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What this page is: Delvantic's full research page for Keysight Technologies, Inc. (KEYS) — AI-driven forensic equity research: mechanical valuation models (DCF, EPV, anchored-PE, scenario) plus three independent AI lenses (Quality / Value / Sentiment). Everything below is rendered server-side; you are not missing content that requires JavaScript. All scores are predictions and research opinions, not financial advice.
Our current read (analysis of 2026-08-23): Designation Low · Gem Score -18 (−100…+100 Quality+Value blend) · Quality 52 · Value -75 · Sentiment 17 (timing only, not weighted) · Composite fair value $128.54 vs $357.82 at analysis
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profile-header/price-overview— company profile, live quote, market capextended-analysis— the core: three AI lens reads with findings, scores, and the analyst memofuture-predictions— our forward price-band predictionsmarket-narrative/ai-findings/gpt-critique— narrative context, cross-model findings, and an adversarial critique of our own analysis (near the end of the document)- Members-only sections (render as login gates for anonymous readers):
price-history,income-trend,key-metrics,financials(statement tables),insider-trading. The analysis above is public; the raw data tables require a free account.
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any ticker resolves at delvantic.com/stock/TICKER ·
raw inputs are public-company filings and market data (via licensed data feeds);
every model, score, lens read, and prediction on this page is Delvantic's own analysis.
Keysight Technologies, Inc.
KEYS NYSEKeysight Technologies, Inc. is a global technology company that provides electronic design and test solutions for complex electronic systems. Headquartered in Santa Rosa, California, it serves customers in communications, networking, aerospace, defense, government, automotive, energy, semiconductor, and general electronics industries. The company operates through two main segments: Communications Solutions Group and Electronic Industrial Solutions Group. Its portfolio includes test and measurement instruments, design and simulation software, automated test systems, and related services that support the entire product lifecycle from research and design through verification, manufacturing, and deployment. Keysight Technologies, Inc. enables customers to develop, validate, and optimize wireless networks, data centers, high-speed digital interfaces, and advanced semiconductor devices. By providing tools for accurate measurement, modeling, and analysis, it plays a central role in helping organizations ensure performance, reliability, and regulatory compliance across a wide range of electronic and communication applications.
Price Overview
Price History (1 Year)
Revenue & Net Income Trend
| Period | Revenue | Net Income | Net Margin | YoY/QoQ |
|---|
Key Metrics
EPS (Diluted): 4.91
Total Equity: $5.88B
Shares: 173,000,000
Total Debt: $2.53B
Cash: $1.87B
EBITDA: $1.14B
Total Debt: $2.53B
Cash: $1.87B
Revenue: $5.38B
Revenue: $5.38B
Revenue: $5.38B
Total Equity: $5.88B
Tax Rate: 19.7%
Equity: $5.88B
Total Debt: $2.53B
Cash: $1.87B
Current Liabilities: $1.85B
Long-Term Debt: $2.53B
Total Debt: $2.53B
Total Equity: $5.88B
Shares: 173,000,000
Shares: 173,000,000
CapEx: -$128.00M
Shares: 173,000,000
Stock Price: $357.82
Net Income: $850.00M
Industry Benchmarks
Income Statement (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 15, 2026 9:11am (8d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $4.9B | $5.4B | $5.5B | $5.0B | $5.4B |
| Cost of Revenue | $1.9B | $2.0B | $1.9B | $1.8B | $2.0B |
| Gross Profit | $3.1B | $3.5B | $3.5B | $3.1B | $3.3B |
| Operating Expenses | $2.0B | $2.1B | $2.2B | $2.3B | $2.5B |
| Operating Income | $1.1B | $1.3B | $1.4B | $833.0M | $876.0M |
| Net Income | — | $1.1B | $1.1B | $614.0M | $850.0M |
| EBITDA | $1.4B | $1.6B | $1.6B | $1.1B | $1.1B |
| EPS | $4.84 | $6.23 | $5.95 | $3.53 | $4.93 |
| EPS (Diluted) | $4.78 | $6.18 | $5.91 | $3.51 | $4.91 |
Balance Sheet (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 11, 2026 12:50pm (12d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash & Equivalents | $2.1B | $2.0B | $2.5B | $1.8B | $1.9B |
| Total Current Assets | $3.8B | $4.2B | $4.8B | $4.3B | $4.3B |
| Total Assets | $7.8B | $8.1B | $8.7B | $9.3B | $11.3B |
| Current Liabilities | $1.3B | $1.4B | $2.0B | $1.4B | $1.9B |
| Long-Term Debt | $1.8B | $1.8B | $1.2B | $1.8B | $2.5B |
| Total Liabilities | $4.0B | $3.9B | $4.0B | $4.2B | $5.4B |
| Total Equity | $3.8B | $4.2B | $4.7B | $5.1B | $5.9B |
| Retained Earnings | $3.4B | $4.6B | $5.6B | $6.2B | $7.1B |
Cash Flow (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 15, 2026 9:11am (8d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operating Cash Flow | $1.3B | $1.1B | $1.4B | $1.1B | $1.4B |
| Capital Expenditure | -$174.0M | -$185.0M | -$196.0M | -$154.0M | -$128.0M |
| Free Cash Flow | $1.1B | $959.0M | $1.2B | $898.0M | $1.3B |
| Acquisitions (net) | -$178.0M | -$33.0M | -$85.0M | -$681.0M | -$2.0B |
| Net Debt Issued / (Repaid) | $0 | $0 | $0 | -$25.0M | $748.0M |
| Dividends Paid | — | — | — | — | — |
| Stock Buybacks | -$673.0M | -$849.0M | -$702.0M | -$439.0M | -$375.0M |
| Net Change in Cash | $301.0M | -$11.0M | $431.0M | -$674.0M | $76.0M |
Growth Trends (YoY %)
Last updated: Aug 15, 2026 9:11am (8d ago)| Metric | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue Growth | +9.7% | +0.8% | -8.9% | +8.0% |
| Gross Profit Growth | +12.4% | +2.4% | -11.3% | +6.5% |
| Operating Income Growth | +23.5% | +1.8% | -38.7% | +5.2% |
| Net Income Growth | — | -6.0% | -41.9% | +38.4% |
| EBITDA Growth | +13.3% | +0.9% | -30.0% | +4.3% |
Deep Analysis
Risk : Reward — if the last quarter repeats
Live · as of 2026-08-22 02:11Even the bull case prices 65% below today — the ratio here measures the model-vs-market gap, not payoff odds. Another quarter like the worst recent one costs 84%.
| Case | Growth | Margin | Fair value | vs price ($357.82) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bull — recovery | +29% | 19.9% | $126.20 | -65% |
| Base — stabilizes | +19% | 17.3% | $84.62 | -76% |
| Bear — keeps slipping | +10% | 14.7% | $55.20 | -85% |
| Stress — last quarter repeats | +10% | 14.8% | $56.53 | -84% |
Narrative Economics
market-narrative step).
AI Lens 4th lens · how AI reaches this business · 5-yr
2026-08-15AI infrastructure buildout raises test intensity per unit: 224G SerDes, 1.6T optics, co-packaged photonics, HBM and power-delivery validation all require more instrument channels, higher bandwidth and longer conformance cycles than the links they replace — Keysight sells into the validation step of the AI capex chain.
AI-accelerated simulation and digital twins let customers converge designs with fewer physical prototype spins, stretching bench-instrument replacement cycles; separately, low-end and mid-range box competition (Chinese vendors) erodes the volume tier where measurement science matters least.
Whether AI-era demand lands as durable, broad test intensity or a concentrated hyperscaler capex pulse — observable in Communications Solutions Group order growth breadth versus customer concentration disclosure, and in whether operating margin recovers off the 16% trough.
Traceable metrology and calibration standards, decades of RF/microwave and high-speed-digital measurement IP, conformance authority with 3GPP/automotive/aero standards bodies, and a global calibration/service footprint tied to a huge installed base.
AI Lens thesis
Keysight's core is not information processing that AI can substitute — it is converting physical electrical, optical and RF phenomena into trustworthy numbers, which requires hardware whose accuracy is certified against physical standards. Cheap intelligence therefore reaches Keysight mostly as demand: it makes designs cheaper and more numerous, makes AI-network silicon and optics vastly more complex, and shifts the engineering bottleneck from design generation to validation — the step Keysight owns. The offsets are real but second-order: better AI simulation can absorb some prototype iterations (Keysight partly hedges by owning ADS/EMPro/ESI simulation assets), AI-assisted engineering lowers the cost of building competent mid-tier instruments, and the software/seat portion of revenue carries ordinary AI seat risk. Internally, an R&D- and services-heavy cost base gives genuine AI cost leverage, but Keysight's 62% gross margin has been flat and operating margin has halved from 2023, so the burden of proof is that AI savings reach the P&L rather than funding the next M&A integration.
What the market may be underestimating
Upside Test intensity is superlinear in signal rate: moving from 112G to 224G lanes and to optical/electrical co-packaging multiplies required instrument channels and adds new measurement categories (jitter, thermal, power integrity) — revenue per validated port can rise even if unit shipments of end systems don't.
Downside AI-related test demand is concentrating in a handful of hyperscalers, network ASIC vendors and optical module makers with unusual purchasing leverage and lumpy programs; that mix can compress pricing and turn the annuity-like installed-base story into a capex-cycle story with a sharper downside than the historical customer mix implied.
Outcome range spread 43
Growth Outlook
Analyzed 2026-08-17 16:25The question every valuation on this page silently assumes: is this company likely to grow? Judged forward — the business, its category, the world — against what's already printed.
Claude Reading
The raw quarterly trajectory is genuinely impressive and deserves top billing: revenue has gone $1.22B → $1.29B → $1.30B → $1.31B → $1.35B → $1.42B → $1.60B → $1.72B across eight quarters, with the last two prints showing sequential acceleration of 13% and 8%. Net income in the April 2026 quarter hit $349M (20.3% margin) versus $257M a year prior — that's 36% YoY earnings growth on 31% YoY revenue growth. Annualizing the last two quarters gets you to roughly $6.6B revenue and ~$1.25B net income, versus FY2025 actuals of $5.38B and $850M. That's a real inflection, not a marketing slide. FCF of $1.28B on $1.41B OCF against only $128M capex confirms this is a capital-light compounder, not a cyclical capex hog.
That said, the synthesis DCF at $135 and the thesis-evaluation dunk on "57% FCF CAGR is unprecedented" are attacking a strawman. At current run-rate ($1.72B quarterly × 4 = $6.9B), assuming margins hold at 20% you're looking at ~$1.4B in NI and probably $1.6-1.7B in FCF within a year — that's not 57% CAGR territory, that's ~25-30% forward growth off a real base. At $61B market cap and ~$1.6B forward FCF, you're paying ~38x forward FCF. Expensive, yes, but not the "165% premium to fair value" the composite suggests. The DCF model is anchored to trailing FY2025 data that already looks stale — the April 2026 quarter alone is running 31% above the FY2025 quarterly average. The $130 fair value implicitly assumes reversion to sub-$5.5B revenue and $850M NI, which the trajectory flatly contradicts.
The contrarian case worth taking seriously isn't the DCF — it's the AI-capex-peak bear at weight 78. Test & measurement equipment is famously cyclical, and the acceleration from $1.31B to $1.72B in four quarters smells like a semiconductor capex + AI infrastructure test cycle that historically ends abruptly. Keysight's own history shows this: FY2023 revenue was $5.46B, FY2024 fell to $4.98B (-9%), and the October 2024 quarter printed a $73M loss. That cyclicality is not theoretical, it happened 18 months ago. Insider activity supports caution — six sales versus one small award in recent months, no opportunistic buying at $358 despite management having the best view of the pipeline. That's the tell. Also worth flagging: the pe_ratio of 72 and EV/EBITDA of 54 are TTM figures that include the weak base periods; forward multiples are meaningfully lower but still not cheap at ~35x earnings.
I partially dissent from the synthesis. The $135 fair value is mechanically wrong — it's fighting the tape with stale inputs. But the market-forces "prove-it" framing and the narrative layer's honest acknowledgment of a 165% premium to anchored fundamentals are directionally right: you're paying a full-cycle-peak multiple on what may be peak-cycle earnings, in a business that just lost 9% of revenue in a single year 18 months ago. Fair value on a normalized basis — assume $6.2B mid-cycle revenue, 18% net margin, $1.1B NI, 25x multiple appropriate for a quality but cyclical instrument compounder — lands around $27.5B market cap, or roughly $160/share. If you believe the AI/6G/defense stack sustains current run-rate through 2027, you can defend $250-280. Getting to $358 requires believing this cycle doesn't crest, which the historical pattern says is a bad bet at these multiples. Not a short (quality is real, FCF is real, moat is real), but new money at $358 is buying peak earnings at a peak multiple with insiders selling into the strength.
GPT Reading
What jumps out is not that Keysight is a bad business; it is that the stock price is attaching software-like expectations to a business whose recent history still looks like a high-quality cyclical instrument maker. The operating profile is solid: 2025 revenue was $5.38B, gross margin 62.1%, operating margin 16.3%, free cash flow $1.28B, and the balance sheet is fine with $1.87B cash against $2.53B debt. But the earnings path has been choppy in a way the current multiple barely acknowledges. Revenue fell from $5.46B in 2023 to $4.98B in 2024 before recovering to $5.38B in 2025, while operating income dropped from $1.36B in 2023 to $876M in 2025. On that 2025 base, the stock at $61.2B market cap trades at roughly 11.4x sales, 47.8x trailing FCF, and over 70x TTM earnings. Those are extraordinary multiples for a company with a five-year revenue CAGR of roughly flat and earnings CAGR negative.
The near-term recovery is real, but the market is paying as if recovery is only the first leg of a much larger structural step-up. Quarterly numbers show clear improvement: revenue rose from $1.22B in July 2024 to $1.72B in April 2026, and net margin rebuilt from the odd -5.7% quarter in October 2024 to 20.3% in the latest quarter. The last four quarters sum to about $6.09B of revenue and $1.05B of net income, so yes, the business has exited its trough. But even annualizing the latest quarter gets you only about $6.9B revenue and $1.4B net income, which still leaves the stock around 44x that run-rate earnings power. For a company generating mid-teens operating margins and low-single-digit through-cycle top-line growth, that is hard to defend. If you put a generous 25x multiple on $1.4B of normalized earnings, you get about $35B equity value before net debt adjustments, nowhere close to $61B.
The most important contradiction in the data is that profitability quality remains good while growth quality does not justify the premium. Free cash flow conversion is healthy, with $1.41B operating cash flow and only $128M capex in 2025, and gross margin above 60% speaks to real moat and product relevance. But return metrics are good, not transcendent: ROIC 10.8% and ROE 14.5% do not support paying 10.5x book and 54x EV/EBITDA unless you believe a long runway of high-teens or better earnings growth is imminent. I do not see that in the history presented. This is a company that earned $1.12B in 2022, $1.06B in 2023, then $614M in 2024 and $850M in 2025. That is resilience, but not compounding. At $357, investors are capitalizing a cyclical rebound as if it were a durable re-rating into a higher-growth model.
The best argument against my view is that the annual numbers lag a genuine inflection. The latest two quarters were $1.60B and $1.72B in revenue with 17.6% and 20.3% net margins, materially above the 2025 average. If that cadence reflects a semiconductor, AI infrastructure, aerospace, and automotive test upcycle arriving all at once, then 2026 could look dramatically better than 2025. A business doing, say, $6.5B-$7.0B revenue at 22%-24% operating margin and perhaps $1.5B-$1.7B of free cash flow deserves a premium, especially if software/services mix is rising and cyclicality is dampening. The negative 2024 quarter may also include one-offs that distort the trailing P/E optics, and the insider sales disclosed are small enough to be almost meaningless for valuation. In other words, if this is not a mature instrument vendor but an increasingly indispensable picks-and-shovels provider to several secular growth markets, the multiple can stay elevated longer than valuation work suggests.
What would change my mind is simple: I need to see the recovery convert into a new earnings base, not just a rebound from a slump. If Keysight can sustain at least $1.65B quarterly revenue for the next three to four quarters and deliver full-year net income above $1.4B with free cash flow above $1.6B, then the case for a structurally higher multiple gets stronger. I would also want evidence that operating margins are moving back toward the 2022-2023 peak zone rather than merely bouncing with volume. Absent that, a fairer range looks closer to 25x-30x normalized earnings or about 7x-8x sales, which points more to roughly $220-$260 than $358.
Grok Reading
Keysight’s recent operating trajectory is unambiguously a recovery story, and the numbers make that plain. Revenue has climbed five straight quarters from the $1.22–$1.31B trough range into $1.60B and then $1.72B, with net margins expanding from the mid-teens back above 20% in the most recent print. Annual 2025 revenue of $5.38B and net income of $850M mark a clear rebound from the depressed 2024 year ($4.98B, $614M), and free cash flow of $1.28B against only $128M of capex underscores a genuinely high-quality, capital-light franchise with 62% gross margins and a clean balance sheet ($1.87B cash, $2.53B debt, D/E 0.43). The business is real, the cyclical bottom looks behind it, and the AI-infrastructure, 6G, automotive, and defense test demand that management and the street cite is showing up in the order book.
None of that justifies the price. At $357.82 and a $61B market cap the stock trades at roughly 72x trailing earnings, 11.5x sales, and 54x EV/EBITDA. Longer-term momentum is still negative—revenue CAGR near flat at –0.8%, earnings CAGR –10.3%—so the market is not paying for a proven compounder; it is paying for a multi-year fantasy in which free cash flow compounds at rates no $5B-scale test-and-measurement company has ever sustained. The valuation synthesis fair value near $135 is directionally correct; even a generous 25–30x multiple on a normalized $1.0–1.2B earnings power only gets you into the mid-$100s to low-$200s. The gap between that range and $358 is a narrative premium, not a cash-flow premium, and the insider tape (repeated open-market sales, almost no buying) does nothing to support the optimism.
The strongest counter-argument is the slope of the last four quarters themselves. If $1.72B is the new run-rate floor rather than a peak-cycle spike, annualized revenue is already pushing $6.5B+ with 20% net margins, which would produce well over $1.2B of earnings and still-rising FCF. Attach a software-and-services mix shift, sticky installed-base economics, and multi-year defense/aerospace tailwinds, and a quality industrial can arguably clear 30–35x forward earnings. Under that framing the stock is “only” 40–50% expensive rather than 60%+, and any sustained beat-and-raise cycle could keep the multiple from collapsing. I weigh that case as real but incomplete: even the optimistic math still leaves the shares priced for perfection on growth that the five-year history simply does not support, and 54x EV/EBITDA leaves almost no room for a China slowdown, AI capex digestion, or competitive pricing pressure.
I would reverse to neutral or constructive only if two things arrive together: (1) two more quarters of mid-teens-or-better organic revenue growth with operating margins holding above 18–20%, proving the recovery is structural rather than snap-back, and (2) a material derating toward $200–220 that brings the multiple back inside historical quality-industrial bounds. Absent that combination, the risk/reward at $358 is skewed hard to the downside.
Big-3 Panel — where each AI stands
Advanced Analysis Forensic deep-dive · separate lenses
Revenue moved from $4.94B (2021) to $5.38B (2025) with gross margins consistently in the 62-65% band, indicating durable pricing power in scientific/test instruments. FCF has been solid throughout ($898M-$1.28B/yr), including $1.28B in the most recent year, and OCF/NI at 1.43x with accruals of -3.5% of assets point to genuine cash-backed earnings. Beneish M at -2.56 and Altman Z at 8.64 show no mechanical red flags. Diluted share count has fallen from 187M to 173M (a -1.9% CAGR), and buybacks run 4.6x SBC, so per-share value is being concentrated rather than eroded.
Verify before trusting this (5)
- Whether the 2024 operating margin drop reflects restructuring/one-time charges or a permanent cost-base reset
- Segment mix and end-market exposure (semiconductor test vs commercial comms vs aerospace/defense) driving the 2024 revenue dip
- Debt maturity schedule and covenants underlying the -$661M net debt position
- Any pending M&A commitments (Spirent-type deals) that would change the capital structure
- Customer concentration in top segments
The e2e composite fair value of $130.82 (signal-adjusted $134.96) implies roughly 62% downside from $357.82 - a gap too wide to ignore even after discounting the EPV floor of $51.60 as a punitive no-growth scenario. The DCF at $129.66 and anchored PE at $212.35 bracket a deserved range of roughly $130-$210; even the most generous of these leaves the stock ~40% above deserved value. High earnings quality and a strong franchise argue for the upper end of that range, but not for $358.
Verify before trusting this (4)
- Whether the operating margin reset from 25% to 16% is structural (mix, competition) or temporary (cycle, integration) - transcript commentary on margin bridge
- Forward orders/book-to-bill in 5G, semi test, and auto electrification segments
- Software and services mix trajectory - the linchpin of the platform-monopoly bull case
- China competitive pressure on pricing in lower-end T&M
The macro tape is mildly risk-on (VIX 14, S&P near highs) and KEYS at beta 1.21 gets a modest lift from that, but this is not a euphoric setup - it is a name being carried by an intact-but-moderate platform-monopoly story around test-and-measurement for 5G, AI data centers, EVs, and photonics. Recent news flow is genuinely supportive: a prominent role in the Verizon/Lockheed/Nvidia 5G drone-detection demo, an OCP APAC Summit presentation flagged as '8% undervalued', an ESA contract win, and peer Fortive raising guidance - all landing days before the Aug 18 Q3 print. Momentum has flipped positive short-term (8% recent vs -0.8% long-term).
Verify before trusting this (4)
- Aug 18 Q3 print reaction - a beat that fails to hold suggests the 'fully valued' meme is dominating
- Whether AI-infrastructure/data-center commentary in the call extends narrative attachment
- Semi-cap and T&M peer tape (KLAC, TER, FTV) for sector rotation signals
- Any China commodity-pricing commentary that revives the bear frame
Keysight's core is not information processing that AI can substitute — it is converting physical electrical, optical and RF phenomena into trustworthy numbers, which requires hardware whose accuracy is certified against physical standards. Cheap intelligence therefore reaches Keysight mostly as demand: it makes designs cheaper and more numerous, makes AI-network silicon and optics vastly more complex, and shifts the engineering bottleneck from design generation to validation — the step Keysight owns. The offsets are real but second-order: better AI simulation can absorb some prototype iterations (Keysight partly hedges by owning ADS/EMPro/ESI simulation assets), AI-assisted engineering lowers the cost of building competent mid-tier instruments, and the software/seat portion of revenue carries ordinary AI seat risk. Internally, an R&D- and services-heavy cost base gives genuine AI cost leverage, but Keysight's 62% gross margin has been flat and operating margin has halved from 2023, so the burden of proof is that AI savings reach the P&L rather than funding the next M&A integration.
None surfaced.
Verify before trusting this (8)
- CSG order growth vs. semi capex
- new 224G/1.6T test program wins
- automotive and defense test budgets
- test-to-R&D spend ratio at customers
- lab capacity constraints reported
- service/calibration backlog
- simulation software revenue growth
- instrument replacement cycle length
The world is spending on two things Keysight sells picks-and-shovels into: AI compute/networking build-out and re-armament. Both are design-intensive, which front-loads test-and-measurement demand ahead of volume production. Against that, the macro tape is restrictive (10y 4.63, macro headwinds) and this remains discretionary capex tied to customer R&D budgets — the cycle is up, not permanently up. Structurally, rising electronic complexity (higher data rates, electrification, advanced packaging) is a slow, durable tailwind to test content per design, and the software/simulation layer makes displacement costly. The honest structural rate is a mature-but-compounding high-single-digit revenue business with margin upside, not a hypergrowth platform.
When we made this prediction on Jul 20, 2026, KEYS was $315.90. We expect it to be $282.00 by Jan 2027, and we consider it great value under $240.00. This is an early model (v0.4.0) — the direction is more reliable than the exact price. Made Jul 20, 2026.
Blue is our prediction, starting the day we made it. Grey is a slower route to the same place — the same destination, taking longer. Black is the actual price, so you can see how we are doing.