vs BDX Carries about 3.6x more debt cushion than BDX.
Total debt $9.67B Interest coverage 0.61x -87% vs BDX Carries about 8.0x less debt cushion than BDX.
What you should know
The case for and against BDX
3 Rewards
2 Risks
Rewards
-
Returns 6.6% on equity, ahead of 16% of its peers.
-
Free cash flow was positive in 10/10 years.
-
Dividend yield is 2.3% with 54-year payout history.
Risks
-
Net debt grew 23.1% over 3 years.
-
Insider ownership is only 0.4% (peer median: 0.5%).
The numbers
All the key metrics, grouped by purpose
Tap any ? icon to learn what it means.
Valuation
How expensive the stock looks
P/E (TTM)
31.62x
Forward P/E
13.99x
P/B
2.07x
P/S
2.25x
EV/EBITDA
10.90x
PEG ratio
1.11x
Profitability
How much profit each dollar creates
Gross margin
46.9%
Operating margin
15.7%
Net margin
4.2%
ROE
6.6%
ROA
4.3%
Health
Liquidity and balance-sheet strength
Debt / equity
0.69x
Current ratio
0.86x
Quick ratio
0.33x
Total debt
$16.81B
Total cash
$709.00M
Growth
How the business has been compounding
Revenue TTM
$20.84B
Revenue 5Y CAGR
3.4%
EPS TTM
5.88
EPS 5Y CAGR
-0.3%
Cash flow
How much cash the business throws off
Operating CF TTM
$4.12B
Free CF TTM
$2.67B
FCF margin
12.8%
Dividend
Shareholder payout
Yield
2.3%
Payout ratio
72.5%
Last ex-div date
2026-09-09