Qiagen Earnings: Management Guides to Weak 2024 That Mildly Affects Our Fair Value Estimate

Qiagen's fourth-quarter results mildly exceeded expectations, even when considering the significant COVID-19-related declines versus a tough comparable period in 2022. At first glance, we plan to revert to our previous fair value estimates ($52/EUR 48 per share), despite the recent $300 million synthetic share repurchase that automatically boosted our fair value estimates last week. This mild decrease relates primarily to the firm's weak outlook for 2024, which was below our previous expectation for the year, although we still expect trends to reverse eventually for Qiagen and the rest of the life science and diagnostic industries. Also, while our moat rating remains none, we recognize that Qiagen's operations have improved substantially in recent years even when excluding COVID-19-related demand, and we expect Qiagen to remain economically profitable throughout our five-year forecast period.