Forensic Analysis · Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology · as of Nov 8, 2026
Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc (LGND)
A forensic read on Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc built from its complete SEC filings — financial-health screens, earnings quality, red flags and a price-aware rating. Reproducible math, not opinion.
B · Sound & dependable
Forensic grade
Safe
Financial health
6.8
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
3
Forensic signals
13.5%
ROE
60.4%
Revenue growth
This free snapshot doesn't read filing or proxy text, so the auditor-quality and governance checks that can lower a grade were not evaluated (auditor quality, say on pay, board independence, going concern). Those checks only ever lower a grade, so the full analysis can land below the grade above but never above it — treat it as the most favourable reading, not the settled one.
Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc earns a B (Sound & dependable) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 6.8, placing it in the Safe zone. 3 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
2.9%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 2.9% in the latest fiscal year, against 1.4% in FY2023, having run between -1.9% and 2.9% across FY2023–FY2025 with no direction held. After-tax operating profit was $10M in FY2023 and $32M in FY2025, with operating income at 9.1% of revenue in FY2023, -13.5% in FY2024 and 15.3% in FY2025. The capital base behind it grew +46% across FY2023–FY2025, from $747M to $1.1B, and the return did not fall doing it, so the dollars added over that window earned at least the 1.4% the older base was already earning. $371M of the $1.1B base at FY2025 is short-term investments (34.0%) — securities held beside cash, which the base keeps because only cash is subtracted from it; they earn the balance sheet's yield, which is not in the operating profit above, so this rate understates what the operating capital earns. FY2024's operating profit carried a $31M asset write-down that alone took about 2.5 points off that year's return; FY2024 sits between the two ends of FY2023–FY2025, so the charge shapes the path between them without moving the change across it. A non-cash write-down lowers the reported return in the year it lands.
+6.9%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +14% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+6.9%/yr). The count is growing — 17.8M shares in FY2023, 20.3M in FY2025: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~6.9% shaved off per-share growth every year — total profit has to grow that much just to keep earnings-per-share flat, and a stake held since FY2023 has been diluted ~13%.
17% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 17% of revenue and 96% of free cash flow in FY2025 — about $2.31 per diluted share. No cash left the business to pay it, which is why operating cash flow adds it back. Net of repurchases the diluted count still rose about 6.9% a year across FY2023–FY2025 and that rate is not falling, so total profit has to grow by that much annually before any of it reaches a share. Stock compensation is one source of that issuance; acquisition consideration, equity raises, convertibles and other employee plans also net into the count, and these figures do not separate them.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$268.1M
Revenue Growth YoY+60.4%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+42.9%
Net Margin46.4%
Free Cash Flow$48.9M
Return on Equity13.5%
The forensic grade and screens above are free — no account needed. Want the AI investment read on top — the 0–100 rating, thesis, bull-vs-bear, red flags and the 12-month scenario, written from Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?