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Rigel Pharmaceuticals, Inc. RIGL

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The bet you're really making is that Rigel keeps selling more of its three specialist pills, TAVALISSE, REZLIDHIA and GAVRETO, to the same blood and cancer doctors, and keeps the cash it throws off. You're betting the base business, about $290 million of sales this year, holds while a fourth drug it just launched and one experimental drug still in testing add upside you are not paying much for. Right now it is going well: first-half profit of $26 million, cash back up to $61 million, debt paid down. You pay about 17 times this year's earnings, near where it sat in 2024, the only clean year of profit it has ever posted.

Key data

Price$48.67
52-week range$24.95 to $52.24
P/E, TTM / FY28e2.9x / 8.3x
EV/EBITDA, TTM9.4x

RIGL · price with moving averages

Daily · 6MWeekly · 3Y
$4$16$29$41$54 Sep '23Apr '24Nov '24Jul '25Feb '26Sep '26 BID
EMAs82140

Source: market data.

The business

Rigel is a commercial hematology and oncology company that sells pills a specialist prescribes and a patient swallows at home. TAVALISSE (fostamatinib) is a SYK inhibitor for chronic immune thrombocytopenia, an autoimmune disorder that destroys platelets. REZLIDHIA (olutasidenib) is an IDH1 inhibitor for relapsed acute myeloid leukemia; its approval rested on a 153-patient Phase 2 registrational trial reported at ASCO in June 2021 (NCT02719574). GAVRETO (pralsetinib), in-licensed, treats RET-driven lung and thyroid cancers. Revenue is product sales plus lumpier contract and royalty income from partners who sell these drugs abroad. The moat is narrow but real: orphan indications with few competitors, patent exclusivity, and a commercial sales force already calling on these same doctors, which is why bolting on a fourth and fifth product costs little.

Inside the complete Back of Napkin

  1. 01The business
  2. 02The numbers
  3. 03Management
  4. 04How it fails or surprises you
  5. 05Closing thoughts
  6. 06Methodology

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