Smith & Nephew (SNN) Stock Forecast 2026: Q3 2025 Results, $500m Buyback and New Board Signals

LONDON — December 1, 2025 — Smith & Nephew plc (LSE: SN., NYSE: SNN) heads into the final month of 2025 with its turnaround story largely on track, but investor sentiment still split between cautious “hold” and selective “strong buy”.

The NYSE‑listed ADR is trading around $33 per share, roughly 29% higher than a year ago and about 40% above its 52‑week low of $23.69, but still around 14% below its recent high near $39. ^[1]

Below is a detailed look at the latest numbers, news and forecasts as of 1 December 2025.

Where Smith & Nephew stock stands today

On current data, Smith & Nephew carries a market capitalisation of about $14 billion and generates roughly $5.9 billion in trailing 12‑month revenue with around $491 million in net income. ^[2]

Key valuation metrics on SNN’s ADR today:

Price: about $33.28 per share (early U.S. trading, 1 December 2025)
Market cap: ~$14.1 billion ^[3]
Trailing P/E: ~60x based on depressed 2024 earnings
Forward P/E: ~20x, reflecting expectations of stronger 2025–26 profits ^[4]
Dividend: about $0.73 per ADR, a yield of roughly 2.2%, with the last ex‑dividend date on 3 October 2025 ^[5]
52‑week range:$23.69–$38.79 ^[6]

For context, 2024 revenue grew 4.7% to $5.81 billion, while earnings jumped 56.6% to about $412 million, giving management a stronger base going into 2025. ^[7]

Q3 2025: solid growth, narrow revenue miss

The most important recent datapoint is the Q3 2025 trading update released on 6 November. Smith & Nephew reported: ^[8]

Q3 revenue:$1.50 billion (vs $1.41 billion in Q3 2024)
Underlying revenue growth:5.0%
Reported growth:6.3%, helped by currency tailwinds
Segment growth (underlying):
- Orthopaedics: +4.1%
- Sports Medicine & ENT: +5.1%
- Advanced Wound Management: +6.0%

Despite those respectable numbers, the quarter slightly missed market expectations: a Reuters poll had looked for revenue of about $1.51 billion, and the stock fell around 9% on the day, its biggest one‑day drop since late 2024. ^[9]

The pain point remains U.S. knee implants. While Orthopaedics overall grew mid‑single digits, management acknowledged that strong hip implant growth is still offsetting weaker knees in the U.S., where peers like Johnson & Johnson and Stryker have been posting stronger updates. ^[10]

That contrast – decent group‑level progress but underperformance in a key sub‑segment – is a big reason markets treated Q3 as “good, but not good enough”.

Turnaround plan, 2025 guidance and the $500m buyback

Q3 also confirmed that Smith & Nephew’s three‑year “12‑Point Plan” is nearing completion and is finally visible in the numbers:

Management reaffirmed full‑year 2025 underlying revenue growth “around 5%” (about 5.7% on a reported basis).
They expect trading profit margin to rise to 19–20%, up from 18.1% in 2024 – a meaningful step‑up. ^[11]
Crucially, free cash flow guidance was raised to around $750 million for 2025, from “more than $600 million” previously, which the company describes as more than five‑fold higher than in 2023. ^[12]

That cash‑flow improvement underpins a major capital‑return move: a $500 million share buyback, announced after a strong Q2 in which revenue grew 7.8% to $1.55 billion, half‑year revenue rose 4.7% to $2.96 billion, and pre‑tax profit jumped 43% to $362 million. ^[13]

The Q3 update confirms that the buyback is now completed, signalling management confidence in the balance sheet and the durability of cash generation. ^[14]

Looking ahead, investors are focused on two Capital Markets Days in London and New York on 8 and 11 December 2025, where Smith & Nephew has promised to unveil a refreshed strategy, mid‑term priorities and financial goals, along with a deeper dive into its innovation pipeline. ^[15]

Operational recovery and 2026 outlook

Independent analysis broadly agrees that 2025 has been one of Smith & Nephew’s most stable periods in recent years.

A detailed review from TIKR notes that, through the first nine months of 2025, the company has delivered year‑on‑year growth across all three major segments, driven by: ^[16]

Better supply‑chain reliability, especially in Orthopaedics
Stronger volumes in Sports Medicine & ENT
Solid demand in Advanced Wound Management
Gradual margin improvement thanks to cost control and manufacturing efficiencies
Healthier cash flow supported by more disciplined working capital

TIKR’s internal valuation model suggests that, under reasonable assumptions for revenue growth, margins and exit multiples, the stock could have meaningful upside by 2029, although that is scenario‑based rather than a firm prediction. ^[17]

Management itself emphasises that the 2026 story is about consistency: taking the operational fixes and new products that boosted 2025 and proving that they can be sustained at scale.

New governance: board refresh and CFO relocation

Corporate governance has also moved to the foreground going into December.

From 1 December 2025, Thérèse Esperdy joins the board as an independent non‑executive director and Senior Independent Director (SID) designate. She will sit on the Nomination & Governance and Remuneration committees and is expected to take over as SID from Angie Risley after the 2026 AGM. ^[18]

Esperdy brings heavyweight capital‑markets and board experience:

Non‑executive chair of Imperial Brands plc
Non‑executive director at Moody’s Corporation
Former senior independent director of National Grid plc
Former global chair of JP Morgan’s Financial Institutions Group, co‑head of Asia‑Pacific Corporate & Investment Banking, and global head of Debt Capital Markets ^[19]

Chairman Rupert Soames has framed her appointment as adding deep financial services and transatlantic board expertise at a time when Smith & Nephew is increasingly focused on the U.S. market. ^[20]

That U.S. tilt is also evident in the decision for Chief Financial Officer John Rogers to relocate from the UK to the U.S., reflecting the fact that more than half of group revenue now comes from the United States and aligning his pay more closely with U.S. market norms. Soames has simultaneously pushed back on the idea of an imminent London‑to‑New York primary listing switch, while acknowledging that executive pay and talent competition are heavily U.S.‑centric. ^[21]

Activist investor Cevian Capital, which has built a stake of around 8–9%, continues to press for more value creation, including through sharper operational execution and a potentially more radical portfolio strategy. ^[22]

Product momentum: wound therapy, sports medicine and digital tools

Fundamentally, Smith & Nephew’s investment case rests on its product portfolio and clinical data.

A standout late‑2025 catalyst is a 22,000‑patient real‑world study of the company’s PICO single‑use negative pressure wound therapy (sNPWT) system. Using data from the Premier PINC AI database, the analysis found that PICO at −80 mmHg delivered significantly better outcomes than a rival −125 mmHg device (Prevena) in both cardiovascular and orthopaedic surgery: ^[23]

Up to 63.9% lower wound dehiscence incidence
Shorter length of stay (about 9% shorter for cardiovascular, nearly 30% shorter for orthopaedic cases)
Meaningful cost reductions, with admission‑related costs down roughly 10–22% depending on cohort

The study is observational rather than a randomised trial, but its size and health‑economic focus play directly to what hospital systems and payers care about: fewer complications and lower total cost of care. ^[24]

Meanwhile, the Q3 update highlighted a steady drumbeat of new launches: ^[25]

CORIOGRAPH™ Pre‑Op Planning and Modeling Services extended into total shoulder arthroplasty, rounding out a multi‑joint pre‑operative planning platform.
Q‑FIX™ KNOTLESS All‑Suture Anchor expanded the sports‑medicine portfolio for soft‑tissue fixation across multiple joints.

These launches support management’s assertion that more than half of revenue growth now comes from products introduced in the last five years, underpinning the growth and margin narrative. ^[26]

How analysts and models view SNN now

Analyst sentiment on Smith & Nephew is constructive but not euphoric.

Street ratings and price targets

MarketBeat aggregates 8 sell‑side analysts covering SNN: ^[27]

Consensus rating:Hold
Mix: 6 Hold, 1 Buy, 1 Strong Buy
Average 12‑month target:$35.75, implying about 7% upside from ~$33
Target range:$34–$37.50

Kepler Capital Markets recently upgraded SNN to “strong‑buy”, while Royal Bank of Canada maintains an “outperform” stance. Other firms such as Canaccord Genuity and Weiss Ratings remain more cautious with Hold‑type ratings and mid‑$30s price objectives. ^[28]

StockAnalysis, which tracks a smaller subset of analysts, also shows a “Hold” consensus with an average target around $32.83, essentially flat versus the current price. ^[29]

Zacks Investment Research upgraded Smith & Nephew to a Rank #2 (Buy) in mid‑September, citing improving earnings momentum and relative value compared to some U.S. medtech peers. Zacks lists a wide price‑target band from roughly $27.71 to $41, underlining disagreement on the amount of upside but generally framing the risk‑reward as balanced to slightly positive. ^[30]

WallStreetZen’s meta‑consensus, built from a larger pool of analysts, points to continued revenue and earnings growth into 2025–26, albeit from still‑rebuilding margins. ^[31]

Technical picture and trading strategies

Technically, SNN has enjoyed a strong 2025:

Investor’s Business Daily reported in August that the ADR’s Relative Strength (RS) Rating rose to 88, placing it among the stronger performers in its industry and noting a breakout above a buy point near $31.72. ^[32]
Even after the 9% drop on Q3 day, shares remain up around the high‑20s percent year‑on‑year. ^[33]

On 1 December 2025, quantitative service StockTradersDaily characterised the picture as: ^[34]

Near‑term: strong positive sentiment
Mid‑term: neutral
Long‑term: positive bias but with elevated downside risk because long‑term support levels are relatively far below the current price

They outline both long and short rule‑based strategies around the current low‑$30s area, which highlights how tactically split the market is: some traders see further upside, others are positioning for pullbacks.

Institutional flows

A fresh MarketBeat report on 1 December 2025 notes that SG Americas Securities LLC has initiated a new position of 10,484 shares (roughly $321,000) in SNN, while Bank of Montreal increased its holding by more than 300% to about 3.4 million shares. Overall, institutional investors are estimated to own around 25–26% of the float. ^[35]

That mix of cautious analyst ratings, reasonably full valuations and growing institutional interest is very much the “late‑turnaround” profile: the worst appears behind the company, but the market wants proof that higher margins and growth are durable.

Strategic overhangs and key risks

Despite clear progress, several issues still weigh on sentiment:

U.S. knee implants lag peers. Q3 again showed only modest growth in this business, which is strategically important and politically sensitive given strong updates from U.S. rivals. ^[36]
Tariff headwinds. Smith & Nephew expects a net $15–20 million tariff hit in 2025, with further compounding in 2026, partially offset by internal mitigations. ^[37]
Activist pressure and portfolio structure. Earlier in 2025, management publicly indicated it was open to considering more radical options – including a possible break‑up – as part of dialogue with activists such as Cevian. No formal process has been announced, but the question of whether Smith & Nephew should remain a single group or separate its businesses remains a live debate. ^[38]
Valuation risk. A trailing P/E near 60x and forward multiple around 20x mean SNN is not obviously cheap; much of the turnaround is already priced in, so any stumble on knees, tariffs or execution could hit the shares disproportionately. ^[39]

What to watch next

Going into 2026, several milestones will likely shape the Smith & Nephew investment narrative:

Capital Markets Days (8 and 11 December 2025) – where investors expect detailed medium‑term margin targets, capital‑allocation plans post‑buyback, and clarity on whether management leans toward “fix and grow” or more structural moves. ^[40]
Board and leadership impact – how the arrival of Thérèse Esperdy and the CFO’s U.S. relocation translate into decisions on portfolio, listing venue and shareholder returns. ^[41]
Further clinical and product data – especially follow‑up evidence on PICO wound therapy, continued expansion of the digital CORIOGRAPH platform and sports‑medicine launches. ^[42]
Full‑year 2025 results on 2 March 2026, which will show whether management has delivered on its targets for 5% underlying revenue growth, 19–20% trading margin and ~$750m free cash flow. ^[43]

For now, Smith & Nephew sits in the “earned another look” camp: a company with improving operations, credible cash‑flow growth and solid clinical assets, but also an uneven track record, demanding valuation and important execution tests still ahead.