Is Illumina Stock Worth The Wait?
For questions about this article or underlying research, email help@trefis.com.
Illumina (ILMN) stock closed at $214.91 on November 10, 2026, sitting far below its old high of $510.06 from August 2021. More than five years later, holders can easily keep measuring the shares against that 2021 price, treating it as the baseline where Illumina belongs. What would it take for Illumina stock to get back there?
Illumina Stock Needs A 137% Gain To Get Back
Illumina stock remains 57.9% below its old high, and returning to that peak demands a 137.3% gain. Even if the climb spanned three years, it would require an annual return of 33.4%.
Has Illumina Stock Ever Gained 137% In Three Years?
It has, but rarely. Take every rolling three-year stretch of the last ten years, each lasting 756 trading sessions, with one starting on each trading day. Illumina stock gained 137.3% or more in just 1.7% of those periods. To reach its old high within three years, Illumina stock will need to pull off a rare feat.
What Has Waiting Cost Illumina Holders?
Holders who bought at the high have now waited 5.2 years. In that time, Illumina stock dropped 57.9% while the S&P 500 rose 67.9%, both before dividends. Waiting has cost these investors the fall in Illumina’s share price, alongside the gains they would have captured by holding the index instead.
Is Illumina The Same Business It Was Then?
No: Illumina sells more and earns a wider margin today than it did at its 2021 high.
| Illumina | At the high, August 2021 | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Share price | $510.06 | $214.91 |
| Business figures: twelve months ended | July 4, 2021 | September 27, 2026 |
| Revenue, twelve months | $3.97 billion | $4.54 billion |
| Operating margin | 17.0% | 21.4% |
| Net income, twelve months | $0.768 billion | $0.895 billion |
Share prices are split-adjusted closes on August 16, 2021 and November 10, 2026. Business figures are as reported, for the twelve months to the latest fiscal quarter in our data on or before each date.
Illumina sells sequencing instruments like the NovaSeq X, alongside the sequencing consumables those machines require. On the company’s October 29 call, management said Illumina placed about 360 NovaSeq X instruments over the last four quarters, surpassing the total from the first year after its launch.
Over the twelve months to September 2026, Illumina’s revenue ran 14.4% higher than in the twelve months before the high. The operating margin rose to 21.4% from 17.0%, though management said on the same call that tariff refunds lifted operating income in the latest quarter. That quarter’s margin was 27.0%, against 18.2% to 21.1% in the three quarters before it, and the call did not give the size of the refunds.
So Illumina is a bigger and more profitable business than the one investors paid that 2021 price for, and its share price is far lower. The price back then was the unusual part. At the end of June 2021, Illumina stock traded at 16.9 times its sales, the highest of the last 40 quarter ends. Illumina stock now trades at 7.2 times its sales, against 3.2 for the S&P 500. For Illumina holders, the better question is what today’s business is worth at its current price, not when the 2021 price comes back. So far, waiting for the old high has not been worth it.
Waiting On Illumina?
Part of your money can pay you while you wait. The Trefis Income Solution holds 50 dividend stocks yielding about 3x the S&P 500, each with at least 10 straight years of dividends.
Spot an error or want more like this? Tell us in 10 seconds.