One-glance verdict
Undervalued
$48.40 our estimate vs market $42.90
Wall Street consensus: $46.27 (-4.4% lower than our fair-value estimate)
11% below our estimate, below the bear case
Fundamentals snapshot
Qiagen N.V.
QGEN · NYQ · Healthcare · Diagnostics & Research
Current price
$42.90
52-week range
$32.53 - $57.82
Market cap
$8.86B
Balance sheet
Healthy
15.65x Strong cushion
Net debt $860.20M. Interest coverage shows how many times profit covers the interest bill.
What stands out
3 Rewards
3 Risks
3 rewards · 3 risks
- Reward Revenue grew 5.7% last year.
- Reward Returns 11.9% on equity, ahead of 40% of its peers.
- Risk Net debt grew 53.3% over 3 years.
- Risk Insider ownership is only 0.5% (peer median: 5.6%).
What this company does
Qiagen N.V.
Qiagen provides the essential "razor and blades" for medical labs and research facilities, selling machines and the disposable testing kits that run on them. The company makes most of its money from the ongoing sale of these kits, which are used for critical tasks like detecting diseases, conducting cancer research, and analyzing crime scene evidence. This business model creates a steady stream of income because customers are locked into their ecosystem (a network of products designed to work together, making it hard to switch).
How the company got here
Qiagen was started in 1984 by a team of scientists in Germany who found a better way to handle the building blocks of life, DNA and RNA. [2, 24] Their first big product was a kit that made it much easier and faster for researchers to purify tiny DNA molecules from bacteria. [2, 6] The company grew by creating more of these essential tools for scientists and eventually listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange in 1996, a first for a German company. [2] A key turning point was buying a company called Digene in 2007, which moved Qiagen heavily into molecular diagnostics (testing for diseases by looking at a person's genes or proteins). [2, 24] Over the years, it has continued to acquire other companies to add new technologies to its portfolio. [2]
What it actually does
Qiagen provides the tools and technologies that scientists, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies use to get from a biological sample to a useful insight. [11, 23] Imagine a lab needing to test a blood sample for a virus; Qiagen makes the kits that extract the virus's genetic material and the machines that analyze it. [21, 26] Their products are used for everything from diagnosing infections and cancer to forensic testing at crime scenes and developing new medicines. [5, 22] The company calls this entire process "Sample to Insight," providing the equipment and supplies for nearly every step of the workflow. [27]
Diagnostic Solutions
This is the company's largest business, making up over a third of its sales. [8, 10] It creates tests that help doctors diagnose diseases by identifying specific molecular clues in a patient's sample. [5] A major product here is the QuantiFERON test, a modern blood test used worldwide to detect tuberculosis (TB) infection. [7, 25] This segment also includes automated systems like QIAstat-Dx, which can quickly test a sample for multiple viruses or bacteria at once, helping doctors in hospitals pinpoint the cause of an illness. [5, 22]
Sample Technologies
This is Qiagen's original and foundational business, representing about a third of its revenue. [10] It provides the essential kits and chemicals used at the very first step of most biological research: isolating and purifying DNA, RNA, and proteins from samples like blood, tissue, or cells. [1, 5] Because the quality of this initial preparation is critical for getting accurate results later, labs around the world rely on these products for their experiments and diagnostic tests. [1] This part of the business is like selling the essential prep tools and ingredients that every chef needs before they can start cooking.
PCR and Nucleic Acid Amplification
This business line focuses on a technology called PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction), which is a way to make millions of copies of a tiny piece of DNA. [5, 21] This copying process, called amplification, is crucial because it allows scientists to detect even the smallest traces of a virus or a specific genetic marker. Qiagen sells the instruments and related consumable kits that labs use to perform these tests. [1] A key product is the QIAcuity system, which uses an advanced method called digital PCR to count DNA molecules with very high precision. [5, 22]
Genomics and Next-Generation Sequencing
This is a smaller but important part of the company that helps scientists read and understand genetic information at high speed. [10] It provides tools to prepare DNA for Next-Generation Sequencing (or NGS), a technology that can read millions of DNA sequences at once. [1] Just as important, this segment includes powerful bioinformatics software (computer tools for analyzing biological data) that helps researchers make sense of the huge amounts of information that NGS produces. [5, 22] This software helps turn raw genetic data into actionable insights for cancer research and other complex diseases.
What management is betting on now
The company's strategy is to focus its investments on five key areas it calls its "growth pillars": its sample preparation tools, the QuantiFERON TB test, the QIAstat-Dx diagnostic system, the QIAcuity digital PCR machines, and its bioinformatics software. [14, 16] Management is pushing to create more automated systems to make lab work faster and more efficient for its customers. [14] They are also expanding the menu of tests available on their machines and using artificial intelligence (AI) to help scientists plan experiments and analyze data. [14, 26] The goal is to grow sales from these core pillars to over $2 billion by 2028. [11, 12]
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 Q4
$506.38M
FY2025 Q4
$453.28M
Revenue
$2.09B
Net income
$424.88M
Diluted EPS
1.94
Operating cash flow
$654.33M
Free cash flow
$453.28M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$1.98B
Net income
$83.59M
Diluted EPS
0.37
Operating cash flow
$673.55M
Free cash flow
$506.38M
Fetching…
Sources
Is it cheap or expensive?
Fair value $48.40 vs current price $42.90
Wall Street consensus is the average analyst price target: $46.27 (-4.4% lower than our fair-value estimate).
Our most-likely fair value is $48.40 a share — about 12.8% above today's price of $42.90, so the stock currently looks cheap (undervalued).
Is it drowning in debt?
Healthy
Net debt $860.2M. Interest coverage 15.6x.
Net debt
$860.20M
Interest coverage
15.65x
Qiagen N.V.'s profit covers its interest bill about 15.6 times over. which is stronger than most peers shown here.
Healthy
Worse cushion
Baseline
Better cushion
QGEN
BASELINE
Qiagen N.V.
Total debt $1.65B Interest coverage 15.65x This is the baseline the peer rows are being compared against.
Total debt $42.55B Interest coverage 5.72x -63% vs QGEN Carries about 2.7x less debt cushion than QGEN.
Total debt $27.86B Interest coverage 17.70x +13% vs QGEN Has roughly the same debt cushion as QGEN.
Total debt $4.15B Interest coverage 13.21x -16% vs QGEN Carries about 1.2x less debt cushion than QGEN.
Total debt $1.37B Interest coverage 4.46x -71% vs QGEN Carries about 3.5x less debt cushion than QGEN.
What you should know
The case for and against QGEN
3 Rewards
3 Risks
Rewards
-
Revenue grew 5.7% last year.
-
Returns 11.9% on equity, ahead of 40% of its peers.
-
Free cash flow was positive in 10/10 years.
Risks
-
Net debt grew 53.3% over 3 years.
-
Insider ownership is only 0.5% (peer median: 5.6%).
-
Operating margin compressed from 26.9% to 26.3% over 3 years.
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)
21.78x
Forward P/E
16.42x
P/B
2.64x
P/S
4.22x
EV/EBITDA
13.24x
PEG ratio
1.15x
Profitability
How much profit each dollar creates
Gross margin
66.4%
Operating margin
26.3%
Net margin
19.5%
ROE
11.9%
ROA
5.9%
Health
Liquidity and balance-sheet strength
Debt / equity
0.49x
Current ratio
2.85x
Quick ratio
2.05x
Total debt
$1.65B
Total cash
$793.50M
Growth
How the business has been compounding
Revenue TTM
$8.18B
Revenue 5Y CAGR
-1.8%
EPS TTM
1.97
EPS 5Y CAGR
-9.9%
Cash flow
How much cash the business throws off
Operating CF TTM
$2.50B
Free CF TTM
$453.28M
FCF margin
5.5%
Dividend
Shareholder payout
Yield
0.8%
Payout ratio
17.8%
Last ex-div date
2026-07-07