Numbers
The Numbers
Cooper is two high-quality franchises — contact lenses (CooperVision) and fertility/women's health (CooperSurgical) — priced like a slowing medtech but still running a premium sticker (P/E 37, EV/EBITDA 15). The numbers confirm a durable gross-margin business with Quality Score 90 and a 20-year revenue CAGR around 13%, but they also show the bill from a decade of levered M&A: ROIC has compressed to about 3.8%, GAAP EPS has gone sideways since FY2019, and FCF/NI conversion has been lumpy (0.7x–1.2x) because capex and acquisition spend keep eating the cash. The single variable most likely to rerate this stock is organic growth at CooperVision reaccelerating back to 7%+ — or, alternatively, JANA Partners' activist push forcing a breakup/merger with Bausch+Lomb that crystallizes the sum-of-the-parts gap.
A. Snapshot
Price ($)
Market Cap ($M)
Quality Score (0–100)
Fair Value ($)
Revenue TTM ($M)
B. Quality scorecard — is this a well-run business?
Two-sentence read. The scorecard is a classic "great business, priced in" signature: Cooper posts top-decile profitability and growth sub-ranks, a comfortable Altman Z of 3.4, and no earnings-manipulation signal on the Beneish M-score. The only soft spot is the balance-sheet sub-rank of 6 — a legacy of Cooper's $2.5B net-debt load from a decade of acquisitions.
C. Revenue and earnings power — 20-year view
Revenue roughly 5x'd from 2006 to 2025 (~9% CAGR) with two visible step-ups — the CooperSurgical expansion through FY2018 and the Cook Medical acquisition in FY2022. Operating margin has held a wide 13–22% band with distortions from amortization of acquired intangibles; FY2021's net margin spike is a one-off tax benefit. The trend most worth knowing: FY2025 operating income dipped about 3% YoY even as revenue grew 5%, signaling operating leverage has flattened.
Recent quarterly trajectory
Organic growth has decelerated from double-digits in FY2023 into the mid-single-digits through FY2025 — the exact slowdown activist Jana Partners flagged when pushing management to re-examine the portfolio. 1Q FY26 nudged back to 6.2%, with CooperVision up about 4% and CooperSurgical up about 6%.
D. Cash generation — are the earnings real?
Operating cash flow has run consistently above GAAP net income (FY2021's net-income spike was a one-off tax benefit; ignore the optical mismatch). The meaningful issue is capex intensity — annual capex climbed from roughly $150M in FY2016 to about $400M through FY2023–24 as Cooper built out lens capacity. FCF/NI has averaged about 1.1x over five years but swung from 0.7x to 1.2x; FY2023's 0.55x FCF/revenue was the tightest period and coincided with the stock's de-rating.
E. Capital allocation — where did the cash go?
Cooper has run a roll-up, not a return-of-capital story. Roughly $4.3B of acquisitions since FY2016 (Cook Medical at $1.6B in FY2022 the biggest swing) dwarfs about $653M of buybacks and only about $24M of dividends — the company eliminated its dividend in FY2024 to consolidate into a 4-for-1 split and opportunistic repurchase. FY2025 marked a visible pivot: $290M of buybacks versus only $11M of M&A, the first year in a decade dominated by return of capital.
F. Balance-sheet health
Net debt sits at about $2.4B against $1.04B of EBITDA — 2.3x, down from a 3x peak after the Cook Medical deal but still the highest leverage inside its peer group. Altman Z of 3.44 and interest coverage of 6.8x both signal safe, not fragile, but leverage is the reason the balance-sheet sub-rank is only 6/10 and the reason dividends remain off the table.
G. Valuation — 20-year self vs today
Current P/E
▲ 34.2 vs 20y mean
Current EV/EBITDA
▲ 17.9 vs 20y mean
Fair Value Gap
This is the critical chart. On P/E Cooper sits roughly in-line with its 20-year and 5-year means (37x), so the stock is not "screening cheap" by headline earnings. The more informative read is EV/EBITDA at 15.4x — roughly 0.4 standard deviations below the 20-year mean of 17.9x and a full 5 turns below the 5-year mean of 20.5x. That is the first time EV/EBITDA has traded under the 20-year average since the 2008–10 GFC window. The disconnect: the market has compressed EBITDA-based valuation while P/E stays elevated because amortization and interest are growing with the debt stack.
H. Peer comparison
Cooper screens cheap only against Alcon and Edwards on EV/EBITDA (15x vs 31x), and it is more diversified than either. The gap to watch is ROIC — Cooper's 3.8% is less than a quarter of what Hologic (15%) and Edwards (20%) earn on capital, because Cooper has put almost $4B into goodwill over the last decade. That is the precise frustration behind the Jana Partners activist campaign: the portfolio is worth more than the sum of its returns.
I. Fair value and scenario
Consensus 12-month analyst target sits around $85 (range $65 Goldman Sachs sell to $100+ at Needham/JP Morgan), and the model Fair Value is $103 for a ~58% upside gap. The bull case does not require operational heroics — it requires the activist-push sum-of-the-parts to be recognized. The bear is that lens market share erosion versus Alcon continues and growth stays in the 3–4% band that typically earns an 11–12x EV/EBITDA.
What to watch
The numbers confirm Cooper is a high-quality duopoly-adjacent medtech: 65% gross margin, 90 Quality Score, Altman Z of 3.4, predictable 4.5-star earnings. The numbers contradict the "contact-lens compounder" narrative — GAAP EPS is flat since FY2019 and ROIC is below WACC at about 3.8% because a decade of acquisitions loaded $3.8B of goodwill onto the books. What to watch next is CooperVision organic growth reaccelerating above 6% (the threshold where it historically earned a premium multiple) and any board response to JANA Partners' ongoing push for portfolio action — either one would reset the EV/EBITDA ceiling.