CluenexIllumina ILMN
Illumina scores average on business quality (4.8 of 10). Here is why, in plain words, and what our sealed record shows.
Why it matters
- What Illumina does
Illumina sells gene-sequencing instruments and consumable reagents to research labs, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies globally. The business makes money by locking customers into proprietary chemistry and hardware ecosystems for clinical diagnostics and genomic research.
- What it does best
Illumina dominates gene sequencing with an installed base that drives recurring consumable sales, showing a gross margin of 66.4% that beats peers like Thermo Fisher at 40.9%. This hardware lock-in makes switching sequencing platforms prohibitively expensive for labs.
- The main risk
Top-line stagnation threatens cash generation, with revenue shrinking 0.7% over the latest period as clinical labs delay capital equipment upgrades. Without a return to sustained organic growth, fixed costs will pressure operating margins.
Quality, check by check
Scored against its own industry, from company filings.
Operating margins hold at 20.2% with a strong ROE of 31.1%, placing return on equity in the top quartile at the 80th sector percentile. This profitability remains resilient despite flat revenue.
High switching costs lock in genomics researchers and clinical labs who build proprietary workflows around its sequencers. Its gross margin sits in the middle of the pack at the 55th sector percentile.
Revenue declined 0.7% over the latest period, ranking in the bottom decile of its sector at the 8th percentile and extending a multi-year stagnation visible across recent annual history summaries.
Interest coverage sits at 9.6x while free cash flow reached $931 million, showing adequate debt service ability and improving cash generation as the balance sheet softens its net debt to $356 million.
Insiders
Executives and directors, from SEC Form 4 filings we read ourselves. Open market trades only; grants, option exercises and pre-planned sales left out.
1 sold $436.2M outside pre-planned sales.
Our sealed record on ILMN
Verdicts appear here 30 days after we publish them; members see today's. Each one is in the nightly ledger, fingerprinted the night it was made.
The first sealed verdicts appear here on Oct 11, 2026.
Questions
Illumina scores average on the Cluenex quality check (4.8 of 10), measured against its own industry. Profitability is strong, moat fair, growth slow and financial health fair.
In the last 90 days of SEC Form 4 filings: 1 sold $436.2M outside pre-planned sales.
Oct 29, 2026, after the close.
See ILMN today
- Today's verdict on ILMN, and why
- Fair value with cautious, base and optimistic cases
- The exact price that would change the verdict
- Which stocks each signal names, the night it fires
Cite this page: Cluenex, “Illumina (ILMN)”, https://cluenex.com/stocks/ilmn/, data as of Oct 10, 2026.