Humacyte, Inc. (HUMA) Stock Analysis
Humacyte, Inc.
▾ What's in the 50/100 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 HUMA (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 HUMA 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 biotechnology. Reverse DCF + Football Field also work as cross-checks.
⚠ At today's price, the market values HUMA at about 36.7× 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: Biotechnology. 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 HUMA stack up against its closest peers?
We take the 8 same-industry companies most similar to HUMA (similar size) and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If HUMA 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.
| EV / SalesEV / Sales — For every $1 of yearly revenue, this is how many dollars investors pay to own the whole business (including debt). Why it matters: Works for pre-profit growth companies where P/E and FCF don't apply. The most apples-to-apples cross-company multiple because it ignores accounting choices. Reference: 1–3x for mature companies · 4–10x for software/SaaS · 10–20x for hypergrowth · >20x is rare and demanding Full explanation → |
5.3x / 5.5x / 16.7x |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LONA | LeonaBio, Inc. | Biotechnology | $90M | — | — | — | — |
| OTLK | Outlook Therapeutics, Inc. | Biotechnology | $88M | 62.4x | 1,542.4x | — | 0.5% |
| PTHS | Pelthos Therapeutics Inc. | Biotechnology | $92M | 5.5x | — | — | 8.1% |
| SCLX | Scilex Holding Co | Biotechnology | $76M | 5.3x | 1.3x | — | 319.1% |
| SLXNW | Silexion Therapeutics Corp | Biotechnology | $67M | — | — | — | — |
| OKYO | OKYO Pharma Ltd | Biotechnology | $65M | — | — | — | — |
| KLRS | Kalaris Therapeutics, Inc. | Biotechnology | $125M | — | — | — | — |
| TCRX | TScan Therapeutics, Inc. | Biotechnology | $140M | 16.7x | — | — | 0.1% |
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 -$40.8M 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 -$105.0M (was -$98.1M 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 -$105.0M vs net income -$40.8M.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 -35.1% vs -107.9% a year ago.
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✗ Debt load (vs assets)Total debt is 30.5% of assets vs 0.0% a year ago ($35.4M of $116.4M 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 3.69x vs 2.40x a year ago.
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✗ Share count (dilution)Share count rose 33.5% (118.5M → 158.2M 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 $50M in cash and is burning roughly $105M/year in operations. At that pace, the cash lasts 6 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 HUMA. 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 HUMA 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 Humacyte, Inc. because the company has negative operating cash flow and has not been profitable in the last five years, indicating it is in a cash-burning growth stage. Investors are likely betting on the future success of its biotechnology pipeline, which is not captured by backward-looking cash flow models. The market may be assigning value to the potential for its bioengineered human tissues to address unmet medical needs, which is not in the model. The number one quantifiable risk is the continued negative operating cash flow, which implies ongoing reliance on external funding.
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.
- FDA approval status for HAVs
- Clinical trial results for pipeline products
- Quarterly cash burn rate and cash runway
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 -$40.8M — loss narrowing.
- Free cash flow is negative at -$115.7M — the cash burn widened vs last year.
Management & Leadership
Laura E. Niklason, M.D., Ph.D., serves as the Chief Executive Officer and President of Humacyte, Inc., a role she has held since co-founding the company. She is also the company's Chief Medical Officer and Chair of the Board. Dale R. Sander is the Chief Financial Officer.
What They Make
Humacyte develops bioengineered human tissues, including human acellular vessels (HAVs), designed to be implantable and avoid immune rejection. These products are intended for patients requiring vascular repair, reconstruction, or replacement.
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 Humacyte based on expectations for its future product pipeline and potential market penetration, rather than current cash flow, as indicated by its negative net income and operating cash flow. The market may be assigning value to the potential for its bioengineered human tissues to achieve regulatory approval and commercial success, which is not in the model. The current ratio of 3.69 suggests adequate short-term liquidity to support ongoing operations and R&D.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
The company funds its operations primarily through equity raises, given its negative operating cash flow and lack of 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 | 15.0% |
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
Net income and operating cash flow have been negative in the latest period and for the past five years.
Geography & Markets
Humacyte, Inc. is headquartered in the United States, with its primary operations focused on research, development, and potential commercialization within the US and international markets. 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)68.4NeutralMomentum 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 (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 15% 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 Humacyte, Inc.'s SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2.0M | -40.8M | $-0.26 |
| 2024 | — | -148.7M | $-1.26 |
| 2023 | — | -110.8M | $-1.07 |
| 2022 | — | -12.0M | $-0.12 |
| 2021 | — | -26.5M | $-0.66 |
Cash Flow (5yr)
| Year | Operating CF | CapEx | − SBC & adj. | Free Cash Flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | -105.0M | 884,000 | 9.8M | -115.7M |
| 2024 | -98.1M | 1.6M | 6.1M | -105.8M |
| 2023 | -73.3M | 2.3M | 6.8M | -82.4M |
| 2022 | -71.1M | 1.0M | 6.2M | -78.4M |
| 2021 | -81.2M | 220,000 | 10.1M | -91.6M |
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: -105.0M − 884,000 − 9.8M (SBC & adj.) = -115.7M. 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 | 116.4M |
| Total Liabilities | 113.3M |
| Equity | 3.1M |
| Total Debt | 35.4M |
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