MoatScopeFortrea Holdings Inc.FTRE
Spin-off from Labcorp (Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings) (LH) · Jun 30, 2023 · Nasdaq
one share of Fortrea for every share of Labcorp
Documents
Both companies today
Moat ratings, quality scores and fair value estimates are MoatScope research opinions and refresh with the data pipeline. Price / FV below 1.00× means the shares trade under our base-case estimate.
What is being separated
Fortrea is a global contract research organization providing phase I through IV clinical development, clinical pharmacology, patient access and related services to pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device customers, built on more than 30 years of operations inside Labcorp.
Stated rationaleLabcorp said separating its Clinical Development and Commercialization Services business would let Fortrea serve CRO customers independently while Labcorp concentrates on diagnostics.
The four questions
Indiscriminate selling
StrongManagement incentives
PartialThe hidden jewel
AbsentLeverage
StrongThe write-up
Labcorp distributed Fortrea on June 30, 2023, one Fortrea share for each Labcorp share. Fortrea is Labcorp's former clinical development and commercialization services business — a contract research organization running clinical trials for pharmaceutical and biotech sponsors — and it raised roughly $1.6 billion of debt at separation to pay Labcorp a $1,605 million cash distribution as partial consideration for the business. On MoatScope's framework Fortrea carries no moat rating and a quality score of 14 at a $1.6 billion market value, trading at $17.70; its earnings-based fair value estimate is not meaningful because owner earnings do not cover the capital structure. Labcorp carries a Narrow moat and a quality score of 48 at $27.2 billion, 1.01× fair value.
Not investment advice. Terms are as stated in the latest filing; spin-off shares are often thinly covered and volatile in their first months. Write-up dated Sep 8, 2026.