Illumina
Makes the machines that read DNA letter by letter, and the single-use chemicals every run consumes; the chemicals are three-quarters of its sales.
Our viewUnattractive Medium conviction
The scores
The profile · 1-4
Growth3/4 ↑
Growing three quarters, not three years, and 2.1 of Q2's 9.5 points were bought. Clinical demand is real; the group rate is not compounding yet.
Business quality3/4 →
A rival sold it his short-read patents rather than fight. But Roche launched ten weeks ago, with a diagnostics franchise behind it.
Financial position3/4 →
Net debt of $823M, under one year of free cash flow, with a $1.0B undrawn revolver behind it. Not net cash, so not Self-funding.
Execution record3/4 ↑
Eight beats in nine quarters and guidance raised twice this year, but the same board oversaw GRAIL's $1.89B impairment and forced divestiture.
Per share capture4/4 →
Share count down about 2.5% a year, both acquisitions paid in cash, no convertible, no issuance and no financing need at any milestone.
Potential2/4 →
A bigger version of today, resting on instruments placed but not yet pulling reagents, and on a testing rate laboratories and payers decide.
Risk profile3/4 →
Three live dependencies: one region carrying the growth, US research funding, China's blacklist. None resolves in a single step inside the horizon.
Valuation2/4 ↓
At 29.5 times guided operating profit and still 23.0 times the 2030 estimate, the plan must work and then keep working for four more years.
Evidence quality3/4 →
Filings, a rival's 10-K, a counterparty's 8-K and Form 4s read from raw XML. But the clinical mix figures exist only in management's spoken remarks.
The Verdict
We rate Illumina unattractive. Its machines read DNA, and every run uses chemicals only Illumina sells; its sequencers are the standard for genetic testing, so the business is solid. Sales are growing again, led by hospitals using sequencing to choose cancer treatments, but the recovery is narrower than it looks: about a third of the headline growth was an acquisition and currency, research demand is shrinking, China is closed and Roche has launched a rival. The price is full, not cheap: it assumes the recovery lasts for years, so a stall would hurt. The view hinges on hospital growth holding while margins rise.
The long caseHospitals are using DNA sequencing in routine care, starting with choosing cancer treatments; Illumina gains on every test only if that clinical use keeps growing fast enough.
The evidence under this - 8 claims
C01facthigh confidence
Consumables were 74% of Illumina's consolidated revenue in 2025, against 11% for instruments and 15% for services and other.
C05management claimmedium confidence
Clinical markets are about 65% of sequencing consumables revenue, and clinical sequencing consumables grew 15% excluding China in Q2 2026, down from more than 20% in Q1 2026.
against this
- The figure exists only in management's spoken remarks. Neither the 10-Q nor the results release splits consumables into clinical and research, so nothing outside the call can check it.
- Growth decelerated from above 20% to 15% in a single quarter, and management attributed it to the Middle East and Latin America rather than to the United States, which is an explanation that cannot be verified from the regional table because those two are inside one reported region.
- An analyst on the same call put the opposite reading directly to management: that running NovaSeq 6000 and NovaSeq X in parallel means Illumina is over-earning on consumables until the older machines are decommissioned. Management did not quantify the overlap.
C02facthigh confidence
Q2 2026 revenue was $1,159M, up 9.5% on the $1,059M of Q2 2025.
C03facthigh confidence
Of that 9.5%, acquisitions contributed 2.1 points and currency 0.9, leaving organic growth of 6.5%; the 8.1% management leads with is reached only by also excluding Greater China.
C06management claimmedium confidence
Research and applied sequencing consumables declined 7% on a rest-of-world basis in Q2 2026, and management expects mid to high single-digit declines for the full year.
against this
- The figure exists only in management's spoken remarks; neither the 10-Q nor the release splits consumables between research and clinical, so the decline cannot be checked or sized from any filing.
- Management said funding-release activity and quoting improved in the latter part of the quarter and that research consumables grew 9% sequentially, which is the opposite direction from the year-on-year figure and is the number a bull would quote.
- The guidance for mid to high single-digit declines was set at the start of the year and has not been improved despite that sequential move, so the company may be holding a conservative number it now expects to beat - which makes the decline a guidance artefact rather than a demand reading.
C24facthigh confidence
Greater China revenue was $243M in 2025 and fell $65M over the year after Illumina was added to China's List of Unreliable Entities on 4 February 2025; it was $56M in Q2 2026 and $108M in H1 2026 against $135M a year earlier.
C19estimatehigh confidence
At $206.45 the enterprise value of $32.06B is 29.5 times guided 2026 non-GAAP operating profit, and the shares are 38.6 times the $5.35 midpoint of guided non-GAAP earnings per share, 29.4 times the 2028 consensus estimate and 23.0 times the 2030 estimate.
derivedMarket capitalisation $31.24B from the research pack at the 11 September 2026 close of $206.45, plus net debt of $823M (term debt $1,991M less cash and short-term investments of $1,168M, both from the Q2 2026 balance sheet). Guided non-GAAP operating profit of $1,086M is the midpoint of the company's own revenue and margin ranges. The 2028 and 2030 earnings estimates of $7.02 and $8.96 are the vendor's analyst panel, seven and two contributors respectively.
against this
- The 2030 estimate rests on two analysts, which is a thin panel to hang a terminal multiple on, and the 2028 estimate on seven.
- A recurring consumables stream at a 66% gross margin with an installed base that takes years to displace is worth more than a cyclical industrial's earnings, so a comparison against a market multiple understates what the annuity deserves.
- Free cash flow of $931M over the last twelve months is close to guided non-GAAP operating profit, so the earnings are cash rather than accrual, which supports a higher multiple than a company where they are not.
C35factmedium confidence
The vendor's analyst panel carries 1 Strong Buy and 26 Buy against 17 Hold and 6 Sell, and short interest was 6.58% of float at the 31 August 2026 settlement, up from 4.53% at 15 June.
The company
A cancer panel, a prenatal screen or a rare-disease test that reads DNA letter by letter needs a sequencer, and in cancer care it replaced ordering one single-gene test after another.
Illumina sells the instrument once and then the chemicals and glass slides it consumes on every run. In 2025 those consumables were 74% of sales, instruments 11% and service the rest. The buyers are hospital, commercial and research laboratories.
The evidence under this - 1 claim
C01facthigh confidence
Consumables were 74% of Illumina's consolidated revenue in 2025, against 11% for instruments and 15% for services and other.
How it makes money
Razor and blades. A laboratory buys the machine once, then orders chemicals run by run for as long as it runs its tests. There is no contract and no minimum order, so the stream is a habit rather than an obligation, and no customer is more than 10% of sales.
The evidence under this - 2 claims
C01facthigh confidence
Consumables were 74% of Illumina's consolidated revenue in 2025, against 11% for instruments and 15% for services and other.
C25facthigh confidence
No customer accounted for more than 10% of Illumina's consolidated revenue in 2025, 2024 or 2023, and shipments outside the United States were 48% of revenue in each of those years.
Where the money comes from, stream by stream
| Stream | Share of sales (H1 2026) | How it earns it |
|---|---|---|
| Sequencing consumables | 66.6% | Reagent kits and flow cells each installed sequencer uses up on every run, reordered for as long as it runs. |
| Sequencing service and other | 13.6% | Instrument service contracts, sequencing services and development and licensing agreements. |
| Sequencing instruments | 10.8% | NovaSeq X and smaller sequencers, sold once, which create the consumables demand that follows. |
| Microarrays | 9.0% | Genotyping chips, scanners and services, mostly for consumer genomics and agricultural and research genotyping. |
Who runs it
Jacob Thaysen, who ran Agilent's life-science tools business, became chief executive in September 2023; Ankur Dhingra has run finance since 2024. They spun GRAIL out and returned the company to growth, but 2025 fell short of their own bonus targets. Insiders now own under 1%, since director Keith Meister sold most of his funds' stake. Half the bonus rides on sales and half on operating profit; most share awards on margins and on the stock against biotech peers, none on cash.
The evidence under this - 6 claims
C44facthigh confidence
Jacob Thaysen has been chief executive since September 2023, after running Agilent's Life Sciences and Applied Markets group from 2018; Ankur Dhingra joined as chief financial officer in 2024 from Summit Therapeutics and CareDx; Steve Barnard, at Illumina since 1998, has been chief technology officer since 2023.
C47facthigh confidence
The fiscal 2025 cash bonus paid half on revenue and half on non-GAAP operating income and paid 77% of target, revenue of $4,356M and non-GAAP operating income of $1,298M against targets of $4,410M and $1,367M. About 70% of executive equity is PSUs earning 0% to 250% on three-year average operating margin and three-year shareholder return against selected Nasdaq Biotechnology Index companies; the rest is RSUs vesting over four years.
C46estimatemedium confidence
Netting Meister's 3,059,258 shares sold between May and September 2026 against the proxy's group total leaves directors and executive officers with about 1.39M shares, roughly 0.9% of the company.
C45facthigh confidence
At 26 March 2026 the 19 directors and executive officers as a group owned 4,450,125 shares, 2.9% of 151,906,915 outstanding, of which director Keith Meister's 4,202,657 (2.8%, mostly the Corvex funds) were nearly all; Thaysen held 40,313. Capital World Investors (13.3%), BlackRock (11.9%) and Vanguard (10.5%) were the only holders above 5%.
C23facthigh confidence
Keith Meister, a serving director, sold 3,059,258 shares for about $591M between 13 May and 4 September 2026 at prices from $144.13 to $231.23, cutting the Corvex funds' holding from 3,829,508 shares to 770,350.
sourceForm 4, Keith A. Meister (director), filed 4 September 2026,…primaryResearch pack, ILMN, 12 September 2026secondary
against this
- The shares are held by private investment funds for which Corvex Management is the adviser, so the sales may be fund-level portfolio management, redemptions or risk limits rather than a view on Illumina - the Form 4 footnotes say Meister disclaims beneficial ownership except to the extent of his pecuniary interest.
- Corvex has held the position since 2023 and a position that has roughly doubled will breach concentration limits mechanically; selling into the strength it campaigned for is what a successful activist exit looks like.
- Two directors bought in the open market in the same twelve-month window - Scott Gottlieb, 500 shares at $122.13 and 200 at $117.81 - so the board is not uniformly selling, although the amounts are trivial beside the sales.
C50facthigh confidence
Illumina completed the spin-off of GRAIL on 24 June 2024, distributing about 85.5% of its shares; because the disposal did not qualify as a discontinued operation, Illumina's reported results until then include GRAIL's.
Why it wins, and who could beat it
Why customers come back
A hospital laboratory does not just buy a sequencer; it proves each test works on one machine's chemistry, with reference samples, accuracy runs and paperwork. Moving to a rival means doing all of it again while patients wait, so the chemical orders stay.
The trace: about 83% of sequencing volume has moved onto Illumina's newest machine, re-qualified inside its own range rather than elsewhere, and Pacific Biosciences sold Illumina its short-read patents for $50.0M instead of competing.
The evidence under this - 3 claims
C08inferencemedium confidence
A clinical laboratory validates one assay on one sequencing platform and the cost of revalidating it elsewhere is what keeps the reagent order in place.
derivedIllumina's own 10-K states that 'customers in our markets display a significant amount of loyalty to their initial supplier of a particular product'. Pacific Biosciences sold Illumina its short-read intellectual property rather than compete for that installed base. About 78% of clinical volume migrated within the Illumina estate to NovaSeq X rather than out of it. The mechanism connecting those three is validation cost.
against this
- Illumina's own sentence about supplier loyalty is a self-serving statement in a risk factor, and it is written the other way round - as a reason Illumina finds it hard to win customers who bought from a competitor.
- The same 10-K concedes that Illumina has 'experienced lengthened sales cycles with many customers due to competition' and 'increased pricing pressure from competitors who offer sequencing products', which is what a weakening switching cost looks like from inside.
- Roche launched AXELIOS 1 with Broad Clinical Labs and the Hartwig Medical Foundation named as collaborators - exactly the high-volume institutions whose validation work would be the precedent others cite.
C09management claimmedium confidence
By Q2 2026 about 83% of sequencing volume and 59% of sequencing revenue had moved onto NovaSeq X, with roughly 78% of clinical volume converted.
against this
- No filing carries a platform mix, so the conversion percentages cannot be checked at all - and they are the numbers that decide whether the consumables base is over-earning or under-earning today.
- The company sold more than 10 NovaSeq 6000 units in the same quarter and management said customers 'plan to remain on that platform for years to come', which is inconsistent with a migration that is 83% done and near its end.
- An analyst put the direct consequence to management: if 6000 and X run in parallel and the 6000s are later decommissioned, the current consumables run-rate is inflated. Management called it 'a standard part of the business' and quantified nothing.
C12facthigh confidence
Pacific Biosciences sold its short-read sequencing, clustering, reagent and detection intellectual property to Illumina Cambridge for $50.0M in cash on 30 January 2026.
The threat
Roche launched its first sequencer, AXELIOS 1, in June, labelled for research only and not yet for diagnosis. Element Biosciences promises a $100 whole genome later this year. And in China, after Illumina was put on an unreliable-entities list in February 2025, local supplier MGI took over: Illumina's first-half China sales fell from $135M to $108M.
The evidence under this - 4 claims
C10facthigh confidence
Roche launched AXELIOS 1, its first sequencing-by-expansion platform, on 29 June 2026, labelled for research use only and not for use in diagnostic procedures.
against this
- Research-use-only is a starting position, not a ceiling. Roche's own release says it 'intends to establish SBX as the gold standard for diagnostics and stratification in personalised medicine' in the medium term, and Roche is the largest in-vitro diagnostics company in the world, so it has the regulatory apparatus Illumina's other challengers lack.
- It launched with Broad Clinical Labs and the Hartwig Medical Foundation, which are among the highest-volume sequencing institutions in the world, not with small academic sites.
- Illumina's Q2 2026 call, held four weeks after the launch, did not mention Roche once; an analyst raised it only obliquely, asking whether the instrument order surge reflected 'the market waiting for a more competitive information'.
C11management claimlow confidence
Element Biosciences states that its VITARI platform will be available in the second half of 2026 and enables a $100 whole genome with more than 90% of bases at Q30 quality.
against this
- Element Biosciences is private, files nothing, and this is its own marketing specification - the weakest source type in the whole manifest, and a $100 genome claim is precisely the kind of figure a challenger has every incentive to state on its best case.
- 'Will be available in H2 of 2026' is a forward statement from a company that has moved launch dates before; the same page still lists AVITI and AVITI24, so VITARI is not yet what it sells.
- A headline price per genome is not a cost per gigabase in a clinical workflow, which also carries library preparation, instrument depreciation, service and the validation the laboratory has already paid for on another platform.
C13facthigh confidence
Pacific Biosciences' annual report names eleven companies offering nucleic acid sequencing equipment or consumables, including Illumina, BGI Genomics, Thermo Fisher, Oxford Nanopore, Roche, Qiagen, Element Biosciences, Ultima Genomics and Singular.
C24facthigh confidence
Greater China revenue was $243M in 2025 and fell $65M over the year after Illumina was added to China's List of Unreliable Entities on 4 February 2025; it was $56M in Q2 2026 and $108M in H1 2026 against $135M a year earlier.
The rivals: all private, in-house or listed abroad.
Who else does this, rival by rival
| Ticker | Rival | How far along | Priced against it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roche AXELIOS 1Priced against it: Listed abroad | On sale | Listed abroad | |
| Private | Element Biosciences VITARIPriced against it: Private | Announced | Private |
| Not listed | MGI / Complete Genomics, the sequencing arm of BGI GenomicsPriced against it: Not listed | On sale | Not listed |
How big it could get
How big this could get
Take cancer, the biggest clinical use. About 2.11 million Americans will be diagnosed in 2026. Among patients with advanced cancer, between 34.5% and 62.9% were sequenced after diagnosis depending on the cancer, and the share rose for every type studied.
The two numbers do not multiply into a market: nobody publishes how many new diagnoses are advanced.
The evidence under this - 2 claims
C26facthigh confidence
An estimated 2,114,850 new cancer cases will be diagnosed in the United States in 2026, and 18,640,213 people were living with cancer there in 2023.
C27facthigh confidence
Among 63,294 US patients diagnosed with advanced or metastatic cancer between 2018 and 2022, sequencing after diagnosis ranged from 34.5% in metastatic breast cancer to 62.9% in metastatic colorectal cancer, and rose for 2022 diagnoses against 2018 across every cancer type studied.
against this
- The cohort ends in 2022, so it cannot say what the rate is in 2026 - it establishes the direction and a historic level, not today's penetration.
- The study's own finding is that low socioeconomic status, Black race or Hispanic ethnicity, and Medicaid or Medicare coverage are associated with significantly longer time to sequencing, which means the untested remainder is concentrated in the patients hardest and least profitable to reach.
- A high existing penetration rate cuts both ways for a supplier: the closer the rate is to 63%, the less first-line volume is left to win, and the growth has to come from repeat testing instead.
Where the growth is coming from, business by business
Where the growth is coming from
| Business | Share of revenue | Growth: last quarter | Last half-year | Last year | Share in 3 years at its half-year rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sequencing | 91% | +8.4% | +6.8% | +2.7% | 90% |
| Microarray | 9% | +20.7% | +11.0% | +4.1% | 10% |
| Whole company | 100% | +9.4% | +7.1% | +2.8% | 100% |
On the filed split through 2026-06-28, if each business keeps its last half-year's growth, the company grows about 7% next year and 7% in year 3, against 4.9% over the last twelve months. A scenario, not a forecast: no business holds its rate.
The results
The numbers
Is it growing?Slow
Sales grew 4.9% over the twelve months to Jun 2026, faster than the −0.7% in the year to Dec 2025.
Is it profitable?Healthy
Operating margin is 20%, up from −24% in the year to Dec 2023.
Does growth pay off?Unclear
Running costs take 47¢ of each sales dollar, down from 72¢ in the year to Jan 2022.
Does it earn good returns?Strong
Each dollar put into the business earns 28% a year after tax, up from −1.3% in the year to Jan 2022.
Is it making cash?Strong
It turned 21% of sales into free cash, $931M over the last twelve months.
How steady is it?Swingy
Yearly sales growth has ranged from −2.9% to +40% over the last 5 years, with sales falling in 3 of them.
Are shares being diluted?Stable
The share count rose 1.3% in 4.5 years, and pay in shares costs 5.9% of sales.
All the numbers
Filed figures from the company's 10-K and 10-Q, read 2026-10-04. Fiscal years end in December.
| Jan 2022 | Jan 2023 | Dec 2023 | Dec 2024 | Dec 2025 | 12 mo to Jun 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Size and growth | ||||||
| Sales | $4.53B | $4.58B | $4.50B | $4.37B | $4.34B | $4.49B |
| Sales growth | +40% | +1.3% | −1.7% | −2.9% | −0.7% | +4.9% |
| Profit | ||||||
| Gross margin | 70% | 65% | 61% | 65% | 66% | 66% |
| Operating margin | −2.7% | −91% | −24% | −19% | 19% | 20% |
| Net margin | 17% | −96% | −26% | −28% | 20% | 18% |
| What growth costs, per sales dollar | ||||||
| Research and development | 26% | 29% | 30% | 27% | 22% | 21% |
| Selling, general and admin | 46% | 28% | 36% | 25% | 25% | 25% |
| Pay in shares | 21% | 8.0% | 8.4% | 8.5% | 6.3% | 5.9% |
| Capital spending | 4.6% | 6.2% | 4.3% | 2.9% | 3.4% | 3.6% |
| Cash | ||||||
| Cash from operations | $545M | $392M | $478M | $837M | $1.08B | $1.09B |
| Free cash flow | $337M | $106M | $283M | $709M | $931M | $931M |
| Balance sheet | ||||||
| Debt | $0 | - | - | - | - | - |
| Returns and shares | ||||||
| Return on capital | −1.3% | - | - | - | 25% | 28% |
| Shares (diluted) | 151M | 157M | 158M | 159M | 156M | 153M |
What growth costs
For years sales barely moved, so the recovery in profit came from cutting costs, mostly by letting GRAIL go, not from growth spreading fixed costs over more sales. The first real stretch of growth, this year, came with a thinner margin. Whether growing makes Illumina more profitable has not been tested yet.
The evidence under this - 3 claims
C49facthigh confidence
Per sales dollar, R&D was 21.1 cents in the year to January 2021, peaked at 30.1 in the year to December 2023 and was 22.3 in fiscal 2025 and 21.4 over the four quarters to June 2026; selling, general and administrative went 29.1, 35.8, 25.0 and 25.2, and stock pay 6.0, 8.4, 6.3 and 5.9, while revenue was $4,526M in the year to January 2022 and $4,343M in fiscal 2025.
sourceIllumina Form 10-K, fiscal year ended 28 December 2025primaryIllumina Form 10-Q, quarter ended 28 June 2026primary
against this
- Those years carry GRAIL's costs from August 2021 to June 2024, which were never restated as discontinued (C50), so most of the fall is GRAIL leaving rather than Illumina's own spending getting leaner.
- In Q2 2026, the first quarter of real growth, non-GAAP operating margin fell to 22.5% from 23.8% (C18).
C50facthigh confidence
Illumina completed the spin-off of GRAIL on 24 June 2024, distributing about 85.5% of its shares; because the disposal did not qualify as a discontinued operation, Illumina's reported results until then include GRAIL's.
C18facthigh confidence
Q2 2026 non-GAAP operating margin was 22.5% against 23.8% in Q2 2025, and non-GAAP gross margin 68.2% against 69.4%, even as revenue rose 9.5%.
The last report (30 Jul)
Quarter ended June 2026, filed figures.
9%
Sales growth
against the same quarter a year earlier
6.1%
Growth from the quarter before
against -5.8% the quarter before that
21¢
Operating profit
per dollar of sales
The second quarter of 2026 looked like a return to form: sales up 9.5% to $1.16B. Without an acquisition and currency, growth was 6.5%. Hospital sequencing chemicals grew 15% outside China, down from more than 20% in the first quarter, while research chemicals fell 7%.
Profit went the other way: operating margin on the company's adjusted measure slipped to 22.5% from 23.8%. The bright spot was more than 95 new top-end machines placed, against a plan of 50 to 60, which is future chemical sales.
What it did to the thesisIt supported the view that the speed-up is narrower than it looks. Growth shrank once an acquisition and currency were removed, the hospital business slowed and margins fell. The many new machines placed are the open question, since they could lift future sales, but the price already assumes it.
The quarter in detail
Sales growth from the previous quarter, filed figures.
Earnings per share $1.31 against $1.23 expected; $1.35 as filed, the gap being what the company adds back.
The evidence under this - 6 claims
C02facthigh confidence
Q2 2026 revenue was $1,159M, up 9.5% on the $1,059M of Q2 2025.
C03facthigh confidence
Of that 9.5%, acquisitions contributed 2.1 points and currency 0.9, leaving organic growth of 6.5%; the 8.1% management leads with is reached only by also excluding Greater China.
C05management claimmedium confidence
Clinical markets are about 65% of sequencing consumables revenue, and clinical sequencing consumables grew 15% excluding China in Q2 2026, down from more than 20% in Q1 2026.
against this
- The figure exists only in management's spoken remarks. Neither the 10-Q nor the results release splits consumables into clinical and research, so nothing outside the call can check it.
- Growth decelerated from above 20% to 15% in a single quarter, and management attributed it to the Middle East and Latin America rather than to the United States, which is an explanation that cannot be verified from the regional table because those two are inside one reported region.
- An analyst on the same call put the opposite reading directly to management: that running NovaSeq 6000 and NovaSeq X in parallel means Illumina is over-earning on consumables until the older machines are decommissioned. Management did not quantify the overlap.
C06management claimmedium confidence
Research and applied sequencing consumables declined 7% on a rest-of-world basis in Q2 2026, and management expects mid to high single-digit declines for the full year.
against this
- The figure exists only in management's spoken remarks; neither the 10-Q nor the release splits consumables between research and clinical, so the decline cannot be checked or sized from any filing.
- Management said funding-release activity and quoting improved in the latter part of the quarter and that research consumables grew 9% sequentially, which is the opposite direction from the year-on-year figure and is the number a bull would quote.
- The guidance for mid to high single-digit declines was set at the start of the year and has not been improved despite that sequential move, so the company may be holding a conservative number it now expects to beat - which makes the decline a guidance artefact rather than a demand reading.
C18facthigh confidence
Q2 2026 non-GAAP operating margin was 22.5% against 23.8% in Q2 2025, and non-GAAP gross margin 68.2% against 69.4%, even as revenue rose 9.5%.
C38management claimmedium confidence
Illumina placed more than 95 NovaSeq X instruments and more than 10 NovaSeq 6000 units in Q2 2026, against a plan laid out 18 months earlier of 50 to 60 placements a quarter, with about 70% of placements going to clinical customers.
against this
- Placements are units, not contracts: they create capacity and management says clinical customers take six to nine months to reach normalised consumables pull-through, so the revenue is neither booked nor committed.
- An analyst on the call put the alternative reading directly - that in the fourth year of a platform's life such placement numbers are odd, and might reflect customers buying ahead of a competitive announcement.
- Instrument revenue is guided to grow only low single digits rest-of-world organically for the full year despite rising 31% in Q2, which means the company itself expects the placement rate to stop rising.
What management did with the money
It bought back shares, cutting the diluted count to 153 million from 157 million, and bought SomaLogic for $350M. The telling sale was a director's: Keith Meister sold 3.06 million shares for about $591M between May and September, cutting his funds' holding by four-fifths.
The evidence under this - 3 claims
C22facthigh confidence
Diluted shares fell to 153M in Q2 2026 from 157M a year earlier; the company repurchased 0.9M shares in the quarter at an average of $129.07 and had about $1.8B of authorisation remaining.
C29facthigh confidence
Illumina bought SomaLogic and certain other assets from Standard BioTools for $350M in cash, closing 30 January 2026, then paid about $30M in July 2026 to terminate the seller's 2026 earnout and its royalty rights.
C23facthigh confidence
Keith Meister, a serving director, sold 3,059,258 shares for about $591M between 13 May and 4 September 2026 at prices from $144.13 to $231.23, cutting the Corvex funds' holding from 3,829,508 shares to 770,350.
sourceForm 4, Keith A. Meister (director), filed 4 September 2026,…primaryResearch pack, ILMN, 12 September 2026secondary
against this
- The shares are held by private investment funds for which Corvex Management is the adviser, so the sales may be fund-level portfolio management, redemptions or risk limits rather than a view on Illumina - the Form 4 footnotes say Meister disclaims beneficial ownership except to the extent of his pecuniary interest.
- Corvex has held the position since 2023 and a position that has roughly doubled will breach concentration limits mechanically; selling into the strength it campaigned for is what a successful activist exit looks like.
- Two directors bought in the open market in the same twelve-month window - Scott Gottlieb, 500 shares at $122.13 and 200 at $117.81 - so the board is not uniformly selling, although the amounts are trivial beside the sales.
The price, and where we disagree
In short. Full. The price already pays for Illumina growing steadily and keeping more profit from each sale for years, at a company whose growth has stalled before.
Share price
$206.45
close,
Price for each $1 of yearly profit
38.2
its 6-year normal 8.8
Company value for each $1 of cash profit
24.0
its 6-year normal 3.4
The shares have more than doubled in a year, up 116.2%. On 21 September Illumina joined the S&P 500, index funds had to buy, and the price rose 32.7% from our first look without one new fact about the business.
The next facts arrive with the September-quarter results on October 29.
The evidence under this - 2 claims
C31facthigh confidence
The shares have returned 116.2% over the last 252 sessions, sit 10.9% below their 252-day high of $231.81 and 134.6% above the 252-day low of $88.00.
C30facthigh confidence
S&P Dow Jones Indices added Illumina to the S&P 500 and deleted it from the S&P MidCap 400 before the open on 21 September 2026, replacing Builders FirstSource, as announced. The shares re-rated sharply into and after the effective date on the resulting index-fund buying.
- 2026-09-25editedthe announced addition date passed; confirmed as completed and re-sourced as a historical fact rather than a forward claim
How we read the multiple
Buyers pay about 38 times a year's profit, more than four times Illumina's own six-year normal. Index buying since our first look has pushed the price higher still.
For that price to make sense, Illumina must:
- Grow sales about 7% a year, as analysts expect, for years.
- Keep about three more cents of profit from each dollar of sales than it does today.
- Start this year: about 25.5 cents of profit per sales dollar in the fourth quarter, against 22.5 cents in June.
Against its own history. Dearer than its own normal on every measure, for a business smaller and slower than the one those years describe, after the shares more than doubled.
The evidence under this - 5 claims
C19estimatehigh confidence
At $206.45 the enterprise value of $32.06B is 29.5 times guided 2026 non-GAAP operating profit, and the shares are 38.6 times the $5.35 midpoint of guided non-GAAP earnings per share, 29.4 times the 2028 consensus estimate and 23.0 times the 2030 estimate.
derivedMarket capitalisation $31.24B from the research pack at the 11 September 2026 close of $206.45, plus net debt of $823M (term debt $1,991M less cash and short-term investments of $1,168M, both from the Q2 2026 balance sheet). Guided non-GAAP operating profit of $1,086M is the midpoint of the company's own revenue and margin ranges. The 2028 and 2030 earnings estimates of $7.02 and $8.96 are the vendor's analyst panel, seven and two contributors respectively.
against this
- The 2030 estimate rests on two analysts, which is a thin panel to hang a terminal multiple on, and the 2028 estimate on seven.
- A recurring consumables stream at a 66% gross margin with an installed base that takes years to displace is worth more than a cyclical industrial's earnings, so a comparison against a market multiple understates what the annuity deserves.
- Free cash flow of $931M over the last twelve months is close to guided non-GAAP operating profit, so the earnings are cash rather than accrual, which supports a higher multiple than a company where they are not.
C20estimatemedium confidence
The vendor's analyst panel puts revenue at $5.26B in 2028 and $6.00B in 2030 with earnings per share of $7.02 and $8.96, which is earnings compounding about 13.8% a year on revenue compounding about 6.8%.
derivedThe research pack's analyst_estimates block, compounded from the guided 2026 midpoints of $4.62B of revenue and $5.35 of non-GAAP earnings per share. The gap between the two growth rates is roughly three points of operating margin plus a share count falling about 2.5% a year.
against this
- The panel is two contributors at 2030 and seven at 2028 - too thin to carry a terminal multiple, and the pack's own tier note warns that a consensus is a vendor's aggregation methodology rather than what the market expects.
- Analyst estimates on a name that has just tripled off its low are as likely to be following the price as leading it; the same panel carried much lower numbers a year ago.
- The revenue path is close to management's own stated ambition of high single-digit growth in 2027, so the estimates may simply be reproducing guidance rather than testing it - which makes the earnings line, where they run nearly twice as fast, the part that is actually the analysts' own.
C16estimatehigh confidence
Taken at the midpoints, that guidance requires a second-half non-GAAP operating margin of about 24.8% against 22.2% in H1 2026, and - with Q3 guided at about 24% - about 25.5% in Q4 2026 against 22.5% in Q2 2026.
derivedFull-year revenue midpoint $4.62B at the 23.5% margin midpoint gives $1,086M of non-GAAP operating profit. H1 2026 delivered $499M on $2,251M of revenue, so H2 must deliver $587M on $2,369M, which is 24.8%. Q3 guided revenue of $1,150M at the guided 24% is $276M, leaving $311M on $1,219M in Q4, which is 25.5%. Every input is from the Q2 2026 results release and the call.
against this
- Management says the step is already identified: consumables mix improves as instrument revenue moderates, and specific cost actions land in Q3 and again in Q4. The chief financial officer also noted that Q2's 22.5% is about 23% excluding a deferred-compensation effect that is neutral to earnings per share, which shrinks the required step by half a point.
- The extra week in Q4 is mostly consumables, which is the higher-margin revenue, so some of the step is mix arriving by calendar.
- The company delivered a 200 basis point margin improvement in 2025 on roughly flat revenue, so a step of this size is within its recent record.
C15management claimhigh confidence
Illumina guides fiscal 2026 to revenue of $4.60B-$4.64B, non-GAAP operating margin of 23.4%-23.6% and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $5.30-$5.40, having raised revenue and earnings but left the margin range unchanged.
against this
- The margin range was left unchanged while revenue was raised by $50M at the midpoint, which means none of the extra revenue is guided to reach operating profit.
- Guidance for Q3 2026 is rest-of-world organic growth of about 4.5%, against the 8.1% just delivered - so the raised full-year number is carried by the quarter already reported rather than by the quarters still to come.
- The fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 contains a 53rd week, which management sized at about half a point of full-year revenue, so part of the guided growth is a calendar artefact rather than demand.
C18facthigh confidence
Q2 2026 non-GAAP operating margin was 22.5% against 23.8% in Q2 2025, and non-GAAP gross margin 68.2% against 69.4%, even as revenue rose 9.5%.
Priced against its rivals
Its rivals have not yet been checked against their own filings, so there is no group to price it against; the price is judged against its own history instead.
Where we disagree with the market
The market believes
The turnaround worked: hospitals replaced the lost research and China sales, and Illumina compounds again. 27 of 50 analysts say buy.
We believe
The hospital business is real but narrow, and the reported speed-up is flattered by an acquisition, currency, an extra week and a shrinking China.
The evidence sits in the company's own paperwork. Its reconciliation table cuts headline growth by a third, and insider filings show a director selling four-fifths of his funds' stake as the shares rose.
We are wrong if hospital sequencing chemicals keep growing 15% or more through 2027 while the fourth-quarter margin reaches 25%.
What analysts say, and the evidence
The evidence under this - 7 claims
C35factmedium confidence
The vendor's analyst panel carries 1 Strong Buy and 26 Buy against 17 Hold and 6 Sell, and short interest was 6.58% of float at the 31 August 2026 settlement, up from 4.53% at 15 June.
C03facthigh confidence
Of that 9.5%, acquisitions contributed 2.1 points and currency 0.9, leaving organic growth of 6.5%; the 8.1% management leads with is reached only by also excluding Greater China.
C17management claimmedium confidence
Fiscal 2026 has a 53rd week, falling in the fourth quarter, which management sized at about half a point of full-year revenue and described as largely a consumables effect.
C24facthigh confidence
Greater China revenue was $243M in 2025 and fell $65M over the year after Illumina was added to China's List of Unreliable Entities on 4 February 2025; it was $56M in Q2 2026 and $108M in H1 2026 against $135M a year earlier.
C23facthigh confidence
Keith Meister, a serving director, sold 3,059,258 shares for about $591M between 13 May and 4 September 2026 at prices from $144.13 to $231.23, cutting the Corvex funds' holding from 3,829,508 shares to 770,350.
sourceForm 4, Keith A. Meister (director), filed 4 September 2026,…primaryResearch pack, ILMN, 12 September 2026secondary
against this
- The shares are held by private investment funds for which Corvex Management is the adviser, so the sales may be fund-level portfolio management, redemptions or risk limits rather than a view on Illumina - the Form 4 footnotes say Meister disclaims beneficial ownership except to the extent of his pecuniary interest.
- Corvex has held the position since 2023 and a position that has roughly doubled will breach concentration limits mechanically; selling into the strength it campaigned for is what a successful activist exit looks like.
- Two directors bought in the open market in the same twelve-month window - Scott Gottlieb, 500 shares at $122.13 and 200 at $117.81 - so the board is not uniformly selling, although the amounts are trivial beside the sales.
C05management claimmedium confidence
Clinical markets are about 65% of sequencing consumables revenue, and clinical sequencing consumables grew 15% excluding China in Q2 2026, down from more than 20% in Q1 2026.
against this
- The figure exists only in management's spoken remarks. Neither the 10-Q nor the results release splits consumables into clinical and research, so nothing outside the call can check it.
- Growth decelerated from above 20% to 15% in a single quarter, and management attributed it to the Middle East and Latin America rather than to the United States, which is an explanation that cannot be verified from the regional table because those two are inside one reported region.
- An analyst on the same call put the opposite reading directly to management: that running NovaSeq 6000 and NovaSeq X in parallel means Illumina is over-earning on consumables until the older machines are decommissioned. Management did not quantify the overlap.
C16estimatehigh confidence
Taken at the midpoints, that guidance requires a second-half non-GAAP operating margin of about 24.8% against 22.2% in H1 2026, and - with Q3 guided at about 24% - about 25.5% in Q4 2026 against 22.5% in Q2 2026.
derivedFull-year revenue midpoint $4.62B at the 23.5% margin midpoint gives $1,086M of non-GAAP operating profit. H1 2026 delivered $499M on $2,251M of revenue, so H2 must deliver $587M on $2,369M, which is 24.8%. Q3 guided revenue of $1,150M at the guided 24% is $276M, leaving $311M on $1,219M in Q4, which is 25.5%. Every input is from the Q2 2026 results release and the call.
against this
- Management says the step is already identified: consumables mix improves as instrument revenue moderates, and specific cost actions land in Q3 and again in Q4. The chief financial officer also noted that Q2's 22.5% is about 23% excluding a deferred-compensation effect that is neutral to earnings per share, which shrinks the required step by half a point.
- The extra week in Q4 is mostly consumables, which is the higher-margin revenue, so some of the step is mix arriving by calendar.
- The company delivered a 200 basis point margin improvement in 2025 on roughly flat revenue, so a step of this size is within its recent record.
What could go wrong, and how we would know
The risks
- A rival from Roche. Roche's first sequencer launched in June for research. If it reaches hospital laboratories, the lock-in is tested where it matters.
- A margin step not yet taken. The year's forecast needs about 25.5% margin in the fourth quarter, against 22.5% in June.
- Research spending shrinking. Research sequencing chemicals fell 7% outside China in June, and management expects declines for the whole year.
- China closed. Sales there fell to $56M in the June quarter after China put Illumina on its unreliable-entities list.
- Cheaper genomes. Element Biosciences says its new machine reads a whole genome for $100.
The evidence under this - 5 claims
C10facthigh confidence
Roche launched AXELIOS 1, its first sequencing-by-expansion platform, on 29 June 2026, labelled for research use only and not for use in diagnostic procedures.
against this
- Research-use-only is a starting position, not a ceiling. Roche's own release says it 'intends to establish SBX as the gold standard for diagnostics and stratification in personalised medicine' in the medium term, and Roche is the largest in-vitro diagnostics company in the world, so it has the regulatory apparatus Illumina's other challengers lack.
- It launched with Broad Clinical Labs and the Hartwig Medical Foundation, which are among the highest-volume sequencing institutions in the world, not with small academic sites.
- Illumina's Q2 2026 call, held four weeks after the launch, did not mention Roche once; an analyst raised it only obliquely, asking whether the instrument order surge reflected 'the market waiting for a more competitive information'.
C16estimatehigh confidence
Taken at the midpoints, that guidance requires a second-half non-GAAP operating margin of about 24.8% against 22.2% in H1 2026, and - with Q3 guided at about 24% - about 25.5% in Q4 2026 against 22.5% in Q2 2026.
derivedFull-year revenue midpoint $4.62B at the 23.5% margin midpoint gives $1,086M of non-GAAP operating profit. H1 2026 delivered $499M on $2,251M of revenue, so H2 must deliver $587M on $2,369M, which is 24.8%. Q3 guided revenue of $1,150M at the guided 24% is $276M, leaving $311M on $1,219M in Q4, which is 25.5%. Every input is from the Q2 2026 results release and the call.
against this
- Management says the step is already identified: consumables mix improves as instrument revenue moderates, and specific cost actions land in Q3 and again in Q4. The chief financial officer also noted that Q2's 22.5% is about 23% excluding a deferred-compensation effect that is neutral to earnings per share, which shrinks the required step by half a point.
- The extra week in Q4 is mostly consumables, which is the higher-margin revenue, so some of the step is mix arriving by calendar.
- The company delivered a 200 basis point margin improvement in 2025 on roughly flat revenue, so a step of this size is within its recent record.
C06management claimmedium confidence
Research and applied sequencing consumables declined 7% on a rest-of-world basis in Q2 2026, and management expects mid to high single-digit declines for the full year.
against this
- The figure exists only in management's spoken remarks; neither the 10-Q nor the release splits consumables between research and clinical, so the decline cannot be checked or sized from any filing.
- Management said funding-release activity and quoting improved in the latter part of the quarter and that research consumables grew 9% sequentially, which is the opposite direction from the year-on-year figure and is the number a bull would quote.
- The guidance for mid to high single-digit declines was set at the start of the year and has not been improved despite that sequential move, so the company may be holding a conservative number it now expects to beat - which makes the decline a guidance artefact rather than a demand reading.
C24facthigh confidence
Greater China revenue was $243M in 2025 and fell $65M over the year after Illumina was added to China's List of Unreliable Entities on 4 February 2025; it was $56M in Q2 2026 and $108M in H1 2026 against $135M a year earlier.
C11management claimlow confidence
Element Biosciences states that its VITARI platform will be available in the second half of 2026 and enables a $100 whole genome with more than 90% of bases at Q30 quality.
against this
- Element Biosciences is private, files nothing, and this is its own marketing specification - the weakest source type in the whole manifest, and a $100 genome claim is precisely the kind of figure a challenger has every incentive to state on its best case.
- 'Will be available in H2 of 2026' is a forward statement from a company that has moved launch dates before; the same page still lists AVITI and AVITI24, so VITARI is not yet what it sells.
- A headline price per genome is not a cost per gigabase in a clinical workflow, which also carries library preparation, instrument depreciation, service and the validation the laboratory has already paid for on another platform.
What we still do not know
- Whether Roche's research-only machine reaches hospital laboratories. Nothing outside the company answers that yet.
- Whether hospital sequencing growth, already slowing from above 20% to 15%, settles above or below 10%.
- What reading a genome actually costs today; the official public series stops in 2015.
The evidence under this - 3 claims
C10facthigh confidence
Roche launched AXELIOS 1, its first sequencing-by-expansion platform, on 29 June 2026, labelled for research use only and not for use in diagnostic procedures.
against this
- Research-use-only is a starting position, not a ceiling. Roche's own release says it 'intends to establish SBX as the gold standard for diagnostics and stratification in personalised medicine' in the medium term, and Roche is the largest in-vitro diagnostics company in the world, so it has the regulatory apparatus Illumina's other challengers lack.
- It launched with Broad Clinical Labs and the Hartwig Medical Foundation, which are among the highest-volume sequencing institutions in the world, not with small academic sites.
- Illumina's Q2 2026 call, held four weeks after the launch, did not mention Roche once; an analyst raised it only obliquely, asking whether the instrument order surge reflected 'the market waiting for a more competitive information'.
C05management claimmedium confidence
Clinical markets are about 65% of sequencing consumables revenue, and clinical sequencing consumables grew 15% excluding China in Q2 2026, down from more than 20% in Q1 2026.
against this
- The figure exists only in management's spoken remarks. Neither the 10-Q nor the results release splits consumables into clinical and research, so nothing outside the call can check it.
- Growth decelerated from above 20% to 15% in a single quarter, and management attributed it to the Middle East and Latin America rather than to the United States, which is an explanation that cannot be verified from the regional table because those two are inside one reported region.
- An analyst on the same call put the opposite reading directly to management: that running NovaSeq 6000 and NovaSeq X in parallel means Illumina is over-earning on consumables until the older machines are decommissioned. Management did not quantify the overlap.
C41facthigh confidence
The National Human Genome Research Institute's cost-per-genome fact sheet, the canonical public measure of sequencing cost decline, was last updated in November 2021 and its newest figure is below $1,500 in late 2015.
What would change our view
- Unattractive→AttractiveThe margin target is met, at a price that stopped assuming it
It needs all of:
- ○Adjusted operating margin reaches 24% in a quarter of 2027, with hospital sequencing chemicals still growing above 10% outside China.checked at the next results, due by 29 Oct
- ○The company's value, debt included, falls to about 18 times its forecast operating profit.about ≈$125.97 today, 39% below the last close
- Reopens the researchThe installed base proves it still pulls consumables
It needs:
- ○Sequencing chemical sales keep growing as more machines are installed, and no named hospital laboratory moves a proven test to a rival.checked at the next results, due by 29 Oct
What is coming
- 29 October 2026 Q3 2026 results: Whether clinical sequencing consumables growth holds near 15% and non-GAAP operating margin reaches the guided 24%, or the year's margin step slides into the fourth quarter.
Every dated event ahead
- 29 October 2026 Q3 2026 results: Whether clinical sequencing consumables growth holds near 15% and non-GAAP operating margin reaches the guided 24%, or the year's margin step slides into the fourth quarter.
- 2 November 2026 Delaware Chancery hearing on the proposed dismissal of the GRAIL acquisition suit: Whether the Icahn plaintiffs' claims over the GRAIL deal end; three related derivative actions stay live either way.
- December 2026 Element Biosciences VITARI availability: Whether a $100-genome rival actually ships into laboratories, the first test of price pressure on the consumables annuity.
- February 2027 Q4 and fiscal 2026 results, with the 53-week quarter: Whether the guided full-year margin was reached, how much the extra week flattered consumables, and the 2027 guide.
Since we wrote this
Written
12 Sep
Price the thesis read
$206.45
11 Sep
- 5 OctThesis reviewThe long case now sits under the verdictAfter the five-name pilot, the owner asked for the long case on every thesis.
- 4 OctThesis reviewOwner's checklist: revenue streams, cost of growth, management, catalystsThe owner's checklist found the method silent on who runs the company, what growth costs, where the money comes from and what is dated ahead; this pass fills those four blocks from the proxy and filings.
- 26 SepThesis reviewPrice route now starts from 39.1 times. View heldThe route to a better view is unchanged at about 18 times forecast operating profit. Its text still gave the starting point as 29.5 times, before index buying lifted the shares.
- 25 SepPrice moveUp 32.7% on S&P 500 index buying. View heldIndex funds had to buy the shares. Nothing about hospital sequencing growth or margin changed, and the higher price moved further from the level that would change the view.
- 12 SepThesis writtenUnattractive, medium convictionWritten six weeks after June-quarter results, with the shares up 116.2% in a year and a promotion to the S&P 500 announced.
Also checked 1 time with nothing new to act on.
Sources 19
Where this came from
Sources - 19
Every claim above cites one of these, or states the reasoning that derived it. The quote is frozen at the date it was read: a link can rot, and an agent fetch returns a reading of a page rather than the page. Backs counts the whole claim ledger, so it can name a claim this page does not surface.
- S01primarycompany filing2026-02-12the product and consumables mix, the Competition section read by hand, the customer concentration disclosure, Greater China revenue and the Unreliable Entities List risk factor, the SomaLogic terms, the segment structure and the 2025 operating bridgebacksC01C14C24C25C29C37C48C49C50
- S02primarycompany filing2026-07-31revenue by region on the restated 2026 basis, the sequencing and microarray split, note 5 on the debt tranches, the contingent value rights measurement, the restructuring note and the stockholders' equity movementbacksC02C07C21C22C24C33C36C43C49
- S03primarycompany filing2026-07-30the growth reconciliation table that halves the headline rate, the GAAP-to-non-GAAP margin and earnings bridges, the balance sheet, the free cash flow calculation and the raised fiscal 2026 guidancebacksC02C03C04C15C18C21C32C36
- S04primarytranscript2026-07-30Illumina Q2 2026 earnings call transcriptmanagement's prepared figures with no filed home - clinical as 65% of sequencing consumables, the platform conversion percentages, the placement counts, the 53rd week, the buyback price and the leverage ratio - and, separately, seven analyst questions, of which two put the over-earning and the guidance step-down directly to management
Clinical markets, which represent approximately 65% of sequencing consumables revenue, remained our primary growth driver. ... Sequencing consumables revenue in clinical markets grew 15% ex-China, with the U.S. Canada region continuing to grow above 20%. ... As of Q2, approximately 83% of volumes and 59% of revenue had transitioned to the platform. Approximately 78% of clinical volume is now on the X ... allowing us to place over 95 NovaSeq X instruments in Q2 ... We also placed over 10 NovaSeq 6000 units ... we laid out a logic around 50-60 placements per quarter ... it is still about 70/30, 70% being clinical, and the remainder still going into the research space ... With over 300 million cells delivered to date ... you would expect maybe half a point or so of revenue contribution that could come from that extra week ... a leverage ratio of approximately 1.6x gross debt to last 12 months EBITDA
backsC05C06C09C17C22C34C38C39C40 - S05primarycompany filing2026-01-13the full-year 2025 outturn on both bases - revenue flat at $4.34B, ex-China up 2% - and the gap between GAAP earnings per share of $5.42-$5.45 and non-GAAP of $4.76-$4.79read, but no claim rests on it
- S06primarycompany filing2026-02-25the $50.0M sale of its short-read sequencing intellectual property to Illumina Cambridge, which Illumina's own filings do not mention, and the named competitor list Illumina's annual report refuses to givebacksC12C13
- S07primarycompany release2026-06-29the attacker's own statement of what it launched, when, with what read length, and - decisively - that it is not cleared for diagnostic use
Roche ... announced today the launch of AXELIOS 1 ... AXELIOS 1 is Roche's next-generation single-molecule sequencing platform and the first powered by proprietary sequencing by expansion (SBX) technology. AXELIOS 1 is for research use only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.
backsC10 - S08primarycompany release2026-09-12Element Biosciences instrument specifications - VITARI, AVITI24 and AVITI Element Biosciencesthe price-per-genome claim a buyer would weigh against NovaSeq X, and the availability date that makes it announced rather than shipping
enabling a $100 genome with >90% Q30 quality ... VITARI will be available in H2 of 2026
backsC11 - S09primarygovernment data2026-09-12the counted base of the prize, in patients, measured by a body with nothing to sell
In 2026, it is estimated that there will be 2,114,850 new cases of cancer of any site ... In 2023, there were an estimated 18,640,213 people living with cancer of any site in the United States.
backsC26 - S10primaryindustry data2026Trends and Disparities in the Use of Next-Generation Sequencing in Patients With Cancer in the United States, JAMA Network Open, 2026 JAMA Network Openthe independent measurement of how much of that base is already sequenced, across 63,294 patients - the only non-industry reading of the driver's rate that could be found The article carries a 2026 digital object identifier; no finer publication date was captured.
63 294 patients with advanced or metastatic cancer ... diagnosed between January 1, 2018, and December 30, 2022 ... Testing after advanced or metastatic disease diagnosis ranged from 34.5% in metastatic breast cancer to 62.9% in metastatic colorectal cancer
backsC27 - S11secondaryvendor data2026-09-12Research pack, ILMN, 12 September 2026the price and market value, the 252-day returns and range, the analyst panel split, the analyst estimate series, the FINRA short interest history and the transcribed Form 4 windowbacksC23C31C32C35
- S12primarycompany filing2026-09-04the transaction codes read from the raw XML rather than from the aggregate: twelve S-coded open-market sales on 2-4 September alone, the footnote placing the shares with the Corvex funds, and the shares-owned-after series that gives the size of the exitbacksC23C46
- S13primarycompany filing2026-07-28the counterparty's own account of Illumina paying about $30M to extinguish the SomaLogic earnout and royalty streams - the seller's disclosure, not the buyer'sbacksC29
- S14primarycompany filing2026-08-17the $300M August 2026 note issue, its coupon and maturity, against the $500M tranche that matured three weeks laterbacksC33
- S15primaryother2026-09-04S&P Dow Jones Indices press release - September 2026 index changes S&P Dow Jones Indicesthe index promotion and its effective date, from the index provider rather than from coverage of it - a mechanical bid arriving on top of a stock that has already doubled
Sept 21, 2026 | S&P 500 | Addition | Illumina | ILMN | Health Care
backsC30 - S16primarygovernment data2021-11-01the canonical public series on sequencing cost - and the finding that it stopped being maintained, which is why no current cost-per-genome figure is claimed in this thesis
the cost to generate a high-quality 'draft' whole human genome sequence in mid-2015 was just above $4,000; by late in 2015, that figure had fallen below $1,500. Last updated: November 1, 2021
backsC41 - S17primarycompany filing2026-08-13a $1.0B senior unsecured five-year revolving facility entered 13 August 2026, undrawn, maturing August 2031 with three one-year extension options and a maximum-total-leverage financial covenant - found only because audit_sources.py named the accessionbacksC42
- S18primarycompany filing2026-08-07the activist litigation over the GRAIL acquisition being dismissed as to the Icahn plaintiffs, with a hearing set for 2 November 2026 and three related derivative actions still liveread, but no claim rests on it
- S19primarycompany filing2026-04-09the executive officers and their start years, beneficial ownership at 26 March 2026, the fiscal 2025 cash bonus goals and payout, and the PSU and RSU designbacksC44C45C46C47