Mixed — $74.2, −12% off 52-wk high, above 50-DMA & just above 200-DMA, RSI 75 (overbought), +1.9% 12-mo (SPY +20.6%)
Conviction
Low (breadth 0) — zero net-bullish voices, zero traceable claims; call rests on fundamentals + quant
Position sizing
Satellite-defensive, ~1.5–3% — a fair-priced steady grower, not a high-conviction anchor
Next catalyst
2026-09-02 Q3 FY26 earnings (Street EPS $1.13)
Single biggest risk
Growth stays low-single-digit while the CooperSurgical fertility-recall litigation / strategic review overhangs the stock
One-line thesis. Cooper is a defensive, low-beta medical-device duopolist (contact lenses + women's health) trading at a reasonable ~15–16× forward non-GAAP earnings after a rough year, but the top line only grows mid-single-digits, returns on capital are mediocre, a fresh $272M litigation charge just landed, and — critically — no Synthos expert voices cover it, so the modest +28% base-case upside is a quant/fundamentals call, not a conviction one.
◆ Synthos call — Buy — TacticalCOO offers ~28% upside to fair value (~$95) with the trend confirming — buy $73–$74, take profits toward $95, and exit on a close below the 200-day (~$73).
Downside Risk (lower = safer)
5/10 · Moderate
Reasonable ~16× forward non-GAAP EPS & 0.87 beta, but 2.7× net-debt/EBITDA, a −35% peak drawdown and a fresh $272M litigation charge.
Growth Quality
5/10 · Moderate
Only ~5% organic revenue & ~9% non-GAAP EPS CAGR; 68% gross margin but ROIC ~2.5% weighed down by acquisition goodwill.
Exponential Potential
3/10 · Low
Mature contact-lens/women's-health duopoly, low-single-digit and decelerating top line — a steady compounder, not an exponential.
◆ Target entry zone$73 – $74accumulate in this band; ideal adds on a dip toward the 200-day average near $73, keeping roughly a 22% margin below our $95 base-case fair value⚖ Reverse-DCF cross-checkMarket-implied growth ≈ 2%/yrTo justify today’s $74, earnings would have to compound roughly 2% a year for 10 years (9% discount rate). Analysts forecast ~9%/yr, so the market is pricing in LESS than what the Street expects.What do the 5 tiers mean? (Core · Tactical · Watch · Hold · Avoid)
Buy — CoreOwn it as a foundation — start or add now, size it for years, let dips be gifts.
Buy — TacticalGood price + confirmed trend + a defined exit — buy the setup, not a marriage.
WatchWe want the business, just not at this price/setup — act only when the listed trigger hits.
HoldFine to keep if you own it — no reason to buy more; new money does better elsewhere.
AvoidDon't own it — the problem is the business or the expectations, so a cheaper price won't fix it.
In plain English
Cooper makes two everyday medical things: contact lenses (CooperVision, two-thirds of sales) and women's-health and fertility products (CooperSurgical, one-third). These are steady, boring, repeat-purchase businesses — people keep buying contacts every month.
The good news: the stock isn't expensive for what it is. After a weak year the price fell, and you're now paying about 15 times next year's adjusted profit for a company that keeps two-thirds of every sales dollar as gross profit. Our verdict is Buy — Tactical: worth owning for a rebound, but keep the position small, because the growth is slow and no expert we track has weighed in on it.
Here's what our three scores mean in everyday terms:
Downside Risk 5/10 (middle). The stock doesn't swing wildly and the price is fair, but the company carries a fair bit of debt and just took a big legal charge over a product recall.
Growth Quality 5/10 (average). A solid, profitable business — but it's only growing about 5% a year, which is ordinary.
Exponential Potential 3/10 (low). This is a mature, two-company market. Expect steady, slow growth, not a rocket.
The one big worry: growth stays stuck in the low single digits while the lawsuit over CooperSurgical's 2023 fertility-media recall — and a "strategic review" of that unit — hangs over the stock.
Solid = price · dashed = 50-day average · dotted = 200-day average · amber = 52-week high/low. Price above both averages is an uptrend.
Bollinger Bands 20-day average ± 2 standard deviations
The shaded band widens when the stock gets more volatile. Riding the upper edge = strong momentum (sometimes stretched); the lower edge = weak / potentially oversold.
Blue crossing above amber (bars flip green) = momentum turning up; below (bars red) = turning down. Bar height = the size of that gap.
Relative performance vs S&P 500 & its sector (XLV (sector)), set to 100 a year ago
Solid = COO · dashed = S&P 500 · dotted = XLV (sector). A rising line means it is beating that benchmark — the sector line shows whether it is a leader or laggard within its own group.
Darker bars = actual results, brighter = analyst estimates. Taller bars to the right = expected growth.
Key stats an RIA wants
Price$74.20
Market cap$14B
P/E trailing3×
P/E FY26E / FY27E16× / 15×
EV / Sales4.0×
EV / EBITDA19.4×
Gross margin64.4%
Net margin5.6%
Dividend yield0.00%
Beta0.873
52-wk range$59 – $84
RSI(14)75
50 / 200-DMA$64 / $73
12-mo return+2% (SPY +21%)
Street target$80 ($61–$98)
Analyst grades16 Buy · 8 Hold · 1 Sell
FMP ratingB
Next earnings2026-08-05
What the experts actually said 0 traceable claims on COO · showing the highest-conviction voices
Every claim reconciles to a real claim_id in the Synthos knowledge base — this is the evidence the verdict is built on, not vibes. Management (the company itself) is shown but half-weighted; one cautionary voice is included on purpose.
1. What it is
The Cooper Companies (Nasdaq: COO) is a ~$14.5B global medical-device firm run through two units. Fiscal year ends October 31.
CooperVision (CVI) — soft contact lenses: spheres, plus higher-margin toric (astigmatism) and multifocal (presbyopia) lenses, and a growing myopia-management franchise (MiSight). This is the crown jewel: a scale player in a global contact-lens oligopoly (with J&J Vision, Alcon, Bausch + Lomb).
CooperSurgical (CSI) — women's and family health: fertility consumables/equipment and genetic testing, plus office/surgical products including the PARAGARD IUD and uterine manipulators.
Revenue mix (FY2025, from filings):
By segment: CooperVision $2.744B (67%) · CooperSurgical $1.349B (33%). Total $4.092B.
By geography: United States $2.733B (67%) · Europe $2.378B (note: FMP's EMEA figure appears to overlap; per the Q2 release CVI Americas + EMEA + APAC split the total) · Rest of world $0.785B. The base is roughly split US / international, with meaningful FX exposure (the Q2 release flagged a −4% currency drag on CVI).
Q2 FY26 detail (from the earnings release): CVI $723.5M (+4% organic), led by toric & multifocal +7%; CSI $358.0M (+6% organic), with fertility +10%.
2. The expert thesis — why the panel is bullish (traceable)
There is no expert coverage of COO in the Synthos knowledge base: total_claims = 0, net-bullish voices = 0. No independent analyst voice we track — bullish or bearish — has said anything reconcilable about this name.
That matters for honesty: this verdict carries no conviction premium. It is built entirely from the reported financials, live analyst consensus estimates (FMP), management's own guidance (half-weighted, §9), and Synthos's quant scoring. Where a name like Eli Lilly earns a "High" conviction rating from 13 reconciled expert voices, Cooper earns "Low (breadth 0)" by construction. Treat the call accordingly: it is a fundamentals-and-valuation judgment, not a crowd-of-experts signal.
3. Synthos scores & the Bull / Base / Bear cases
Three scores, 0–10, each anchored to real metrics (not probabilities we can't honestly calibrate):
Score
0–10
The read
Downside Risk(lower = safer)
5 · Moderate
Forward multiple is reasonable (~16× FY26E non-GAAP) and beta is 0.87, but net-debt/EBITDA is 2.7×, the stock has a −35% max drawdown from its peak, and a fresh $271.6M litigation charge (fertility recall) pushed GAAP Q2 to a loss.
Growth Quality
5 · Average
68% gross margin and recurring demand are attractive, but organic revenue grows only ~5%, non-GAAP EPS CAGR ~9%, and ROIC ~2.5% / ROE ~2.8% are weighed down by ~$5.4B of acquisition goodwill & intangibles.
Exponential Potential
3 · Low
Mature contact-lens/women's-health duopoly; low-single-digit and decelerating top line. A steady compounder, not an exponential — no acceleration, limited room-to-run at scale.
The three cases (our own scenario model — assumptions shown; each target is a ~12–18-month fair value). We deliberately do not attach probabilities. All EPS figures below are non-GAAP (the basis for management's guidance and Street estimates).
Case
Key assumptions
Fair value
Bull
Fertility/myopia reaccelerate, litigation & strategic-review overhang clears, margins expand on synergies. FY28E EPS ~$5.48 earns a re-rating back to ~21–22×.
~$118 (+59%)
Base(our anchor)
Estimates roughly hit — FY27E non-GAAP EPS ~$5.01; a defensive mid-single-digit grower earns a ~19× multiple.
~$95 (+28%)
Bear
Growth stalls near GDP, FX/tariff drag persists, litigation reopens or strategic review disappoints. FY27E EPS misses to ~$4.70; multiple de-rates to ~15×.
~$70 (−6%)
Synthos fair value = the base case, ~$95 (+28%), with the full $70–$118 span as the honest range. This anchor sits above the Street's $80.33 consensus (we think the forward multiple is too depressed for a 68%-gross-margin duopolist) but below the Street high of $98. This is a tracked call — the Forecaster Scorecard grades it once it matures. Given the low conviction (zero expert breadth), size it as a satellite, not an anchor.
4. Exponential Potential
Synthos separates compounders (durable but slow) from exponentials (accelerating multi-baggers). COO is firmly a slow compounder:
Acceleration (2nd derivative) is flat-to-negative: organic revenue growth is running ~4–5% (Q2 FY26 +5% organic) with no inflection in sight; management's own FY26 guide is 3.5–4.5% organic. This is the opposite of the accelerating small-cap profile that scores high here.
Room to run: the global contact-lens market is large but mature and effectively a four-player oligopoly; Cooper is already a scaled incumbent. At $14.5B there is no realistic multibagger runway from category expansion alone — the upside is a valuation re-rate plus steady compounding, not TAM capture.
Optionality: the real growth wedges are myopia management (MiSight — structurally growing as childhood myopia rises) and fertility (+10% organic in Q2). These are the two lines to watch, but neither is large enough yet to move a $4B revenue base into double-digit growth.
Exponential Potential: Low (3/10). Own COO for defensive, mid-single-digit compounding and a possible mean-reversion in the multiple — not for exponential upside.
Margins: gross 64% TTM (68% on a non-GAAP basis); the difference is acquisition-intangible amortization running through COGS. Non-GAAP operating margin was 27% in Q2 FY26, +260 bps YoY on synergies.
The GAAP loss quarter: Q2 FY26 GAAP EPS was −$0.40 — but that is entirely a $271.6M pre-tax litigation charge to resolve the 2023 CooperSurgical fertility-media recall claims. Non-GAAP EPS was $1.21, +26% YoY — the tenth straight quarter of beating consensus. Judge the operating business on the non-GAAP line; judge the balance-sheet/legal risk on the GAAP charge.
Earnings: FY25 GAAP net income $374.9M, EPS $1.88 (note the FY21 EPS of $59.73 is a one-off tax-benefit artifact — ignore it). Non-GAAP FY26 guide is $4.58–$4.66.
Balance sheet: total debt $2.78B, net debt $2.67B, net-debt/EBITDA ~2.7× — investment-grade but more levered than a peer like a debt-free device name. No dividend. ~$861M buyback authorization remains (only $13M repurchased in Q2 — buybacks are minimal).
6. Valuation — priced in or room?
On trailing GAAP numbers COO looks expensive (39× EPS, 19× EV/EBITDA) — but that's distorted by intangible amortization and the litigation charge. The honest lens is forward non-GAAP: at $74.20 the stock trades at ~16× FY26E · ~15× FY27E · ~13× FY29E non-GAAP EPS. For a 68%-gross-margin, low-beta, recurring-revenue duopolist, that is not demanding — it is roughly a market multiple for a below-market grower, which is the crux of the tactical case: the multiple has room to re-rate if growth holds.
EV/EBITDA 19× TTM and EV/S 4.0× are middle-of-the-road for medtech. The bull needs the multiple to normalize back toward COO's historical low-20s forward P/E; the bear says a ~5% grower with 2.7× leverage and a legal overhang deserves only ~15×. Street targets (context): consensus $80.33, median $85.5, high $98, low $61. Our $95 base FV is above consensus because we weight the FY27 earnings power and a modest re-rate; we are not calling it cheap on trailing GAAP.
7. Technicals (from the tech block)
Trend:mixed-to-improving. $74.20 sits above the 50-DMA ($64.27) and just above the 200-DMA ($72.78) — a recovery off the lows, with the 50 now below the 200 (not yet a golden cross). MACD +2.27 (positive).
Location:−12% off the 52-week high ($84.32), +26% off the 52-week low ($58.98). The max drawdown from peak was −35% — this has been a volatile, disappointing year for the stock.
Momentum: RSI(14) 75 — overbought (>70). After a sharp bounce, the near-term entry is stretched; a pullback toward the 200-DMA (~$73) or 50-DMA (~$64) would be a lower-risk add.
Relative strength (the tell): COO +1.9% 12-mo vs SPY +20.6% and QQQ +30.3% — a persistent laggard over the past year. −10% over 6 months while SPY rose. The technicals reflect a name recovering off a bad stretch, not a leadership uptrend.
Read: improving but not confirmed, and overbought short-term. The chart argues for patience on entry rather than chasing.
8. Moat & competitive position
Cooper's moat is scale and consumable recurrence in an oligopoly: contact lenses are a repeat, prescription-anchored purchase, and only four players (J&J Vision, Alcon, Bausch + Lomb, CooperVision) have the manufacturing scale to compete globally. Toric/multifocal and myopia-management (MiSight) are structurally advantaged, higher-value niches. CooperSurgical adds a defensible fertility-consumables and IUD (PARAGARD) franchise. The weaknesses: mediocre returns on capital (ROIC ~2.5%, dragged by goodwill from a deal-heavy history), FX/tariff sensitivity, and the fertility-recall litigation that just cost $272M.
Peer set (FMP-supplied; note these are loosely comparable, not pure contact-lens peers): Hologic $17.0B (women's health — the closest comp), Smith & Nephew $12.8B, Fresenius Medical Care $12.6B, ICON $13.3B, Solventum $13.6B, Neurocrine $17.5B, Universal Health $9.9B, Tempus AI $10.5B, Doximity $4.1B, Summit Therapeutics $12.0B. The truest strategic comps (Alcon, Bausch + Lomb, J&J Vision) are not in this list; against them Cooper is the #2–3 lens player with the strongest myopia-management position.
9. Management, capital allocation & guidance
Capital allocation: organic capex-led (~$362M/yr) plus bolt-on M&A; buybacks are minimal (only $13M in Q2 vs an $861M authorization); no dividend. Net-debt/EBITDA 2.7× is the constraint on more aggressive returns.
Insider activity: the sampled window shows only routine director RSU awards and exempt conversions (Rosebrough, Weiss, Rivas — April 2026), no discretionary open-market buying or alarming selling.
Management's own guidance (half-weighted — their own book): the Q2 FY26 earnings release (filed 2026-06-04) is a real earnings release and gives dated forward guidance. Management updated FY2026 guidance to: total revenue $4.285–$4.321B (organic growth 3.5%–4.5%), CVI $2.883–$2.908B, CSI $1.402–$1.414B, and non-GAAP diluted EPS of $4.58–$4.66. They reaffirmed a cumulative free-cash-flow objective exceeding $2.2B for FY26–FY28. CEO Al White framed the quarter as "record revenue and non-GAAP EPS… tenth consecutive quarter of exceeding consensus," and noted agreements to resolve substantially all fertility-recall claims, "allowing us to move forward with our strategic review" (a signal a CSI transaction/restructuring is under consideration). Treat this as management's self-interested framing, half-weighted.
10. Catalysts & what to watch
Next earnings: 2026-09-02 (Q3 FY26; Street EPS $1.13, revenue ~$1.10B). Watch organic growth vs the 3.5–4.5% guide.
Strategic review of CooperSurgical: management explicitly flagged it — a divestiture, spin, or restructuring of CSI would be the single biggest re-rating catalyst (positive or negative).
Fertility-recall litigation: now largely provisioned ($324M accrued, $52.5M insurance offset), but any reopening is a risk.
Myopia management (MiSight) and fertility momentum: the two real growth wedges — sustained double-digit fertility growth would support the bull case.
FX / tariffs: the Q2 release flagged both; a stronger dollar or new tariffs pressure margins.
Thesis tripwires (what would change the call): organic growth falling below ~3%; non-GAAP margin reversing the synergy gains; leverage rising above ~3× net-debt/EBITDA; or the strategic review resolving value-destructively.
11. Key risks
Slow growth (structural): a mature ~5%-organic category; the multiple only re-rates if growth holds, and there's little to reaccelerate it.
Litigation / recall overhang: the $272M CooperSurgical charge is a reminder of tail legal risk in fertility media; reputational and regulatory follow-on is possible.
Returns on capital: ROIC ~2.5% / ROE ~2.8% — a deal-heavy history has diluted returns; goodwill impairment risk if any acquired line underperforms.
No expert coverage: zero Synthos KB breadth means no independent conviction cross-check — the entire call rests on our own quant/fundamentals read.
FX & tariffs: roughly half the revenue is ex-US; currency and tariff swings move margins quarter to quarter.
12. Verdict, position sizing & monitoring
Buy — Tactical. Cooper is a defensible, low-beta duopolist whose stock has de-rated to a reasonable ~15–16× forward non-GAAP earnings after a bad year, offering ~28% base-case upside on modest multiple normalization plus mid-single-digit compounding. But this is a low-conviction, fundamentals-only call: growth is slow, returns on capital are mediocre, leverage is real, a fresh litigation charge just hit, and no Synthos expert voice covers the name. That combination argues for a tactical, modestly-sized position, not a core holding.
Sizing: satellite-defensive, ~1.5–3%. Because RSI is overbought (75) and the chart is only recovering, prefer to scale in on a pullback toward the 200-DMA (~$73) or 50-DMA (~$64) rather than chase.
Monitoring: re-underwrite on the §10 tripwires; formal re-score each earnings print and on any CooperSurgical strategic-review news. Logged as a tracked Synthos call as of 2026-07-03 at $74.20.
Single biggest risk: growth stays low-single-digit while the CooperSurgical litigation / strategic review overhangs the stock.
Provenance & disclosures
Traceability:0 KB claims, breadth 0 — no expert coverage in the Synthos KB. This is disclosed plainly; the verdict is fundamentals- and quant-driven, and no conviction premium is applied. Fabricated conviction is structurally impossible (claim-ID reconciliation) — and here there are no claims to cite.
Data as-of: fundamentals 2026-04-30 (Q2 FY26) · estimates & prices 2026-07-02/03 · management guidance from the SEC 8-K earnings release filed 2026-06-04. Forward figures are analyst consensus (FMP) or management guidance, labeled as estimates; FY26+ EPS figures are non-GAAP.
Management caveat: COO management guidance is management's own book, half-weighted by design.
Not investment advice. Independent research, educational and informational only, never personalized. Hypothetical/forward figures are labeled; the only performance numbers Synthos will headline are the live, real-money Flagship's.
Version: 2026-07-03. Prior versions available via the deep-dive version dropdown ("based on the info at the time").