Medtronic plc

Medtronic plc is the world's largest pure-play medical device company, designing and manufacturing a portfolio that spans cardiac rhythm management, structural heart, surgical robotics, neuromodulation, spinal technologies, and diabetes care, generating $33.5 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025 and an estimated $35.5 billion in fiscal 2026. From the first battery-powered wearable pacemaker built by founder Earl Bakken in a Minneapolis garage in 1957 to the pulsed-field ablation catheters reshaping electrophysiology today, Medtronic has spent seven decades at the centre of medical technology — a position that confers scale advantages in R&D, regulatory navigation, and hospital contracting that few competitors can match.

This is a story about whether that scale can finally translate into sustained above-market growth. After years of mid-single-digit organic expansion that tracked the med-tech industry rather than leading it, FY2026 delivered the company's strongest annual revenue growth in a decade — roughly 5.8% organic — driven by an electrophysiology franchise that grew 78% globally and crossed a $2 billion annualized run rate. The question now is whether Cardiac Ablation Solutions is the leading edge of a broader innovation-led re-acceleration, or a single-product tailwind that will fade as competitors catch up and the weight of slower-growth segments reasserts itself.

The file turns on a handful of debates that will determine whether Medtronic earns back the multiple compression it has suffered. The stock trades at roughly 13 times forward earnings as of mid-2026, down from over 50 times in 2021 and deep into territory that prices the business as a low-growth stalwart rather than the innovation franchise management describes. Getting that multiple right requires a view on ablation sustainability, Hugo robotics adoption, the Diabetes separation, and the durability of a capital-return model that has now delivered 49 consecutive years of dividend increases.