Forensic Analysis · Healthcare / Pharmaceuticals / Biotech · as of Sep 13, 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
15.8
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
28.7
P / E (ttm)
12.2%
ROE
$5.9B
Market cap
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 (red flags, auditor quality, say on pay, board independence, going concern, valuation). 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 15.8, placing it in the Safe zone. 4 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by inventory days.
What the filings flag
331d
FY2017→FY2018
Inventory days.Measured to FY2018 — 7 years behind FY2025, the most recent year this filer has reported, because its filings carry no cost of sales figure after FY2018. What follows is the last reading these filings support on this line, not a read on the business as it files today. Days inventory outstanding moved from 214 to 331 FY2017→FY2018 (against cost of goods sold; inventory +63% vs +18% in cost of sales). Inventory is outrunning what's being sold — a flag for softening demand or obsolescence risk ahead.
2.4%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 2.4% in the latest fiscal year and rising from 0.3% — well below its ~10% cost of capital, and it has been across FY2022–FY2025, so reinvested dollars have not been earning their keep.
+6.4%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +20% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (+6.4%/yr). The count is growing: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~6.4% 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 FY2022 has been diluted ~17%.
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 6.4% a year 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
Net Margin46.4%
Free Cash Flow$48.9M
Latest Revenue$268.1M
Return on Equity12.2%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+11.0%
Revenue Growth YoY+60.4%
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