EQUUS TOTAL RETURN, INC. (EQS) Stock Analysis
EQUUS TOTAL RETURN, INC.
▾ What's in the 31/100 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 EQS (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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1
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.
EQS's SEC filings give us limited machine-readable financials — common for some foreign or newly-listed filers that report under IFRS or file abbreviated statements. We can't run a full valuation on a partial dataset.
What to use instead: What we have parsed is shown below. As more complete filings arrive (or IFRS support lands), the valuation will populate.
How to read a company this small
EQS is too small and/or too volatile for the valuation lenses we use on larger, more stable companies. The numbers shown below should be taken as rough orientation only.
- Market cap $13.2M — nano-cap territory (below $50M)
Growth percentages on tiny revenue bases (1000% going from $200K to $2M is not predictive). P/E and ROE swing wildly with small earnings changes. Peer comparisons fail because there often aren't comparable companies at this scale.
Start with the Reverse-DCF above — it backs out the growth the price is betting on; if that figure is "historically unprecedented," the price is running on hype, not fundamentals. Then the cash runway (can it fund itself to profitability before diluting you?). Then the raw Financials table and the 10-K on SEC EDGAR — at this scale, insider ownership and the share-count trend often matter more than any ratio.
Classified as Speculative Nano / Micro-cap (confidence 80%). Disagree? An admin can override via the post edit screen.
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 -$14.2M 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 -$2.1M (was $38.2M 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 -$2.1M vs net income -$14.2M.
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✗ Return on assets improvingReturn on assets -66.4% vs -62.7% 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 $21.3M).
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· Short-term liquidity (current ratio) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
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✗ Share count (dilution)Share count rose 0.9% (13.6M → 13.7M 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) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
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 $0M in cash and is burning roughly $2M/year in operations. At that pace, the cash lasts 1 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.
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 EQS because the company has negative operating cash flow and net income, indicating it is not currently generating profits. Investors are likely betting on a turnaround or a strategic shift that could unlock future value, rather than current cash flows. The primary quantifiable risk is the continued negative operating cash flow, which could deplete capital without a clear path to profitability.
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 a significant portfolio company exit
- Improvement in net investment income
- Reduction in operating expenses
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.
- Still unprofitable at -$14.2M — loss narrowing.
- Free cash flow is negative at -$2.4M — the cash burn widened vs last year.
Management & Leadership
EQUUS TOTAL RETURN, INC. is a publicly traded business development company. The current CEO is Kenneth I. Denos, who has served in this role for several years. The company focuses on investing in and providing managerial assistance to small and medium-sized businesses.
What They Make
EQS is a business development company (BDC) that invests in and provides financing to small and medium-sized private companies, primarily in the United States. Its customers are these portfolio companies seeking capital and strategic support.
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 likely pricing EQS based on expectations of future investment performance and the potential for a successful exit from its portfolio companies, rather than current cash flow. The negative net income and operating cash flow, as highlighted in the health signals, make a traditional DCFDCF — 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 → valuation inappropriate. The market may be assigning value to the potential for a significant return on a specific portfolio investment, which is not in the model.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
The company primarily funds itself through equity raises and the recycling of capital from investment exits, as it currently has negative operating cash flow and does not pay dividends or engage in 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 | 15.0% |
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
Net income has been negative in the latest period, and positive in 2 out of 5 years.
Geography & Markets
EQS is a US-headquartered business development company primarily focused on investments in small and medium-sized businesses within the United States. Specific geographic segment 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)53.2NeutralMomentum 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 (4 notes — click to expand/collapse)
Guardrail Notes (4)
- FCF negative: revenue/margin growth model projects future cash flows from revenue trajectory.
- INVARIANT: weighted IV is non-positive. Model may not be appropriate.
- Model implies no positive equity value under these assumptions. Valuation is speculative/low-confidence.
- Illiquidity discount 25% applied (small/micro-cap — harder to exit, demand a margin).
FINANCIALS
Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)
From EQUUS TOTAL RETURN, INC.'s SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | — | -14.2M | $-1.03 |
| 2024 | — | -18.8M | $-1.38 |
| 2023 | — | 12.9M | $0.96 |
| 2022 | — | -1.1M | $-0.08 |
| 2021 | — | 2.6M | $0.19 |
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 | -2.1M | — | 270,000 | -2.4M |
| 2024 | 38.2M | — | — | 38.2M |
| 2023 | -51.4M | — | — | -51.4M |
| 2022 | -7.7M | — | — | -7.7M |
| 2021 | 21.1M | — | — | 21.1M |
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: -2.1M − — − 270,000 (SBC & adj.) = -2.4M. 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 | 21.3M |
| Total Liabilities | 4.8M |
| Equity | 16.6M |
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