Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (BMY): what the price assumes

boothcheck covers Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (BMY) but does not put one priced-in number on it: here the defensible answer is the evidence rather than a point estimate. boothcheck publishes no house fair value, target price, or buy/sell rating. Narrative composed 2026-07-25.

Generated: 2026-08-30 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/BMY

Headline

FieldValue
TickerBMY
CompanyBristol-Myers Squibb Company
Sector / IndustryHealthcare
Current price$66.47/sh
CompositionOpdivo 21% / Opdivo Qvantig 0% / Orencia 8% / Yervoy 6% / Reblozyl 5% / Breyanzi 3% / Opdualag 2% / Camzyos 2% / Zeposia 1% / Abecma 1% / Sotyktu 1% / Krazati 0% / Cobenfy 0% / Other Growth products 4% / Eliquis 30% / Revlimid 6% / Pomalyst/Imnovid 6% / Sprycel 1% / Abraxane 1% / Other Legacy products 2%

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.

FieldValue
Inversion basiswhole-company
Operating margin (value-band context)6.4%
Operating margin today24.2%
Margin compression (value-band)-17.8pp
Multiple paid13x operating income

The operating-margin figure is value-band context at year 12: derived from the framework's value band, a separate calculation — not part of the priced-in solve.

The price sits below what even a 5%/yr operating-profit decline would warrant; the inversion reports a bound, not a solved growth path.

Solve inputs: computed at a 7% cost of capital with 4% terminal growth over a 5-year stage (computed at the 7% minimum rate; the CAPM rate 6.6% sits below it).

How unusual the bet is: n/a

ReferenceValue
cohort percentile (of 115 peers)17

Valuation X-Ray

The price is supported by asset-based and relative-multiple and growth-DCF value. A value/asset-supported name, not a pure growth bet.

How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.

FamilyMedian price/FVModelsReads
Asset1.10x4expensive
Earnings1.46x4expensive
Relative0.96x5justifies
Growth0.82x4justifies

Families that justify the price: Asset, Relative, Growth

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 7.1%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=17)

ModelFamilyFVPrice/FVApplicableMethodology
DCF Perpetual GrowthGrowth$120.730.55xyesFCF base $11.4B, growth 3% (input: historical growth), terminal g 3.1%, WACC 7.1%, 5yr projection
DCF Exit MultipleGrowth$73.500.90xyesExit EV/EBITDA: 46.5x / 48.5x / 50.5x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull), 5yr
Relative ValuationRelative$69.550.96xyesP/E 24x (static sector reference · 2026-04), scenarios: 20.2x / 24.0x / 27.8x (bear / base = reference held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA 25.74x
Simple DDMGrowthno
Two-Stage DDMGrowth$89.370.74xyesStage 1: 20% for 5yr, Stage 2: 3.5% perpetual
Simple Excess ReturnAsset$49.121.35xyesBV/sh $10.93, ROE (TTM) 41.6%, ke 9.3%
Two-Stage Excess ReturnAsset$117.390.57xyes5yr excess ROE then converge to ke=9.3%
Discounted Future Market CapGrowth$47.671.39xyesRev $49.2B, growth 3% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 2.3x / 2.8x / 3.2x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 8x)
Peter Lynch Fair ValueRelative$54.601.22xyesEPS $4.55, growth 2% (input: historical EPS growth), PEG=7.32 (Overvalued)
Margin TrajectoryGrowthno
Earnings Power ValueEarningsno
Residual IncomeAsset$78.110.85xyesBV $10.93 + 5yr PV of (ROE (TTM) 41.6% − Kₑ 9.3%) × BV; BV grows 8.8%/yr
Graham NumberAsset$33.441.99xyes√(22.5 × EPS $4.55 × BVPS $10.93) — Graham's conservative floor
EV/EBITDA RelativeRelative$9.786.80xyesEBITDA $3.57B × sector EV/EBITDA 16.0x
FCF YieldEarnings$42.381.57xyesFCF $11440.0M / Kₑ 9.3% — zero-growth perpetuity
SBC-Adj FCF YieldEarnings$39.461.68xyesSBC-adj FCF $10.89B (FCF $11.44B − SBC $0.55B) capitalized at Kₑ
Ben Graham FormulaEarnings$146.810.45xyesEPS $4.55 × (8.5 + 2×15.0%) × (4.4 / 5.3%)
ROIC-Justified P/BAssetno
P/Sales SectorRelative$96.310.69xyesRevenue $49.19B × sector P/S 4.0x
PEG Fair ValueRelative$170.630.39xyesEPS $4.55 × (PEG 1.5 × growth 25.0% (input: historical EPS growth)) → PE 37.5x
Earnings YieldEarnings$49.191.35xyesEPS $4.55 / required return 9.3% (Rf 4.3% + ERP 5.0%)
Funds From Operations MultipleRelativeno
Clinical Phase NPVGrowthno
MertonAssetno
V5 Mechanicalno

Economic-Unit Decomposition (Sum Of The Parts)

Only one reportable economic unit is present in the current topology source. Consolidated operating lenses remain available, but there is no multi-unit decomposition.

UnitRoleValuation basisRevenueReported profitValue evidenceStatus
Bristol-Myers Squibb (consolidated)operatingenterprise48.2B reported-currencywithheldunresolved no unit value

No total common-equity value is stated. One or more material units lack a supported unit value. The displayed values are an indicative subtotal; consolidated debt and cash cannot be applied to a fraction of the company.

Solvency

FieldValue
Net debt$32.8b
Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax)3.40x
Net debt / operating income (pre-tax)2.76x
Interest coverage6.9x
Share count CAGR (buyback)-1.2%
Burning cashno

Bullet Takeaways

Bull Case

The moat here shows up in a ratio most investors skip past. Bristol-Myers Squibb earns a return on its book equity above 36%, and it does so because the assets producing the profit are patents, approvals and clinical data rather than factories. Book value is under ten dollars a share against a share price above sixty. A company that converts that little accounting capital into roughly 11.9 billion dollars of annual free cash flow is not winning on cost or on scale. It is collecting rent on molecules nobody else is permitted to sell.

What produces the rent is a portfolio of twenty named products, and the shape of it is more interesting than the headline. Eliquis is the largest line at 30% of revenue, and it is still growing: per the annual filing, U.S. revenues rose 6% in 2025 on higher demand while international revenues rose 14%, or 9% excluding currency effects. Opdivo, the immuno-oncology franchise, is 21%. Yervoy, its usual combination partner, is 6%, and the filing reports its U.S. revenues up 14% in 2025 on both higher demand and higher average net selling prices. These are not products in freefall.

The split that decides the next five years is between what the company calls legacy and what it calls growth. Roughly 46% of revenue is legacy, dominated by Eliquis with Revlimid and Pomalyst behind it. Roughly 54% is the growth portfolio: Opdivo and Opdivo Qvantig, Orencia, Yervoy, Reblozyl, Breyanzi, Opdualag, Camzyos, Zeposia, Abecma, Sotyktu, Krazati and Cobenfy. The market has priced the legacy decay as certain and the growth replacement as speculative. That is the standard treatment for a large pharmaceutical company approaching a patent cliff, and it is right often enough to be a reasonable default. It is not right always, and the price offers no compensation for being wrong in the other direction.

Cash does reach shareholders rather than accumulating. The share count has fallen about 1.4% a year across the four years to March 2026, which is buyback deployment showing up in the one place it cannot be faked. The board declared a quarterly dividend of 63 cents a share on June 17, 2026, payable on August 3 to holders of record as of July 2. Free cash flow near 11.9 billion dollars covers that several times over and still leaves capacity to retire borrowings.

Management's forecasting record is also unusually clean for this industry. Since 2006 it has raised guidance on 31 separate occasions, cut it on 2, reaffirmed it on 17, and initiated new guidance on 2. A management team that has lowered its own numbers twice in twenty years is not one that habitually surprises owners badly, and in a sector where the central uncertainty is timing rather than direction, that record is worth something concrete.

Finally, the entry point asks for very little. At roughly 13.4 times company-wide operating income, the multiple already embeds contraction rather than expansion, on the order of five percent a year in operating profit. The bull case therefore does not need growth at all. It needs the decline to be slower than the market has already concluded it will be, and the filing's own 2025 product-level numbers are not the numbers of a portfolio decaying on that schedule.

Bear Case

Look first at who is across the table. AMGN, GILD, MRK, PFE and ABBV all chase the same oncology and immunology prescribers, and several are pulling away. AMGN grew revenue 9.1% over the trailing year on a base of 37.2 billion dollars. ABBV grew 9.5% on 62.8 billion. GILD grew 3.5% on 29.7 billion. BMY sits on a base of 48.5 billion that has been close to flat, which is precisely what the forward valuation inputs assume when they carry a 2% historical rate forward. In a sector where the scoreboard is new approvals, being the company whose revenue does not move is a competitive statement in itself.

The company does not argue with the pressure. Of immuno-oncology, where Opdivo represents 21% of revenue, its own 10-K states that "we anticipate that our IO products will continue to experience intense competition" as new agents win approval and as combination regimens expand into more indications. Opdivo is defending a category it helped create rather than opening a new one, and defending in oncology means matching every competitor's combination trial with one of your own.

Underneath that sits the structural exposure, stated by the filing as a risk-factor heading: "We depend on several key products for most of our revenues, cash flows and earnings." The arithmetic is unforgiving. One product, Eliquis, is 30% of the total. And Eliquis carries a policy exposure the filing describes with unusual precision, warning that a negotiated price "could be renegotiated. This could, among other things, accelerate revenue erosion prior to expiry of intellectual property protections." Erosion arriving before the patent expires is the part of the cliff that models handle worst, because patent calendars are public and negotiated outcomes are not.

Borrowings turn a timing problem into a financing problem. The balance sheet carries net debt near 36 billion dollars, with about 46 billion of gross borrowings set against roughly 10.5 billion of liquid assets. Interest is covered about 5.9 times over, which is adequate rather than generous for a business whose largest product faces a defined expiry. A company with no borrowings can simply wait out a patent cliff and let the pipeline mature. A company owing that much has to refinance through it, and refinancing terms are set by lenders reading the same patent calendar everyone else reads.

There is a floor under the downside, and it is honest to name its size. Beyond the drug portfolio the company holds roughly 1.9 billion dollars of equity stakes that sit outside operating value, about 1.5% of the market capitalisation, which works out to a little under a dollar a share. That bounds the bear case at something above zero. It does not move it.

The cheapness is the bear's evidence, not its refutation. A price that concedes a five percent annual contraction and then discounts it further has already reached its verdict. Owning it is a wager on the rate of decay rather than on any growth. Two of the four families of method are already stretched at today's level: the earnings-power lenses leave a premium near 46% and the asset-based lenses near 32%, both because they capitalize what exists today and credit nothing to a pipeline. If the growth portfolio does not replace legacy revenue on schedule, the frames that look conservative now will turn out to have been the optimistic ones.

Valuation

Most reports on a large pharmaceutical company spend their space explaining a premium. This one has to explain a discount. The market pays about 13.4 times company-wide operating income for Bristol-Myers Squibb, and running that backwards does not yield a growth requirement at all. It yields a bound instead. Model the company as shrinking by roughly five percent a year in operating profit and the value that falls out still lands above what buyers are paying today. The price has conceded contraction and then discounted it further. That is a description of what has been assumed, not a forecast of what will happen.

How unusual is such an assumption? Not very, which is itself the useful finding. Measured against the company's own record, the pace embedded in the price is inside what it has recently delivered. Measured against the wider set of comparable pharmaceutical names, the multiple sits in the lower half of the range. The embedded assumption reads as broadly consistent with plausible outcomes. For a company priced as though it were shrinking, that is the single most important thing on the page.

The methods disagree, and for once they do not all point one way. The forward cash-flow approaches land above today's price, and they reach there on modest inputs: a free cash flow base near 11.9 billion dollars carried forward at about 2% annual expansion, with a terminal rate set lower still. That is not an aggressive projection by any reading. Peer-multiple approaches land beside the price, leaving a premium around 11%, built off a static sector reference in the mid-twenties on earnings. The earnings-power lenses leave a premium near 46% and the asset-based lenses near 32%, both of which capitalize what the company earns and owns today while crediting nothing to what is in development. When the forward frames sit above the price and the comparable frames sit beside it, the argument among the methods is about how quickly the legacy products fade, not about whether the business earns money.

Two filing-sourced inputs carry most of the weight underneath all of that. The first is the revenue mix. Eliquis at 30% of sales is the largest single line, and per the annual filing its U.S. revenues rose 6% in 2025 on higher demand with international revenues up 14%, or 9% excluding currency. Roughly 46% of revenue sits in the products the company classifies as legacy and roughly 54% in the growth portfolio. The second is the concentration disclosure itself: "We depend on several key products for most of our revenues, cash flows and earnings." Those two facts together are what the price is actually arguing about.

The balance sheet decides how much time that argument gets. Net debt runs near 36 billion dollars against liquid assets of roughly 10.5 billion, with interest covered about 5.9 times over. The share count has fallen about 1.4% a year across four years, so the cash has been going to owners and lenders rather than into dilution. Separately, the company holds around 1.9 billion dollars of equity stakes outside the operating segments, roughly 1.5% of market value. None of that is a valuation of anything. It is the measure of how long a company priced for decline can afford to be wrong about when the decline arrives.

Catalysts

The next scheduled information event is close. Bristol Myers Squibb reports second-quarter 2026 results on the morning of July 30, 2026, with management reviewing them on a call beginning at 8:15 a.m. Eastern. The line to watch is not the headline total but its composition: whether growth-portfolio products are adding revenue faster than the legacy products are losing it. That single comparison is what the current multiple is disputing.

Capital return is already fixed for the quarter. The board declared a quarterly dividend of 63 cents a share on June 17, 2026, payable on August 3, 2026 to shareholders of record as of July 2. Alongside that, the share count has continued to shrink, falling about 1.4% a year across the four years to March 2026, so the per-share effect of any given quarter's earnings is being quietly amplified.

The slower-moving catalyst is policy, and it is disclosed rather than speculative. The annual filing warns that a negotiated price for a previously selected product "could be renegotiated. This could, among other things, accelerate revenue erosion prior to expiry of intellectual property protections." For a portfolio where one product is 30% of revenue, the practical consequence is that the erosion schedule may be set by a negotiation calendar rather than by a patent calendar. Investors watching the patent dates alone are watching the wrong document.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Bristol-Myers Squibb (consolidated) (reported)

Methodology Note

Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.

Sources

BMS press release, June 18, 2026 · BMS dividend declaration, June 17, 2026

View the full interactive BMY report on boothcheck