Key Takeaways
- Twist Bioscience shares fell 9% today with no company news, as Illumina dropped 5% in a broad selloff in tech and AI stocks.
- Twist’s run since mid-September came from AI deals and an analyst’s AI call, so the stock now moves with how investors feel about AI.
- The business keeps growing: fiscal third-quarter revenue rose 23% to $118.4 million, and management expects $456 million to $457 million for fiscal 2026.
- Twist still trades at about twice its five-year average forward sales multiple, and its fiscal fourth-quarter report in the coming weeks is the next test.
Twist Bioscience (TWST) shares are down 9% today, and the company didn’t even do anything to deserve it this time.
It has company. Illumina (ILMN) is down 5% as the tech-heavy Nasdaq slid more than 2% after earnings from Meta and Tesla did little to ease investors’ worries about AI spending. Other genomics stocks fell with them.
Twist trades like an AI stock now
Twist’s run since mid-September has been an AI story. First, it agreed to feed antibody data from its labs into Eli Lilly’s AI drug discovery platform, TuneLab. Then, on Sept. 24, Leerink Partners called Twist “the single most important beneficiary” of Anthropic’s push into biology research, and the stock jumped 16%.
Every protein an AI model designs still needs real DNA built and tested in a lab. As CEO Emily Leproust put it on Twist’s fiscal third-quarter call in August, AI “is doing exactly what we thought it would do. It just creates more sequences.”
That story helped the stock more than quadruple over the past year (through Wednesday’s close). It also ties Twist to AI sentiment, so on a day when investors are selling AI, Twist gets sold too.
And the AI premium shows up in the valuation. Twist traded at 18x forward sales at Wednesday’s close, more than double its 8.3x average over the past five years…
(Today’s drop takes it closer to 16x, still about twice that average.)
TIKR tracks 13 analysts on Twist Bioscience. How many say “Buy”?
See the full breakdown of Buy, Hold, and Sell ratings on Twist Bioscience, along with Wall Street’s revenue and earnings estimates, all in one place. More than 500,000 investors use TIKR to research stocks like this one. See Twist Bioscience’s Analyst Ratings
The business is doing its part
The good news: the business under the AI story keeps growing. In the fiscal third quarter (the three months to June), revenue rose 23% to $118.4 million, Twist’s 14th straight quarter of sequential growth. Management also raised its fiscal 2026 forecast to $456 million to $457 million…
…and the 12 analysts behind the consensus expect about 20% more growth in fiscal 2027. Wall Street’s targets have chased the stock too: the consensus target has climbed from $39 a year ago to $164, well above today’s price.
My take: today’s drop looks like AI jitters spilling over onto Twist. But at twice its usual sales multiple, the stock needs AI demand to keep showing up in the numbers.
The next check is Twist’s fiscal fourth-quarter report, due in the coming weeks. Management’s guidance implies record revenue of about $124 million for the September quarter, and it has promised breakeven adjusted EBITDA for that quarter.
So what is Twist Bioscience stock actually worth?
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Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
