PROSPECT CAPITAL CORP (PSEC) Stock Analysis
PROSPECT CAPITAL CORP
▾ What's in the 35/100 risk score? (higher = riskier)
Contributions (weight × component score) sum to the total. This near-term score now includes fundamental health (leverage, FCF trend, DCF applicability). See the Financial Health section for the full balance-sheet read.
How to read PSEC
A profitable, cash-generating business — our discounted-cash-flow estimate is the primary lens, cross-checked against what growth the price implies and against peers.
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The verdict + intrinsic value (our DCF) ↓
Our estimate of what a share is worth, versus today's price.
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Reverse-DCF + the interactive calculator ↓
See the growth the price assumes, then flex every assumption yourself to pressure-test it.
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Football field + peers ↓
A cross-check across methods and against comparable companies.
What growth must the market believe? Reverse DCF — Instead of asking "what is this stock worth?", asks "what growth rate is the current market price already assuming?"
Why it matters: It crystallizes the bull thesis as a single number you can argue with. If the market expects 40% growth for 10 years and you do not believe that, the stock is overvalued.
Reference: 10–15% = sustainable for strong companies · 20–25% = exceptional · 30%+ = historically very rare
Traditional DCF asks "what is this stock worth?" Reverse DCF flips it: it treats today's price as correct and solves for the growth rate that justifies it. In plain terms — if our model is right about everything else, the company's cash flow would have to grow (or shrink) by this much every year for the next 10 years for today's price to make sense. If that required growth looks unrealistic, the price is stretched; if it looks easy to beat, the price may be cheap.
Why it matters: A company can show big profits on paper while burning through cash. FCF is what actually fills the bank account.
Reference: Healthy mature businesses convert 8–15% of revenue into FCF · Growth companies often negative
Full explanation → must grow at:
▾ Exactly how this 10-year figure is computed
Forecast length: 10 years, single flat growth rate (no fade)
Terminal growth after year 10: 3.0%
Discount rate: 9.2% (the rate the model used)
Price used: $2.22 — the live price shown on this page (not frozen)
Method: solve for the constant annual growth rate that makes the discounted 10-year FCF stream + terminal value equal today's price.
Market is pricing in shrinking cash flow — often a sign of undervaluation OR a dying business. Check leverage, the cash-flow trend and the measurable financial-health screens below to tell them apart.
For reference: The market is pricing in a material multi-year contraction in cash flow (≈31.1%/yr) — a significant decline, not a flat business.
▾ How we computed this · Reality check thresholds · Assumptions
- Starting FCF/share: $1.19 (TTM)
- 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 →: 9.2% — standard 8-12%; 9-10% matches S&P 500 historical return - Terminal Growth RateTerminal Growth Rate — The growth rate we assume the company holds forever, after the explicit 10-year forecast period ends.
Why it matters: It anchors the long-tail value. Cannot mathematically exceed long-term GDP growth or the company eventually becomes larger than the global economy.
Reference: 2–3% (matches long-term US GDP growth) · Above 4% is mathematically problematic
Full explanation →: 3.0% — matches long-term GDP growth - Forecast horizon: 10 years explicit + terminal perpetuity
| ≤ 0% | Priced for decline — likely undervalued OR dying business |
| 5-12% | Reasonable; sustainable for quality businesses |
| 12-18% | Demanding — strong execution required |
| 18-25% | Exceptional — few companies sustain for a decade |
| 25-35% | Heroic — historically very rare |
| 35%+ | Borderline impossible at scale |
Sustaining 30%+ cash-flow growth for a full decade at scale is exceedingly rare — the bar is brutally high.
Use the interactive calculator below to change the discount rate, growth and terminal-growth assumptions and watch the value move.
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: broad market average (sector unknown). See the Peer Basket section below for the peer comparison and its limited-comparables caveat.
How does PSEC stack up against its closest peers?
We take the 8 same-industry companies most similar to PSEC (similar size) and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If PSEC 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, FCF yield (in the table) is 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RWAYI | Runway Growth Finance Corp. | Unknown | $1.0B | — | — | — | 13.6% |
| RWAYL | Runway Growth Finance Corp. | Unknown | $1.1B | — | — | — | 13.3% |
| SCA | Stellus Capital Investment Corp | Unknown | $764M | — | — | — | — |
| SLRC | SLR Investment Corp. | Unknown | $714M | — | — | — | — |
| SSSSL | SURO CAPITAL CORP. | Unknown | $655M | — | — | — | 4.7% |
| TRIN | Trinity Capital Inc. | Unknown | $1.5B | — | — | — | — |
| TSLX | Sixth Street Specialty Lending, In | Unknown | $1.7B | — | — | — | 23.7% |
| WHFCL | WhiteHorse Finance, Inc. | Unknown | $549M | — | — | — | 14.0% |
A lender to private mid-market companies — not a bank
A BDC is a publicly-traded fund that lends money to private mid-market companies (typically $10M–$100M loans). They\'re structured like REITs — must distribute 90%+ of taxable income, so they pay big dividends. The right metrics are Price / Net Asset Value (P/NAV), dividend coverage, and the non-accrual rate (% of loans not paying interest). Standard bank metrics don\'t apply because BDCs don\'t take deposits.
- Non-accrual rate — % of loans not paying interest. Above 3% is yellow flag, above 5% is red. In the 10-K\'s "Schedule of Investments".
- Dividend coverage — Net Investment Income (NII) per share vs. distributions per share. Below 100% means they\'re paying out of capital.
- Leverage ratio — debt-to-equity. SEC caps BDCs at 2:1; most run 1.0-1.5×. Higher = more dividend but more risk.
- Originations vs repayments — Is the loan book growing or shrinking?
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 →
BDCs are lenders — their balance sheets are loan portfolios funded with leverage, exactly the structure Altman Z misreads as distress. Judge them on Net Asset Value, the leverage ratio (capped at 2:1) and non-accrual rate instead.
Why it matters: High score = fundamentals improving. Low score = deteriorating. Especially powerful for filtering cheap stocks: cheap + high F-score historically outperforms; cheap + low F-score is often a value trap.
Reference: 7–9 = strong · 4–6 = mediocre · 0–3 = weak
Full explanation →
Piotroski F's checks (operating cash flow, gross-margin trend, current ratio, asset turnover) assume an industrial cost structure, so they misread asset-heavy or financial businesses like this one — a healthy REIT, utility, pipeline, BDC/fund or holding company can score low for reasons that aren't weakness. See the sector lens above for the metrics that actually matter.
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 9.2%, the figure our model used for PSEC. Open Advanced to also change beta, growth and the rate path.
Note: the calculator opens at our published value of $21.30 — it is initialised to the same scenario-weighted result, so the two match exactly on load. The moment you move a slider, the value below becomes a single-path what-if at your assumptions (not the three-scenario weighting), which is why it can differ from the headline once you've touched it.
9.2% — beta-based (CAPM), from this stock's BetaBeta — How much the stock moves when the overall market moves. 1.0 = moves with the market; 1.5 = moves 50% more than the market.
Why it matters: Higher beta = more volatile = should demand higher discount rate. Low beta stocks (utilities, consumer staples) move less.
Reference: Most stocks 0.5–1.5 · Defensives ~0.3 · High-vol tech ~1.5–2.0
Full explanation → of 0.86. The safe Treasury rate plus a premium scaled by how much more (or less) volatile the stock is than the market.
11.5% — sector/quality tier. A simpler hurdle set by industry and business durability: lower for stable, wide-moat companies; higher for speculative or micro-caps.
The headline value and this calculator start at 9.2% — the beta-based rate. Drag the slider to the other rate to see the full range.
-89.6%
At the default assumptions the flat path lands near our published value of $21.30. Move any slider to recompute it with your own.
Move any slider above to recompute this against your own assumptions.
⚙ Advanced — tinker with every input (beta, growth, rate path, margin → full intrinsic value)
PSEC is deeply undervalued by the model, showing an 88.7% discount. The market likely prices it this way due to its declining profitability, with net income being negative in the latest period and only profitable in one of the last five years. The primary quantifiable risk is the implied decline rate of 20.0% compared to the model's 6.0%.
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.
- Next quarter's net income profitability
- Trend in long-term debt levels
- Changes in operating cash flow
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.
- Free cash flow rose to $523.2M.
- Swung to a loss of -$469.9M (from a profit the prior year).
Management & Leadership
Prospect Capital Corp. is led by John F. Barry III, who serves as Chairman and CEO. He has been instrumental in the company's strategy as a business development company (BDC) since its inception.
What They Make
Prospect Capital Corp. is a business development company (BDC) that invests in middle-market companies. It provides debt and equity capital to a diverse range of businesses.
End Markets
Revenue Drivers
Why Is It Priced Like This?
Why Customers Pay
The market discounts PSEC by 88.7%, likely reflecting concerns over its financial health. Net income was negative in the latest period and the company has only been profitable in one of the last five years, indicating inconsistent earnings. Additionally, long-term debt has been rising significantly, from $0M to $2088M, which could be a concern for investors.
Three Scenarios, Weighted
| Scenario | IV | Upside from today's price | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | $18.27 | 722.8% | 40% |
| Base | $21.66 | 875.7% | 35% |
| Optimistic | $25.64 | 1,055.0% | 25% |
| Weighted | $21.30 | 859.3% | 100% |
Reading the last column: it is the move from today's price to each value (IV ÷ price − 1). The headline "premium/discount to model IV" measures the same gap from the value's side (price ÷ IV − 1), so the two percentages differ in size and sign by construction — e.g. a price 8% above value is a value 7.4% below price.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
The company funds its investments and operations through a combination of debt and equity raises, as well as its operating cash flow.
Free Cash Flow DCF Medium
Standard FCF DCF: positive free cash flow in a sector suited for cash-flow-based valuation. FCF negative in 2/5 years.
Show advanced inputs
| Historical Fcf Growth | 310.7% |
| Sector Default | 6.0% |
| Best Estimate | 6.0% |
| Method | sector_default |
| Growth Basis | total |
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
The company has shown inconsistent profitability, with net income being negative in the latest period and profitable in only one of the last five years.
Geography & Markets
Prospect Capital Corp. primarily invests in companies located in the United States, though specific geographic mix percentages are 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)48.0NeutralMomentum 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 →BullishLine above signalThe fast trend is above the slow trend — short-term momentum is currently upward.
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 (1 notes — click to expand/collapse)
Guardrail Notes (1)
- Illiquidity discount 7% applied (small/micro-cap — harder to exit, demand a margin).
FINANCIALS
Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)
From PROSPECT CAPITAL CORP's SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | — | -469.9M | $-1.35 |
| 2024 | — | 234.1M | $0.34 |
| 2023 | — | -88.0M | $-0.43 |
| 2022 | — | — | $1.34 |
| 2021 | — | — | $2.50 |
Cash Flow (5yr)
Capital expenditure isn't tagged in this filer's machine-readable data (the CapEx column shows "—"). The free-cash-flow column is therefore operating cash flow less stock-based compensation only — an upper bound on true owner earnings, not the real figure. Companies that report capex under a custom label (some large IFRS filers do) look better here than they are.
| Year | Operating CF | CapEx | − SBC & adj. | Free Cash Flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 523.2M | — | — | 523.2M |
| 2024 | 280.0M | — | — | 280.0M |
| 2023 | -220.8M | — | — | -220.8M |
| 2022 | -795.3M | — | — | -795.3M |
| 2021 | 31.0M | — | — | 31.0M |
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). This is the same owner-earnings FCF definition the valuation model uses.
Balance Sheet
| Total Assets | 6.8B |
| Total Liabilities | 2.2B |
| Equity | 3.0B |
| Total Debt | 2.1B |
Similar companies worth a look
Same sector and industry, similar fundamentals shape. Verify everything yourself — this list is computed mechanically and does not reflect our judgment about whether any of these are a good investment.