My First Equity Research Report on Haleon (HLN) - BUY Rating, $11.50 PT. Tear it apart.
I’m learning equity research and decided to make Haleon my first proper deep dive. I’ve tried to approach it like an actual institutional-style report: investment thesis, five-year financials, a DCF with defended assumptions, risk factors, catalysts, and, ultimately, a clear BUY/SELL call.
I’ve also gone through the annual report, MD&A, risk factors, and notes to the accounts rather than just relying on the headline numbers. Basically, I tried to read the stuff people usually skip.
Now I’d really appreciate some brutal, honest feedback from people who actually know equity research.
A few things I’d specifically like you to tear apart:
1. Valuation I’m using a 7.5% WACC and 3% terminal growth. Are those assumptions actually defensible for Haleon, or am I being too aggressive/conservative?
2. Thesis Is there anything important I’m missing? Particularly risks, catalysts, or something that could fundamentally undermine the margin-expansion story?
3. Structure Does the report resemble a proper equity research report, or is there too much unnecessary stuff and not enough of what actually matters?
4. Data Do any of the numbers look suspicious or inconsistent? Are there particular figures or sources I should cross-check?
5. Overall quality What would I need to change to take this from “student learning equity research” to something that looks genuinely institution-ready?
The basic thesis is:
Haleon owns brands such as Sensodyne, Advil, Panadol and Centrum. Revenue growth has been relatively weak, but margins have expanded significantly, with operating margins around 22.5% and gross margins around 64.8%. FCF is around £2B annually, while net debt/EBITDA has been coming down toward 2.6x.
My argument is that the market is overly focused on the revenue growth miss versus management’s 4–6% medium-term target and is underappreciating the margin expansion, cash generation and potential H2 2026 recovery.
My DCF gets me to roughly $11.50 versus a current price of about $9.70, so I’ve landed on BUY.
I’m still learning, so I’m much more interested in someone telling me where the analysis is wrong than telling me what I did well. [Haleon\_first\_equity\_report](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zztv6NQDh0gdN0kHf2xJDJbKccaxNZ2v)