TacticScaleWhat Merck Does & How It Makes Money (MRK)
Updated October 2026 · reflects Merck's latest reported financials
Global pharmaceutical, vaccine and animal health company. Merck earns revenue mainly by selling patented prescription drugs and vaccines to healthcare systems worldwide, plus animal health products for livestock and pet owners.
How Merck makes money
Merck earns revenue mainly by selling patented prescription drugs and vaccines to healthcare systems worldwide, plus animal health products for livestock and pet owners. It also shares development costs and profits through co-development and licensing deals with partners like AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo.
What Merck does
Merck & Co. is one of the world's largest drugmakers, founded in 1891 and headquartered in Rahway, New Jersey. Its human health business spans oncology (Keytruda, Welireg), vaccines (Gardasil, Vaxneuvance, Capvaxive, RotaTeq, M-M-R II), hospital acute care (Bridion, Prevymis, Zerbaxa), cardiopulmonary (Winrevair, Adempas/Verquvo, Ohtuvayre), HIV (Isentress, Delstrigo) and diabetes (Januvia, Janumet). Merck also runs a large animal health unit that sells livestock, aquaculture and companion animal products, such as Bravecto flea-and-tick treatments, Nobivac vaccines, and Allflex livestock monitoring. It builds its pipeline through partnerships, including co-developing Lynparza with AstraZeneca, three deruxtecan ADCs with Daiichi Sankyo, and a licensed PD-1/VEGF bispecific antibody (LM-299) from LaNova.
Products & services
- Keytruda
- Gardasil
- Winrevair
- Capvaxive
- Bravecto
- Allflex Livestock Intelligence
What is Merck worth?
On an owner-earnings DCF, Merck's most-likely value is about $113 versus a recent price near $146 (23% above fair value). But TacticScale only calls a stock undervalued when the price sits below its conservative no-growth floor (~$71) with a margin of safety — so the honest verdict here is “Fairly priced — no edge.” Fair value earns its keep only at the extremes, not in the wide middle.
Price sits in the normal range — fair value isn't actionable here; it earns its keep only when price drops below the no-growth floor, or runs to roughly double the optimistic case.
Analysis, not advice. Fair value is a margin-of-safety estimate from a deterministic owner-earnings DCF, not a price target or recommendation. See the full breakdown →
Related companies
Pfizer (PFE) · Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) · Zoetis (ZTS) · Amgen (AMGN) · McKesson (MCK)