Hercules Capital, Inc. (HCXY) Stock Analysis
Hercules Capital, Inc.
▾ What's in the 58/100 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 HCXY
We are not publishing an intrinsic value for this one — the section below says exactly why. Everything on this page that comes straight from the filings and the tape is still here; treat the missing valuation as a known gap, not as a verdict on the business.
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Reported earnings & margins ↓
What the company actually reported — unaffected by the valuation being held.
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Balance sheet & book value ↓
Assets, liabilities and equity as filed.
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Who's selling & betting against it ↓
Insider and short-interest behaviour needs no valuation model.
HCXY'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 does HCXY stack up against its closest peers?
We take the 6 same-industry companies most similar to HCXY (similar size) and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If HCXY 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 6 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 (6)
| Ticker | Company | Industry | Mcap | EV/Sales | EV/GP | EV/EBIT | FCF Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TRINI | Trinity Capital Inc. | Unknown | $2.3B | — | — | — | — |
| TRINZ | Trinity Capital Inc. | Unknown | $2.3B | — | — | — | — |
| TSLX | Sixth Street Specialty Lending, In | Unknown | $1.7B | — | — | — | 23.7% |
| TRIN | Trinity Capital Inc. | Unknown | $1.5B | — | — | — | — |
| RWAYL | Runway Growth Finance Corp. | Unknown | $1.1B | — | — | — | 13.3% |
| RWAYI | Runway Growth Finance Corp. | Unknown | $1.0B | — | — | — | 13.6% |
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 $339.7M in FY2025.
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✗ Positive operating cash flowOperating cash flow -$425.8M (was -$118.1M 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 -$425.8M vs net income $339.7M.Why this matters: When cash generated exceeds reported earnings, profits are high-quality (not propped up by accruals or one-time items).
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✓ Return on assets improvingReturn on assets 7.4% vs 6.9% a year ago.
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✗ Debt load (vs assets)Long-term debt is 49.9% of assets vs 46.2% a year ago ($2,286.4M of $4,584.0M 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) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
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✗ Share count (dilution)Share count rose 16.9% (161.6M → 188.9M 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) (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.
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 Hercules Capital, Inc. because the model projects negative equity value under its assumptions, and the company has negative operating cash flow in the latest period. Investors are likely focused on the company's ability to generate consistent positive operating cash flow and manage its rising long-term debt. The market may be assigning value to the potential for successful exits from its venture debt portfolio, which is not in the model. The number one quantifiable risk is the continued rise in long-term debt.
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.
- Quarterly operating cash flow turning consistently positive
- Stabilization or reduction in long-term debt levels
- Announcements of successful portfolio company exits or IPOs
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.
- Net income grew +29% to $339.7M.
- Free cash flow is negative at -$440.7M — the cash burn widened vs last year.
Management & Leadership
Manuel A. Henriquez is the founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Hercules Capital, Inc., a role he has held since its inception. Seth B. Meyer serves as the Chief Financial Officer. The company specializes in providing venture debt to technology and life sciences companies.
What They Make
Hercules Capital, Inc. provides venture debt financing to privately held, venture capital-backed companies in the technology, life sciences, and sustainable and renewable technology industries. Its customers are growth-stage companies seeking capital without significant equity dilution.
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 Hercules Capital, Inc. is likely driven by expectations for future interest income growth from its expanding loan portfolio and the potential for capital gains from its warrant positions, rather than current cash flow, as operating cash flow was negative in the latest period. The market may be assigning value to the successful maturation and exit of its portfolio companies, which is not in the model. The model implies no positive equity value under its assumptions, indicating a speculative valuation.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
Hercules Capital typically funds its operations and investments through a combination of debt and equity raises, and it distributes a significant portion of its taxable income to shareholders as dividends.
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 positive in 5 out of the last 5 years, while operating cash flow has been positive in 2 out of the last 5 years.
Geography & Markets
Hercules Capital, Inc. is headquartered in the United States and primarily focuses on providing financing to companies within the U.S. technology and life sciences sectors. Exact geographic segment splits 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)55.6NeutralMomentum 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 (3 notes — click to expand/collapse)
Guardrail Notes (3)
- 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.
FINANCIALS
Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)
From Hercules Capital, Inc.'s SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | — | 339.7M | $1.85 |
| 2024 | — | 263.0M | $1.61 |
| 2023 | — | 337.5M | $2.31 |
| 2022 | — | 102.1M | $0.79 |
| 2021 | — | 174.2M | $1.49 |
Cash Flow (5yr)
| Year | Operating CF | CapEx | − SBC & adj. | Free Cash Flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | -425.8M | 89,000 | 14.8M | -440.7M |
| 2024 | -118.1M | 705,000 | 12.5M | -131.3M |
| 2023 | 68.3M | 887,000 | 11.9M | 55.5M |
| 2022 | -424.8M | 114,000 | 10.8M | -435.7M |
| 2021 | 128.6M | 106,000 | 10.4M | 118.1M |
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: -425.8M − 89,000 − 14.8M (SBC & adj.) = -440.7M. 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 | 4.6B |
| Total Liabilities | 2.4B |
| Equity | 2.2B |
| Total Debt | 2.3B |
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