Corcept (CORT)

Biopharma company Corcept Therapeutics (NASDAQ:CORT) missed Wall Street’s revenue expectations in Q4 CY2025, but sales rose 11.1% year on year to $202.1 million. Its GAAP profit of $0.20 per share was 26.3% below analysts’ consensus estimates.

Company Overview

Focusing on the powerful stress hormone that affects everything from metabolism to immune function, Corcept Therapeutics (NASDAQ:CORT) develops and markets medications that modulate cortisol to treat endocrine disorders, cancer, and neurological diseases.

Looking ahead, the branded pharmaceutical industry is positioned for tailwinds from advancements in precision medicine, increasing adoption of AI to enhance drug development efficiency, and growing global demand for treatments addressing chronic and rare diseases. However, headwinds include heightened regulatory scrutiny, pricing pressures from governments and insurers, and the looming patent cliffs for key blockbuster drugs. Patent cliffs bring about competition from generics, forcing branded pharmaceutical companies back to the drawing board to find the next big thing.

Corcept's main competitors in the Cushing's syndrome market include Recordati S.p.A, which sells Signifor and Isturisa, and Xeris Biopharma Holdings, which markets Recorlev. In its broader therapeutic areas, Corcept competes with various pharmaceutical companies developing treatments for endocrine disorders, oncology, and neurological diseases.

Larger companies benefit from economies of scale, where fixed costs like infrastructure, technology, and administration are spread over a higher volume of goods or services, reducing the cost per unit. Scale can also lead to bargaining power with suppliers, greater brand recognition, and more investment firepower. A virtuous cycle can ensue if a scaled company plays its cards right.

With just $761.4 million in revenue over the past 12 months, Corcept is a small company in an industry where scale matters. This makes it difficult to build trust with customers because healthcare is heavily regulated, complex, and resource-intensive.

Reviewing a company’s long-term sales performance reveals insights into its quality. Any business can experience short-term success, but top-performing ones enjoy sustained growth for years. Over the last five years, Corcept grew its sales at an impressive 18.8% compounded annual growth rate. Its growth beat the average healthcare company and shows its offerings resonate with customers.

We at StockStory place the most emphasis on long-term growth, but within healthcare, a half-decade historical view may miss recent innovations or disruptive industry trends. Corcept’s annualized revenue growth of 25.6% over the last two years is above its five-year trend, suggesting its demand was strong and recently accelerated.

This quarter, Corcept’s revenue grew by 11.1% year on year to $202.1 million but fell short of Wall Street’s estimates.

Looking ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 9.5% over the next 12 months, a deceleration versus the last two years. Despite the slowdown, this projection is healthy and implies the market is forecasting success for its products and services.

Corcept has managed its cost base well over the last five years. It demonstrated solid profitability for a healthcare business, producing an average operating margin of 19.6%.

Looking at the trend in its profitability, Corcept’s operating margin decreased by 28.1 percentage points over the last five years. The company’s two-year trajectory also shows it failed to get its profitability back to the peak as its margin fell by 16.4 percentage points. This performance was poor no matter how you look at it - it shows its expenses were rising and it couldn’t pass those costs onto its customers.

In Q4, Corcept generated an operating margin profit margin of 2.2%, down 11.7 percentage points year on year. This contraction shows it was less efficient because its expenses grew faster than its revenue.

Revenue trends explain a company’s historical growth, but the long-term change in earnings per share (EPS) points to the profitability of that growth – for example, a company could inflate its sales through excessive spending on advertising and promotions.

Corcept’s flat EPS over the last five years was below its 18.8% annualized revenue growth. This tells us the company became less profitable on a per-share basis as it expanded due to non-fundamental factors such as interest expenses and taxes.

Diving into the nuances of Corcept’s earnings can give us a better understanding of its performance. As we mentioned earlier, Corcept’s operating margin declined by 28.1 percentage points over the last five years. This was the most relevant factor (aside from the revenue impact) behind its lower earnings; interest expenses and taxes can also affect EPS but don’t tell us as much about a company’s fundamentals.

In Q4, Corcept reported EPS of $0.20, down from $0.26 in the same quarter last year. This print missed analysts’ estimates. Over the next 12 months, Wall Street expects Corcept’s full-year EPS of $0.83 to shrink by 30.3%.

If you’ve followed StockStory for a while, you know we emphasize free cash flow. Why, you ask? We believe that in the end, cash is king, and you can’t use accounting profits to pay the bills.

Corcept has shown terrific cash profitability, enabling it to reinvest, return capital to investors, and stay ahead of the competition while maintaining an ample cushion. The company’s free cash flow margin was among the best in the healthcare sector, averaging 28.7% over the last five years.

Taking a step back, we can see that Corcept’s margin dropped by 25.7 percentage points during that time. Continued declines could signal it is in the middle of an investment cycle.

EPS and free cash flow tell us whether a company was profitable while growing its revenue. But was it capital-efficient? Enter ROIC, a metric showing how much operating profit a company generates relative to the money it has raised (debt and equity).

Although Corcept hasn’t been the highest-quality company lately because of its poor bottom-line (EPS) performance, it found a few growth initiatives in the past that worked out wonderfully. Its five-year average ROIC was 60.9%, splendid for a healthcare business.

We like to invest in businesses with high returns, but the trend in a company’s ROIC is what often surprises the market and moves the stock price. Over the last few years, Corcept’s ROIC has unfortunately decreased significantly. We like what management has done in the past, but its declining returns are perhaps a symptom of fewer profitable growth opportunities.

We struggled to find many positives in these results. Its revenue missed and its EPS fell short of Wall Street’s estimates. Overall, this was a weaker quarter. The stock traded down 3.8% to $35.07 immediately after reporting.

Updated: February 24, 2026 at 4:49 PM EST

We think that the latest earnings result is only one piece of the bigger puzzle. If you’re deciding whether to own Corcept, you should also grasp the company’s longer-term business quality and valuation.

Corcept isn’t a terrible business, but it doesn’t pass our quality test. Although its revenue growth was impressive over the last five years, it’s expected to deteriorate over the next 12 months and its diminishing returns show management's prior bets haven't worked out. And while the company’s stellar ROIC suggests it has been a well-run company historically, the downside is its declining operating margin shows the business has become less efficient.

Corcept’s P/E ratio based on the next 12 months is 49.3x. This valuation tells us a lot of optimism is priced in - we think there are better stocks to buy right now.

Wall Street analysts have a consensus one-year price target of $76.40 on the company (compared to the current share price of $35.07).

Although the price target is bullish, readers should exercise caution because analysts tend to be overly optimistic. The firms they work for, often big banks, have relationships with companies that extend into fundraising, M&A advisory, and other rewarding business lines. As a result, they typically hesitate to say bad things for fear they will lose out. We at StockStory do not suffer from such conflicts of interest, so we’ll always tell it like it is.