TacticScaleWhat Vericel Does & How It Makes Money (VCEL)
Updated October 2026 · reflects Vericel's latest reported financials
Biotech company making cell therapies for cartilage repair and severe burns. Vericel makes money by selling its commercial cell therapy and biologic products to hospitals, surgeons and burn centers that treat knee cartilage injuries and severe burns.
How Vericel makes money
Vericel makes money by selling its commercial cell therapy and biologic products to hospitals, surgeons and burn centers that treat knee cartilage injuries and severe burns. It handles the research, manufacturing and distribution of these products itself.
What Vericel does
Vericel Corporation is a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on two specialized markets: sports medicine and severe burn care. Its main sports medicine product, MACI, takes a patient's own cartilage cells, grows them on a porcine collagen membrane, and uses them to repair symptomatic full-thickness cartilage defects in the knee. It can treat one defect or several. In burn care, Vericel sells Epicel, a permanent skin replacement approved as a humanitarian use device for adults and children with deep-dermal or full-thickness burns. It also sells NexoBrid, an orphan biologic that removes dead tissue (eschar) from deep partial- and full-thickness thermal burns. The company was incorporated in 1989 as Aastrom Biosciences, took the Vericel name in November 2014, and is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts.
Products & services
- MACI
- Epicel
- NexoBrid
What is Vericel worth?
On an owner-earnings DCF, Vericel's most-likely value is about $66 versus a recent price near $40 (64% below fair value). But TacticScale only calls a stock undervalued when the price sits below its conservative no-growth floor (~$13) 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 →
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