Upstream Bio, Inc. (UPB) Stock Analysis
Upstream Bio, Inc.
▾ What's in the 34/100 risk score? (higher = riskier)
Contributions (weight × component score) sum to the total. This near-term score now includes fundamental health (leverage, FCF trend). It excludes the Altman Z score, whose retained-earnings input this filer does not report separately. See the Financial Health section for the full balance-sheet read.
How to read UPB (speculative micro-cap)
No model can pin a precise fair value on a company this small — but that does not mean there is nothing to learn. The useful questions are what the price is betting on, and whether the company can survive long enough to deliver it.
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Reverse-DCF — what growth the price assumes ↓
The single most useful number here: it backs out the growth the market is paying for. If that figure is "historically unprecedented," the price is running on hype, not fundamentals.
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2
Cash runway ↓
A pre-profit micro-cap lives or dies on whether it can fund itself to profitability before running out of money and diluting you.
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3
The raw financial statements + the 10-K ↓
At this scale, the actual numbers, insider ownership, and share-count trend tell you more than any ratio.
Standard DCF doesn't fit UPB well — but that's expected for this kind of business. The Rule of 40 (Pre-Profit Growth) Lens below uses the metrics actually used by analysts who value pharmaceuticals. Reverse DCF + Football Field also work as cross-checks.
⚠ At today's price, the market values UPB at about 72.5× its annual sales — a typical established company trades around 1–3×. Standard industry multiples (the bars below) collapse toward $0 at this scale, so they aren't the useful read. For a micro-cap with sales, lean on the Momentum trend, and cash runway — see 📍 What to focus on.
Football field: where does the price sit?
Different valuation methods produce different fair-value ranges depending on assumptions. Plotting them together lets you see at a glance whether the current price is reasonable across approaches, or only one specific lens.
Industry multiples sourced from: industry: Pharmaceuticals. See the Peer Basket section below for the peer comparison and its limited-comparables caveat.
How to read a company this small
This is a clinical-stage biotech with little or no revenue. Standard DCF requires future cash flows to discount — there's nothing to discount yet. The value is entirely in the drug pipeline and the probability that it works.
- Drug pipeline — phase of each candidate (Phase I → II → III → FDA approval); each phase has historical success probabilities
- Total Addressable Market (TAM) of the lead indication — bigger market = bigger payoff if approved
- Cash runway — months of cash left at current burn rate before they need to raise more (and dilute shareholders)
- Strategic partnerships — Big Pharma collaborations validate the science and bring milestone payments
- Patent / exclusivity timeline — how long until generics if approved
- Insider holdings + management track record — biotech execs with prior wins are a real signal
P/E, P/B, EV/Sales, ROE — meaningless when there's no revenue or earnings. DCF outputs are nonsense.
ClinicalTrials.gov for trial status. The 10-K's "Pipeline" section. Recent press releases on Phase II/III readouts. Conferences like JPM Healthcare or ASCO.
Classified as Clinical-Stage Biotech (confidence 85%). Disagree? An admin can override via the post edit screen.
⚠ Genuine comparables are scarce at this size, so peer multiples are unreliable here. Treat as rough context only — see 📍 What to focus on above.
How does UPB stack up against its closest peers?
We take the 8 same-industry companies most similar to UPB (similar size) and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If UPB is much more expensive on the same yardstick, that's a red flag — unless you have a specific reason it deserves a premium. For a leveraged business, EV/EBIT and FCF yield (both in the table) are usually more reliable than EV/Sales, because revenue multiples ignore differences in margins and debt.
▾ What's "EV / Sales" in plain English?
EV (Enterprise Value) = market cap + total debt − cash. It's "what you'd pay to buy the entire company outright" — you pay the market cap to shareholders and take over their debt, but you keep their cash. EV is fairer than market cap alone because it includes the debt the new owner inherits.
EV / Sales = EV ÷ annual revenue. So "2.5×" means investors pay $2.50 of enterprise value per $1 of yearly sales. Higher = market is paying more per dollar of sales (usually because they expect future growth or fat margins).
p25 / median / p75 are the 25th, 50th (middle), and 75th percentile of the peers' multiples. Half the peers fall between p25 and p75. The median (p50) is the typical peer — that's the benchmark we compare to.
| EV / EBITEV / EBITDA — Enterprise value divided by earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization. Why it matters: A classic "what would a private buyer pay" multiple — used in M&A. Strips out tax and capital-structure noise. Reference: 8–12x for mature businesses · 15–25x for growth · Below 5x often signals distress Full explanation → |
9.0x / 36.4x / 36.5x |
Bold middle number = median peer. Half the peers trade above it, half below. Computed over 8 same-industry peers; implausible multiples excluded.
⚠️ Important caveat: peer multiples only work if the peers are genuinely comparable. Always check the peer list below — if the auto-picker grabbed micro-caps or unrelated businesses, the comparison is noise. A medical-device giant priced against tiny biotech startups won't produce a useful signal.
▾ View peer list (8)
| Ticker | Company | Industry | Mcap | EV/Sales | EV/GP | EV/EBIT | FCF Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CYDY | CytoDyn Inc. | Pharmaceuticals | $301M | — | — | — | — |
| XOMAO | XOMA Royalty Corp | Pharmaceuticals | $318M | 40.0x | — | 36.4x | 0.1% |
| XOMAP | XOMA Royalty Corp | Pharmaceuticals | $319M | 40.2x | — | 36.5x | 0.4% |
| TKNO | Alpha Teknova, Inc. | Pharmaceuticals | $290M | 7.5x | 22.5x | — | 0.6% |
| ZNTL | Zentalis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. | Pharmaceuticals | $285M | — | — | — | — |
| TTRX | Turn Therapeutics Inc. | Pharmaceuticals | $284M | — | — | — | — |
| USNA | USANA HEALTH SCIENCES INC | Pharmaceuticals | $338M | 0.4x | 0.5x | 9.0x | 30.6% |
| NUVL | Nuvalent, Inc. | Pharmaceuticals | $345M | — | — | — | — |
Quality & solvency checks
Cheap stocks can be cheap for a reason. These screens warn when a low valuation comes paired with structural fragility.
Why it matters: Cheap-looking stocks (low P/E or P/B) often have low Z-scores because the market knows the company is dying. Z-score warns you before you fall into a value trap.
Reference: > 3.0 = safe zone · 1.81–3.0 = grey zone · < 1.81 = distress zone
Full explanation →
We can't produce a trustworthy Altman Z here: retained earnings weren't separately reported in our data, so a core input would have to be fabricated. Rather than show a categorical "distress" verdict from an invented number, we mark it unavailable. Judge financial health from the leverage, cash position, and the measurable Piotroski checks instead.
▾ The checks — what passed, what didn't (and what we couldn't measure)
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✗ Positive net incomeNet income -$143.4M in FY2025.Why this matters: Does the company actually earn a profit? Sustained losses eventually force it to raise money — diluting you — or take on debt.
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✗ Positive operating cash flowOperating cash flow -$133.3M (was -$59.2M the prior year).Why this matters: Profit can be an accounting figure; cash from running the business is harder to fake. Negative operating cash flow means the core business consumes cash and must be funded externally.
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✓ Cash flow backs up reported profitOperating cash flow -$133.3M vs net income -$143.4M.
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✗ Return on assets improvingReturn on assets -40.5% vs -13.0% a year ago.Why this matters: Is the company squeezing more profit out of each dollar of assets than last year? Rising = getting more efficient; falling = the opposite.
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✓ Debt load (vs assets)The filing reports no interest-bearing debt in either year (total assets $353.8M).
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✗ Short-term liquidity (current ratio)Current ratio 26.15x vs 44.63x a year ago.Why this matters: The current ratio compares assets it can turn to cash within a year against bills due within a year. Below 1.0 means it may struggle to cover near-term obligations.
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✗ Share count (dilution)Share count rose 293.6% (13.7M → 53.9M year-over-year).Why this matters: Issuing lots of new shares splits the pie into more pieces, shrinking your slice. Stable or falling share count protects existing owners.
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· Pricing power (gross margin) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
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✓ Sales per asset (asset turnover)Asset turnover 0.01x vs 0.00x a year ago.
Missing data is never counted as a pass or a fail — it's shown as n/a and excluded from the denominator. Each check compares the company against its own prior year.
Plain English: the company holds about $102M in cash and is burning roughly $133M/year in operations. At that pace, the cash lasts 9 mo before it must raise capital (diluting shareholders), take on debt, or cut spending.
Assumes constant burn and ignores financing/asset sales. For pre-profit biotech and growth companies, this matters more than a DCF — a great drug pipeline is worthless if they run out of money before approval.
What if you assume different inputs?
Here's where we land — and what happens if you change the assumptions. Drag the sliders to set your own Discount RateDiscount Rate — The annual return you demand for taking single-stock risk instead of buying a safe Treasury or index fund.
Why it matters: Higher discount rate = stricter valuation (a stock has to produce more cash to be worth holding). Lower = more generous.
Reference: 8–12% is standard · 9–10% matches S&P 500 historical return · Below 7% is illogical for single-stock risk
Full explanation → (the annual return you demand for single-stock risk) and terminal growth; the value updates live so you can see whether the stock looks cheaper or richer. The discount rate starts at 10.0%, the figure our model used for UPB. Open Advanced to also change beta, growth and the rate path.
Note: no headline intrinsic value is published for this stock (the valuation is held for a data-quality reason — see the notes above). The calculator below is a what-if tool: the values it produces are your assumptions played out, not our estimate.
A full intrinsic value isn't shown for UPB because the valuation is currently held for a data-quality reason (see the guardrail notes above). The reverse-DCF reading still works — it needs only the price and cash flow — but we won't publish a forward value until the underlying data passes our checks.
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⚙ Advanced — tinker with every input (beta, growth, rate path, margin → full intrinsic value)
A standard discounted cash flowDCF — Discounted Cash Flow — sums up all future cash a business will produce, adjusted for the fact that future dollars are worth less than dollars today.
Why it matters: It is the most fundamentally honest valuation method when applicable — but only works for companies with predictable, positive cash flow.
Reference: Best for: mature, profitable businesses. Fails for: pre-profit growth, banks, REITs.
Full explanation → (DCF) valuation is not meaningful for Upstream Bio, Inc. because the company exhibits negative operating cash flow and has not been profitable in the last three years. Investors are likely betting on the future success of its drug pipeline, which is not captured by backward-looking cash flow models. The market may be assigning value to potential drug approvals and commercialization, which are not in the model. The primary quantifiable risk is the continued negative operating cash flow, indicating ongoing cash burn.
As of 3 months ago
Anatomy of a share
What you're buying per share. Bars are at the same scale so you can see the relative size of revenue, costs, cash flow, and debt — not just read them in a table.
What's free cash flow / what do these mean?
Revenue per share — how much the business earns from customers, divided by the number of shares outstanding. Top of the income statement.
Earnings per share — profit left after operating costs, interest, and taxes, per share. Two versions appear on this page and are not interchangeable: GAAP diluted EPS uses the company's weighted-average diluted share count during the reporting period (this is the "earnings" in "price-to-earnings"); net income per current share divides annual net income by today's share count. They differ whenever the share count has changed.
Owner-earnings free cash flow per share — the cash the business produces for shareholders. Savng's owner-earnings FCF subtracts capital expenditures and stock-based compensation from operating cash flow (SBC is a real dilution cost even though it's non-cash). This is deliberately more conservative than "standard" FCF, which subtracts only capital expenditures — so our figure is lower than the headline FCF you'll see elsewhere. FCF funds dividends, buybacks, debt repayment, and acquisitions; a company can report positive earnings yet negative FCF.
Debt per share — total interest-bearing borrowings divided by shares. High debt-per-share next to thin FCF-per-share is a fragility signal.
What you actually need to decide
Every stock price is a disagreement. Here's the single thing that must go right for the bulls, the single thing that breaks the thesis, and the concrete signposts to watch so you can update your view as real results arrive.
- Announcement of positive clinical trial results (Phase 2/3)
- Securing new strategic partnerships or licensing deals
- Progress towards regulatory approval for lead drug candidates
The trend, in plain numbers (FY2024 → FY2025, latest reported)
Straight from the financial statements — no model, no opinion. For a small or unprofitable company, the direction of these numbers usually tells you more than any single valuation.
- Revenue grew +20% to $2.9M.
- Free cash flow is negative at -$143.8M — the cash burn widened vs last year.
- Still unprofitable at -$143.4M — loss widening.
Management & Leadership
Upstream Bio, Inc. is a clinical-stage biotechnology company. Samantha Truex serves as the Chief Executive Officer, leading the company's efforts in developing novel therapies for inflammatory and allergic diseases. She has been instrumental in guiding the company's strategic direction and pipeline development since its inception.
What They Make
Upstream Bio, Inc. is a biotechnology company focused on discovering and developing new treatments for inflammatory and allergic diseases, primarily targeting unmet medical needs in these areas. Their products are intended for patients suffering from conditions like asthma and other immune-mediated disorders.
End Markets
Revenue Drivers
Why Is It Priced Like This?
Why Customers Pay
What we use instead: earnings (P/E, EV/EBIT), book value (P/B) — computed from the figures this company does report, shown in the sections below. Those numbers are unaffected by the missing cash-flow data.
The market is pricing Upstream Bio based on expectations for its future drug pipeline and potential clinical trial successes, rather than current cash flow, which is negative. The company's revenue is growing at 9.5%/yr, but it is not yet profitable, indicating investors are focused on long-term potential. The market may be assigning value to the potential for breakthrough drug discoveries and subsequent market exclusivity, which is not in the model.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
The company funds itself primarily through equity raises, as indicated by its negative operating cash flow and lack of profitability, with no current dividends or buybacks.
Growth / Revenue DCF
Negative free cash flow: revenue/margin growth model used - standard FCF DCF is unreliable for companies still scaling.
Show advanced inputs
| Revenue Growth | 9.5% |
What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings FCF model. Standalone segment assumptions: none. It does not project its revenue segments independently; their combined effect is embedded in the historical revenue and cash-flow trend the model extrapolates. The calculator above can only approximate a segment's impact through the single consolidated growth rate — it cannot model any one line separately. For a true segment-level view, build a separate model from the company's segment disclosures.
Maturity & Competitive Position
Moat Signals
Revenue is growing at 9.5% per year over the last two years, from $2M to $3M.
Geography & Markets
Upstream Bio, Inc. is headquartered in the United States, with its research and development activities primarily based there. Specific geographic revenue mix is not available from current data sources.
Geographic Risks
Market Signals
These are timing signals, not value signals — they describe the stock's recent price behavior, not what the business is worth. Use them for the "the thesis looks good, but is now the moment?" question. Each tile below explains what it's saying.
Why it matters: Short-term contrarian indicator. Extreme readings often precede mean reversion, though not always.
Reference: 30–70 normal · >70 overbought · <30 oversold
Full explanation → (14)40.8NeutralMomentum is balanced — neither overbought nor oversold.
Why it matters: When the fast line crosses above the slow line, short-term momentum is turning up; below, turning down. A timing cue, not a value signal.
Reference: Line above signal = bullish momentum · below = bearish
Full explanation →BearishLine below signalThe fast trend is below the slow trend — short-term momentum is currently downward.
Technicals describe price, not the business. A great company can have a "bearish" tape (a buying chance) and a weak one a "bullish" tape (a trap). Pair these with the valuation and health sections above.
QUALITY
Data Quality & Risk Flags (5 notes — click to expand/collapse)
Guardrail Notes (5)
- FCF negative: revenue/margin growth model projects future cash flows from revenue trajectory.
- Model implies no positive equity value under these assumptions. Valuation is speculative/low-confidence.
- Illiquidity discount 7% applied (small/micro-cap — harder to exit, demand a margin).
- Extreme valuation (P/IV withheld — see the note above); output dominated by data/units issue (often a multi-class share-count mismatch). Suppressed.
- DATA UNAVAILABLE: per-share values suppressed due to missing/unreliable shares data.
FINANCIALS
Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)
From Upstream Bio, Inc.'s SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2.9M | -143.4M | $-2.66 |
| 2024 | 2.4M | -62.8M | $-5.58 |
| 2023 | 2.4M | -20.5M | $-12.95 |
Cash Flow (5yr)
| Year | Operating CF | CapEx | − SBC & adj. | Free Cash Flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | -133.3M | 165,000 | 10.3M | -143.8M |
| 2024 | -59.2M | 511,000 | 6.0M | -65.7M |
| 2023 | -37.9M | 144,000 | 3.3M | -41.4M |
How we define FCF: operating cash flow − capital expenditure − stock-based compensation (owner-earnings basis — SBC is a real cost to shareholders even though it's non-cash). Latest year: -133.3M − 165,000 − 10.3M (SBC & adj.) = -143.8M. This is the same owner-earnings FCF definition the valuation model uses, though the DCF's starting value is a projected from revenue × terminal margin, not this single year.
Balance Sheet
| Total Assets | 353.8M |
| Total Liabilities | 14.0M |
| Equity | 339.8M |
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