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Staar Surgical

STAA on Nasdaq. STAAR Surgical sells implantable eye lenses to eye surgeons and hospitals. Market value $1.1bn.

Watch this stockFree. We tell you when something changes.

Price checks use the past 12 months to June 2026. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to December 2025.

We can't read total debt from the filing, so debt is left out.

Should I look at this?

Not a fit for our list right now

Why it could be worth it

Nothing stands out yet.

What to watch out for

See Health care stocks that passed both tests

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

Compare with another stock

Cash yield
past 12 months to June 2026
-0.6%low

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $-0.61 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
past 12 months to June 2026
n/a

The filings do not give us enough to work this out.

Return on capital
five annual reports to December 2025
n/a

The filings do not give us enough to work this out.

Quality score: 59 of 100. Price score: 18 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$22.15 a share, 42% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $15.59 to $35.87.

Pays no dividend

Prices from Tuesday’s close (6 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

0.0
0.0
-0.0
-0.0
-0.0
-0.0
2021202220232024202512 monthsto Jun '26

Spare cash swings from quarter to quarter here: a shortfall of $7 million in the past 12 months, a shortfall of $40 million in the year to December 2025.

Revenue
$230m$239m$322m$314m$239m
Operating margin
14.5%18.3%8.7%-4.0%-38.3%
Debt to equity
n/an/an/an/an/a
Shares outstanding
0.05bn0.05bn0.05bn0.05bn0.05bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive2 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Not enough data
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)1 of 8 checks we could run
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
  • DebtUnknown
  • Revenue growth, five yearsSlow, 7.9% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesRoughly flat

The quarter to June 2026

How the business did, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

  • Sales: $94 million last quarter, up 111% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $8 million, after a loss of $17 million a year ago.
  • It keeps 4 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, after losing 49 cents a year earlier.
  • Over the past 12 months it spent $7 million more cash than it brought in, compared with $44 million a year earlier.
  • 4% more shares than a year ago. Each share owns a bit less of the company.
  • Sales grew on a year ago in each of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$89m
December 2024$49m
March 2025$43m
June 2025$44m
September 2025$95m
December 2025$58m
March 2026$94m
June 2026$94m
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$10m
December 2024-$34m
March 2025-$54m
June 2025-$17m
September 2025$9m
December 2025-$18m
March 2026$5m
June 2026$8m

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
n/a
Last annual report (10-K)
3 March 2026
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
11 November 2026

Who owns it

1 long-term investor we follow owns it, unchanged from 1 last quarter. 200 funds in all.

Jun '25
Dec '25
Jun '26
Largest holders overall

From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.

Big holders and activists

7 investors own more than 5%; 1 of them is pushing for change.

  • Broadwood Capital, Inc.
    Passive investor
    at least 32.6%+1.5 pts
    (filed with 3 related holders)
    Since 13 March 2026
    What they said

    The Reporting Persons are filing this Schedule 13D/A to report a change in their respective beneficial ownership percentages. No material changes have been made to the Reporting Persons' Item 4 disclosure in the 13D/A previously filed on January 16, 2026 (Amendment No. 43),…

    Read the filing
  • Broadwood Capital, Inc.
    Activist
    Wants board seats
    at least 31.1%+0.9 pts
    (filed with 5 related holders)
    Since 14 January 2026
    What they said

    Item 4 is hereby amended and supplemented by the addition of the following: On January 14, 2026, Broadwood Partners entered into a letter agreement (the "Cooperation Agreement") with the Issuer. Pursuant to the Cooperation Agreement, the Issuer agreed to (i) accept the…

    Read the filing
  • BlackRock, Inc.
    Passive investor
    13.1%−1.9 pts
    Since 31 March 2026
  • at least 8.4%+2.6 pts
    (filed with 5 related holders)
    Since 30 June 2026
  • at least 6.5%0.0 pts
    (filed with 7 related holders)
    Since 14 January 2026
    What they said

    On January 14, 2026, the Issuer entered into a letter agreement (the "Cooperation Agreement") with Broadwood Partners, L.P. pursuant to which the Issuer agreed, among other things, to appoint Christopher Min Fang Wang to its Board of Directors, effective as of the date of the…

    Read the filing
  • at least 5.2%
    (filed with 2 related holders)
    Since 11 May 2026
  • Soleus Capital Master Fund, L.P.
    Passive investor
    at least 1.0%−4.2 pts
    (filed with 5 related holders)
    Since 30 September 2025
  • The Vanguard Group
    Passive investor
    Sold down below 5%
    Since 13 March 2026
  • Armistice Capital, LLC
    Passive investor
    Sold down below 5%
    Since 30 September 2025

From Schedule 13D and 13G filings: anyone owning more than 5% must file one.

What insiders did

In the last 12 months, 1 insider bought $12m of shares on the open market.

  • BROADWOOD PARTNERS, L.P.
    Director
    Bought
    Date
    13 March 2026
    Shares
    316,017
    Price
    $18.62
    Value
    $6m
  • BROADWOOD PARTNERS, L.P.
    Director
    Bought
    Date
    12 March 2026
    Shares
    299,432
    Price
    $18.12
    Value
    $5m
  • BROADWOOD PARTNERS, L.P.
    Director
    Bought
    Date
    11 March 2026
    Shares
    54,764
    Price
    $17.52
    Value
    $959,465

From Form 4 filings: insiders must report trades in their own company's shares within two days.

What could go wrong

Cheap for a reason is the question the numbers cannot answer.

Whether the price already reflects the risks is what the deep dive is for.

The deep dive

Everything above is arithmetic on public filings. The deep dive reads the last ten years of annual reports, the proxy statements, and the earnings calls, then argues the case the way Buffett, Klarman, and Hohn would, and checks every claim against the source.

  • What the business is worth, as a range, and the margin of safety at today’s price
  • Prices to start buying, buy, and buy hard
  • The three things that would make this a mistake
  • Every number footnoted to the filing it came from
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What a finished deep dive looks like

Not advice. Numbers on this page come from SEC filings and are updated each night; prices are updated again after the US market closes. The five-year figures are rounded.