One-glance verdict
Overvalued
$0.31 our estimate vs market $2.53
Wall Street consensus: $5.12 (1,578.6% higher than our fair-value estimate)
729% above our estimate, beyond the bull case
Fundamentals snapshot
Cerus Corporation
CERS · NGM · Healthcare · Medical Devices
Current price
$2.53
52-week range
$1.22 - $3.47
Market cap
$509.86M
Balance sheet
Distressed
-1.04x Concerning
Net debt $20.54M. Interest coverage shows how many times profit covers the interest bill.
What stands out
2 Rewards
2 Risks
2 rewards · 2 risks
- Reward Revenue grew 51.5% last year.
- Reward Free cash flow was positive in 2/10 years.
- Risk Return on equity was -10.8% last year — the company lost money on shareholders' equity.
- Risk Insider ownership is only 3.6% (peer median: 3.8%).
What this company does
Cerus Corporation
Cerus Corporation makes a product called the INTERCEPT Blood System, which acts like a cleaning system for donated blood before it's given to patients in transfusions. The company earns money by selling these systems and the disposable kits needed for each use to blood centers and hospitals around the world. This is important because making blood transfusions safer helps protect patients from getting sick with infections during medical treatments.
How the company got here
Cerus Corporation was founded in 1991 by a hematologist (a doctor specializing in blood) and a chemist in response to the AIDS crisis, where patients were contracting HIV from contaminated blood transfusions. Their goal was to create a way to safeguard the world's blood supply. The company went public in 1997 to raise money for developing its technology. A major breakthrough came in 2014 when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved their INTERCEPT Blood System for platelets and plasma, opening up a large market.
What it actually does
Cerus makes a product called the INTERCEPT Blood System, which is designed to make donated blood safer for transfusions. Think of it like a cleaning system for blood components like platelets (tiny cells that help with clotting) and plasma (the liquid part of blood). The system uses a special compound and UV light to target and inactivate a wide variety of harmful viruses, bacteria, and parasites that might be in a blood donation, without harming the needed blood components themselves. This helps reduce the risk of patients getting infections from a blood transfusion.
INTERCEPT Blood System
This is the company's only business, focused on blood safety. Cerus sells single-use kits for treating specific blood components like platelets and plasma, which blood centers and hospitals purchase. They also sell the necessary equipment, called an illuminator, that performs the pathogen reduction process. This creates a recurring revenue stream (a steady and predictable income) as customers who buy the machine must continue to buy the disposable kits to use it. The company's main customers are blood centers, hospitals, and national blood services in the U.S., Europe, and other parts of the world.
What management is betting on now
The company's main goal is to make its INTERCEPT system the worldwide standard for preparing blood for transfusions. They are focused on increasing the use of their systems for platelets and a related product called INTERCEPT Fibrinogen Complex, which helps control bleeding. A major priority is the development and approval of a system for red blood cells, which would significantly expand their market. Management is also concentrating on growing sales in international markets and continuing to receive government funding to support research and development (the process of creating new products and improving existing ones).
Price history
How the share price has moved
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Earnings history
Last 8 quarters — what happened
Click any quarter to read the call summary and what the numbers say.
FY2024 Q3
$3.35M
FY2024 Q4
$3.95M
FY2025 Q1
$-956.00K
FY2025 Q2
$-2.92M
FY2025 Q3
$94.00K
FY2025 Q4
$4.89M
FY2026 Q1
$-3.28M
FY2026 Q2
$-3.53M
Revenue
$57.44M
Net income
$-2.94M
Diluted EPS
-0.01
Operating cash flow
$-2.66M
Free cash flow
$-3.53M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$53.66M
Net income
$-1.64M
Diluted EPS
-0.01
Operating cash flow
$-3.05M
Free cash flow
$-3.28M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$190.56M
Net income
$-2.18M
Diluted EPS
-0.01
Operating cash flow
$6.20M
Free cash flow
$4.89M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
—
Net income
$-19.00K
Diluted EPS
0.00
Operating cash flow
$1.93M
Free cash flow
$94.00K
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$52.45M
Net income
$-5.71M
Diluted EPS
-0.03
Operating cash flow
$-2.45M
Free cash flow
$-2.92M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$43.24M
Net income
$-7.72M
Diluted EPS
-0.04
Operating cash flow
$-844.00K
Free cash flow
$-956.00K
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$201.32M
Net income
$-2.52M
Diluted EPS
-0.01
Operating cash flow
$4.93M
Free cash flow
$3.95M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
—
Net income
$-2.93M
Diluted EPS
-0.02
Operating cash flow
$4.07M
Free cash flow
$3.35M
Fetching…
Sources
Is it cheap or expensive?
Fair value $0.31 vs current price $2.53
Wall Street consensus is the average analyst price target: $5.12 (1,578.6% higher than our fair-value estimate).
Our most-likely fair value is $0.31 a share — about 87.9% below today's price of $2.53, so the stock currently looks expensive (overvalued).
Is it drowning in debt?
Distressed
Net debt $20.5M. Interest coverage -1.0x.
Net debt
$20.54M
Interest coverage
-1.04x
Cerus Corporation's profit covers its interest bill about 0.0 times over. which is weaker than most peers shown here and 2 peers sit below 1x, which is the danger zone where profit does not fully cover the interest bill.
Distressed
Worse cushion
Baseline
Better cushion
CERS
BASELINE
Cerus Corporation
Total debt $76.80M Interest coverage -1.04x This is the baseline the peer rows are being compared against.
Total debt $111.18M Interest coverage -11.96x Neither company has much profit cushion over interest right now.
Total debt $48.53M Interest coverage 1.35x This peer still has a real interest-payment cushion, while CERS does not.
Total debt $1.50B Interest coverage 2.76x This peer still has a real interest-payment cushion, while CERS does not.
Total debt $138.40M Interest coverage 1.97x This peer still has a real interest-payment cushion, while CERS does not.
Total debt $74.22M Interest coverage -1.61x Neither company has much profit cushion over interest right now.
What you should know
The case for and against CERS
2 Rewards
2 Risks
Rewards
-
Revenue grew 51.5% last year.
-
Free cash flow was positive in 2/10 years.
Risks
-
Return on equity was -10.8% last year — the company lost money on shareholders' equity.
-
Insider ownership is only 3.6% (peer median: 3.8%).
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)
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Forward P/E
-506.00x
P/B
7.27x
P/S
2.30x
EV/EBITDA
8,046.73x
PEG ratio
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Profitability
How much profit each dollar creates
Gross margin
52.0%
Operating margin
-3.2%
Net margin
-3.1%
ROE
-10.8%
ROA
-0.5%
Health
Liquidity and balance-sheet strength
Debt / equity
1.09x
Current ratio
1.83x
Quick ratio
1.02x
Total debt
$76.80M
Total cash
$56.26M
Growth
How the business has been compounding
Revenue TTM
$354.11M
Revenue 5Y CAGR
10.0%
EPS TTM
-0.03
EPS 5Y CAGR
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Cash flow
How much cash the business throws off
Operating CF TTM
$2.42M
Free CF TTM
$1.11M
FCF margin
0.3%
Dividend
Shareholder payout
Yield
—
Payout ratio
0.0%
Last ex-div date
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