Snail, Inc. (SNAL) Stock Analysis
Snail, Inc.
▾ What's in the 42/100 risk score? (higher = riskier)
Contributions (weight × component score) sum to the total. This near-term score now includes fundamental health (leverage, FCF trend). See the Financial Health section for the full balance-sheet read.
How to read SNAL (pre-profit growth)
This company is reinvesting instead of generating profit, so a standard DCF cannot price it. The useful question is whether the growth the market is paying for is achievable — and whether the company can fund itself until then.
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Reverse-DCF — the growth the price demands ↓
It shows exactly how fast the business must grow to justify today's price. Compare that to what comparable companies have actually achieved.
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Cash runway ↓
Can it reach profitability before it has to raise money and dilute shareholders?
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Interactive calculator ↓
Set your own growth + margin assumptions and see what the business would be worth if you are right.
Standard DCF doesn't fit SNAL 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 software. Reverse DCF + Football Field also work as cross-checks.
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 →
The Z-score needs working capital, retained earnings, EBIT, sales and total assets from the latest balance sheet, and at least one of those isn't reported in machine-readable form here — common for foreign private issuers. We leave it blank rather than compute a distress verdict from an estimated input. It doesn't affect the reported figures in the financial tables below.
▾ The checks — what passed, what didn't (and what we couldn't measure)
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✗ Positive net incomeNet income -$27.2M 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 -$1.2M (was -$1.6M 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 -$1.2M vs net income -$27.2M.
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✗ Return on assets improvingReturn on assets -45.9% vs 2.9% 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)Long-term debt is 24.5% of assets vs 9.2% a year ago ($14.6M of $59.3M assets).Why this matters: Rising debt relative to assets means more risk and more cash going to interest instead of shareholders. Falling debt is a sign of strengthening.
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✗ Short-term liquidity (current ratio)Current ratio 0.62x vs 0.86x a year ago — below 1.0, a caution flag.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) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
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✗ Pricing power (gross margin)Gross margin 27.6% vs 35.8% a year ago.Why this matters: Rising gross margin means stronger pricing power or lower input costs — a sign of competitive strength. Falling margin signals pressure.
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✓ Sales per asset (asset turnover)Asset turnover 1.37x vs 1.36x 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 $9M in cash and is burning roughly $1M/year in operations. At that pace, the cash lasts 7.4 yrs 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.
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 Snail, Inc. because the company exhibits negative operating cash flow and declining revenue, making future cash flows highly uncertain. Investors are likely betting on a turnaround in its core software offerings or potential new product launches. The market may be assigning value to the potential for a successful pivot into a new, higher-growth software niche, which is not captured by historical cash flow models. The #1 quantifiable risk is the current ratio of 0.62, indicating a short-term liquidity crunch.
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 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 new game titles or major expansions
- Quarterly revenue growth returning to positive territory
- Improvement in gross margin from 27.6%
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 is negative at -$1.5M — the cash burn narrowed vs last year.
- Revenue fell -4% to $81.2M.
- Gross margin shrank to 28% (-8 pts).
- Swung to a loss of -$27.2M (from a profit the prior year).
Management & Leadership
Snail, Inc. is led by CEO and founder Jim Tsai, who has been at the helm since the company's inception. He is responsible for the overall strategic direction and product development of the company. The executive team focuses on navigating the competitive software landscape.
What They Make
Snail, Inc. develops and publishes video games and related software, primarily targeting the global gaming community. Their products include online multiplayer games and game development tools.
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's pricing for Snail, Inc. is likely driven by expectations of a future turnaround or successful new game launches, rather than current cash flow, given its negative operating cash flow and declining revenue. The market may be assigning value to the potential for a future hit game or expansion into new gaming platforms, which is not in the model. Investors are likely focused on the company's ability to reverse its revenue decline and improve its gross margin compression.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
The company funds itself primarily through equity raises and has seen long-term debt rising from $3M to $15M, with no current dividend or buyback programs.
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 | 2.0% |
What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings FCF model. Standalone segment assumptions: none. It does not project product, services and recurring/cloud lines 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 declining at -6.6%/yr over the last four years, from $107M to $81M.
Geography & Markets
Snail, Inc. operates globally, with a significant presence in the US and international markets, though specific geographic revenue 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)46.5NeutralMomentum 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 (7 notes — click to expand/collapse)
Guardrail Notes (7)
- FCF negative: revenue/margin growth model projects future cash flows from revenue trajectory.
- Terminal growth (3%) capped to 1.6% (80% of near-term growth 2%).
- Shares from unknown — per-share values may be less accurate.
- Illiquidity discount 25% applied (small/micro-cap — harder to exit, demand a margin).
- Shares/market cap missing or defaulted; per-share valuation unreliable.
- Shares defaulted to 1; IV is NOT meaningful — treat as data-unavailable.
- DATA UNAVAILABLE: per-share values suppressed due to missing/unreliable shares data.
FINANCIALS
Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)
From Snail, Inc.'s SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 81.2M | -27.2M | $-0.73 |
| 2024 | 84.5M | 1.8M | $0.05 |
| 2023 | 60.9M | -9.1M | $-0.25 |
| 2022 | 74.4M | 947,807 | $0.03 |
| 2021 | 106.7M | 8.5M | $0.24 |
Cash Flow (5yr)
| Year | Operating CF | CapEx | − SBC & adj. | Free Cash Flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | -1.2M | 15,798 | 371,496 | -1.5M |
| 2024 | -1.6M | — | 890,208 | -2.5M |
| 2023 | 465,868 | — | 848,035 | -382,167 |
| 2022 | -3.4M | 5,256 | 223,250 | -3.6M |
| 2021 | 15.8M | — | — | 15.8M |
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: -1.2M − 15,798 − 371,496 (SBC & adj.) = -1.5M. 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 | 59.3M |
| Total Liabilities | 81.2M |
| Equity | -16.4M |
| Total Debt | 14.6M |
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