A Member of Pat McKeough’s Inner Circle recently asked for his advice on The Cooper Companies Inc., a diversified healthcare equipment firm that designs, manufactures, and sells soft contact lenses plus women’s health and fertility products worldwide.
Pat likes the firm’s high-quality, recurring-revenue medical device franchise with solid sales growth and expanding profit margins. Meantime, the presence of an activist investor draws attention to its prospects.
The Cooper Companies Inc. (Symbol COO on Nasdaq; www.coopercos.com) is a California-based healthcare business with two operating segments.
The first segment is Cooper Vision (67% of revenue); it makes and sells soft contact lenses for the vision-correction market worldwide. Cooper Vision specializes in lenses for common eye conditions like astigmatism, presbyopia, myopia, and ocular dryness.
The second segment, Cooper Surgical (33%), focuses on fertility and women’s health. It develops and markets the medical devices, diagnostic products and surgical instruments used by gynecologists and obstetricians.
Over the years, Cooper has expanded significantly through acquisitions.
In December 2021, the company completed the purchase of Generate Life Sciences for $1.6 billion. Generate Life Sciences was created in 2018 through the merger of California Cryobank Life Sciences, a donor sperm and egg bank, and Cord Blood Registry, a provider of newborn stem-cell services. The combined firm serves families from preconception to post-birth.
In November 2023, Cooper completed the acquisition of several medical device lines from Cook Medical for $300 million. Those assets included a large portion of Cook’s Maternal Fetal Medicine product line as well as gynecological surgery products and the Doppler monitor technology (ultrasound).
In August 2024, Cooper acquired obp Surgical, a U.S.-based medical device company, for about $100 million. obp makes single-use, cordless surgical retractors (to hold tissue out of the way during surgery). It also makes single-use surgical suction devices with integrated LED lights.
These products generate revenue of about $14.5 million a year. They complement Cooper Surgical’s existing portfolio, which includes its Insorb skin stapler, Lone Star retractor and Doppler Blood Flow Monitor.
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Cooper’s outlook is positive for both businesses
In the three months ended January 31, 2026, Cooper Companies’ total revenue rose 6.0%, to $1.024 billion from $964.7 million a year earlier. Revenue rose due to continued strength in the premium MyDay contact lens portfolio, new product launches including early success from MyDay MiSight, and growth in Cooper Surgical’s fertility business.
Excluding one-time items, earnings were $217.0 million, or $1.10 a share, in the quarter, up 17.7% from $184.4 million, or $0.92 a share. The gain reflects the higher sales as well as improved profit margins driven by synergies from last year’s reorganization, and new IT implementations.
All in all, the outlook for both of Cooper’s operating units is positive given their strong market positions in vision correction and medical devices for gynecology and obstetrics.
Note that activist investor Jana Partners has now built a stake in Cooper. Jana plans to push for strategic alternatives, including a potential deal to combine its contact-lens unit with rival Bauch + Lomb (symbol BLCO on Toronto). Jana believes the company’s two business units are unrelated and would be better off operating independently.
How Cooper will respond to Jana’s pressure is uncertain, but either way, it draws attention to its value and prospects.
Recommendation in Pat’s Inner Circle: The Cooper Companies Inc. is okay to hold.
