Want to find your lens? Five questions, no jargon — they tell you which of four reads fits how you already think.
A wonderful business — priced for growth it hasn't delivered.
A great company, but no margin of safety at this price. Worth watching, not worth buying here.
Price against fair value
Free cash flow — 10-year history ($B)
What the math is really telling you. Watch whether cash flow is compounding — that, more than any single year, is what a value read hangs on.
The read — lights & verdict
- Warning:OvervaluedFair value ~$80 vs $150 — trading 47% above what the math supports.
- Warning:Price assumes a big accelerationYou'd need ~12%/yr free-cash-flow growth to justify today's price; it has done -5.6%/yr lately.
- Good:Revenue still growingUp 1.3% last year — demand isn't the problem.
- Caution:Cash flow flat-to-downFree cash flow ~-5.6%/yr — big, but not compounding. The crux for a value buyer.
- Caution:Manageable net debtNet debt of $34B — about 2.7× annual free cash flow. Normal for a mature company.
How this was built. Every figure is computed from Merck & Co., Inc.'s SEC filings — no estimates, no AI. Two-stage DCF: 9% discount rate, 5% free-cash-flow growth for 10 years, 2.5% terminal. Free cash flow is operating cash flow less capital spending. Net cash is cash and marketable securities less borrowings, commercial paper and finance leases; operating leases are disclosed but never counted as debt. We subtract net debt from the value of the business — for Merck that is about $34B, or $13 per share. Fundamentals are from the FY25 annual report and change only when a new one is filed. Price of $150.33 taken 2026-09-04 (Google Finance, manual entry, 2026-08-28) — it is not live and does not move during the day.
TickerMath is an educational tool, not investment advice — it computes one model from SEC filings and can be wrong. How we compute this →