• If you are wondering whether Medtronic offers good value at today’s price or if it may be better to wait for a clearer signal, this breakdown aims to frame the stock in simple valuation terms.
• The share price closed at US$82.92, with returns of a 2.4% decline over 7 days, a 4.8% decline over 30 days, a 13.7% decline year to date, and a 1.8% gain over 1 year. This mix of short and longer term performance may raise questions about how much risk and potential are already reflected in the price.
• Recent coverage has focused on Medtronic’s position as a major medical device company and ongoing interest in its role in global healthcare. This keeps investor attention on the stock even when short term returns are mixed. Against this backdrop, questions about whether the current price reflects the company’s fundamentals have become more urgent for many shareholders.
• Medtronic currently has a value score of 5 out of 6. The next sections will walk through how different valuation methods line up on the stock, then finish with a way to think about valuation that goes beyond any single model.

Approach 1: Medtronic Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) Analysis

A DCF model estimates what a company might be worth by projecting its future cash flows and then discounting them back to today’s value, so you can compare that figure with the current share price.

For Medtronic, the 2 Stage Free Cash Flow to Equity model uses current last twelve month free cash flow of about US$5.4b as a starting point. Analyst inputs and extrapolated estimates put free cash flow around US$5.7b in 2026, rising to about US$8.7b by 2035, with Simply Wall St extending forecasts beyond the analyst horizon.

After discounting those projected cash flows back to today using the model’s required return, the DCF calculation suggests an estimated intrinsic value of about US$87.73 per share. Compared with the recent share price of US$82.92, this implies the stock trades at roughly a 5.5% discount to that estimate, which sits within a relatively tight band around the model value.

Result: ABOUT RIGHT

Medtronic is fairly valued according to our Discounted Cash Flow (DCF), but this can change at a moment's notice. Track the value in your watchlist or portfolio and be alerted on when to act.

Approach 2: Medtronic Price vs Earnings (P/E)

For profitable companies like Medtronic, the P/E ratio is a common yardstick because it links what you pay for the stock to the earnings the business is currently generating. In general, higher expected growth and lower perceived risk can support a higher P/E, while lower growth expectations or higher risk tend to align with a lower, more conservative P/E range.

Medtronic trades on a P/E of 23.08x, compared with the Medical Equipment industry average of about 24.99x and a peer group average of 36.41x. Simply Wall St’s Fair Ratio estimate for Medtronic is 34.04x. This Fair Ratio is a proprietary measure that looks at factors such as earnings growth, profit margins, industry, market cap and risk to estimate what a more tailored P/E might look like for this specific company.

Because the Fair Ratio blends these company specific drivers, it can provide a more focused reference point than a simple comparison with industry or peer averages. Setting Medtronic’s current P/E of 23.08x against the Fair Ratio of 34.04x indicates that the shares are trading below that tailored benchmark.

Result: UNDERVALUED

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Upgrade Your Decision Making: Choose your Medtronic Narrative

Earlier it was mentioned that there is an even better way to understand valuation, so Narratives are introduced here as a simple way for you to attach a clear story about Medtronic to your own assumptions for fair value, future revenue, earnings and margins. You can then see how that story stacks up against the current price.

A Narrative on Simply Wall St links three things together in one place: the company story you believe in, the financial forecast that flows from that story, and the fair value that drops out of those numbers. This means you are not just looking at ratios in isolation.

On the Community page, where millions of investors share their work, Narratives are set up as an easy tool that lets you adjust expectations and instantly compare the resulting Fair Value to the live market Price. This helps you judge whether the stock looks expensive or cheap relative to your own view, instead of relying only on a single P/E or DCF output.

Because Narratives update automatically when new information such as earnings releases or product news is added, your Medtronic view can evolve in real time. You can also see how different investors arrive at very different fair values. For example, one Narrative recently applied a Fair Value of US$95.00 with specific growth and margin assumptions, while another used US$82.66 with more cautious inputs, giving you a clear sense of the range of perspectives around the same stock.

For Medtronic however we will make it really easy for you with previews of two leading Medtronic Narratives:

Fair value: US$95.00 per share

Pricing gap: around 12.7% below this fair value estimate at the recent US$82.92 share price

Revenue growth assumption: 5.15%

• Diverse four segment product mix in Cardiovascular, Medical Surgical, Neuroscience and Diabetes helps spread business risk across procedures and therapies.
• Heavy R&D spend, a long dividend track record and past acquisitions in robotics and AI tools are central to the case that the shares look undervalued on this view.
• Key watchpoints include product recalls, diabetes competition, currency moves, supply chain pressures and the risk that software led care could shift value away from hardware devices.

Fair value: US$82.66 per share

Pricing gap: around 0.3% above this fair value estimate at the recent US$82.92 share price

Revenue growth assumption: 4.58%

• Frames Medtronic as a large, diversified medical device group with solid cash flow and dividends, but with only moderate growth compared with some peers.
• Highlights stiff competition across cardiovascular, diabetes, surgical and neurology, along with supply chain, regulatory and pricing pressures that could cap upside.
• Emphasises that outcomes hinge on execution of the product pipeline, emerging market expansion and margin discipline, with investors needing to watch product rollouts and profitability closely.

If you want to see how your own expectations line up against these views, you can build and compare your personal Medtronic story directly alongside other Community Narratives on Simply Wall St using the live fair value and pricing tools.

Do you think there's more to the story for Medtronic? Head over to our Community to see what others are saying!

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.