Is Korsana Biosciences, Inc. (KRSA) a good stock to buy?
What we have tested leans negative. To like it anyway you need a reason our checks do not capture.
What each rating means, in numbers
Business quality — Very weak. Passes 2 of the 8 health checks we can measure — things like making a profit, turning it into cash, and not piling on debt. Across 131,000 company-quarters the weakest scorers went on to fail at 5.4% against 1.4% for the strongest, in every era and all twelve sectors.
What "tested" means here, and why there is no score out of 100
Tested means the read was measured against what actually happened afterwards, on a history that keeps the companies that were later delisted, using only figures that had been filed on the day they are used. Survival was ranked on companies that really did fail. What an owner keeps was tested across the universe from 2011 to 2025.
The full record of everything we have tested is on the research pages.
Which benchmark. Over the period we tested, the median listed company returned +5.8% a year while the S&P 500 returned about +13.9% — the index is weighted by size and was carried by a handful of enormous winners. So "beats the index" and "beats the other companies you could have bought" are different questions. Where a read says it picks better companies, it means the second one. None of these gets you an index fund's return, and we would rather say that than imply otherwise.
The quality read is the strongest thing we have tested: 131,000 company-quarters across 5,300 companies, where the weakest scorers went on to fail at 5.4% against 1.4% for the strongest, holding in every era and all twelve sectors. It still says less likely to break, not likely to beat the market — every band in that study lost to the index at the median, because the median listed company does.
Each read is shown on its own rather than merged into a single score, so you can see which part is strong and which is weak instead of taking an average on trust.
▾ What goes into the smart-money reading
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.
Chance the S&P 500 falls 10% or more in the next three months.
Counted from every day since 2006. Says nothing about KRSA — see the board for how it is measured.
📍 Where to start on this page, and what to look at first
How to read KRSA (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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Cash runway ↓
Can it reach profitability before it has to raise money and dilute shareholders?
Standard DCF doesn't fit KRSA 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 pharmaceuticals.
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 KRSA stack up against its closest peers?
Ideally we compare KRSA only to same-industry peers, but too few exist in our universe right now, so the basket below mixes in broader-sector names. Treat the multiples as rough context, not a valuation. 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. Based on the single available name (broad — see caveat) we could price — with one company there is no median, so read it as a single data point.
⚠️ 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 (1)
| Ticker | Company | Industry | Mcap | EV/Sales | EV/GP | EV/EBIT | FCF Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AAPG | ASCENTAGE PHARMA GROUP INTERNATION | Pharmaceuticals | $1.4B | 12.0x | 12.4x | n/r | 2.1% |
loss = the company lost money on that line, so the multiple has no meaning · neg. cash = free cash flow was below zero · n/r = not reported separately in its SEC filings · n/m or struck through = implausible, left out. None of these enter the medians above.
How much money is in the building, and how long does it last?
A clinical-stage biotech has no product revenue, so cash-flow valuation says nothing. What can be measured is the liquid money it holds, how many months of spending that covers, and what the market is paying for the science once the cash is deducted. Keep the two risks apart: financing risk (can it reach the next result without raising money?) and biological risk (does the drug work?). Cash answers only the first.
Over two years: the company can usually choose when to raise rather than being forced to.
Burn is measured from last year's operating cash flow less capital spending, so a company that has just begun a large trial will be spending faster than this implies. Altman Z and Piotroski are not shown: both were built for profitable industrial firms.
Quality & solvency checks
Cheap stocks can be cheap for a reason. These screens warn when a low valuation comes paired with structural fragility.
What these health ratings mean, in numbers
Business quality — Very weak. Passes 2 of the 8 health checks we can measure — things like making a profit, turning it into cash, and not piling on debt. Across 131,000 company-quarters the weakest scorers went on to fail at 5.4% within a year against 1.4% for the strongest, and that held in every era and all twelve sectors. It says "less likely to break", not "likely to beat the market".
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 -$3.5M 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 -$3.3M (was -$4.3M 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 -$3.3M vs net income -$3.5M.
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✗ Return on assets improvingReturn on assets -35.3% vs -31.9% 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)The filing reports no interest-bearing debt in either year (total assets $10.0M).
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✗ Short-term liquidity (current ratio)Current ratio 5.15x vs 5.83x a year ago.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)Share count rose 26.3% (2.5M → 3.2M, average shares for the year, fiscal 2024 → 2025).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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· Gross margin improving (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
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✗ Sales per asset (asset turnover)Asset turnover 0.21x vs 0.21x a year ago.Why this matters: Asset turnover measures how much revenue each dollar of assets generates. Rising = more productive use of the asset base.
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 $3M in cash and is burning roughly $3M/year in operations. At that pace, the cash lasts 12 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 Korsana Biosciences, Inc. because the company has consistently negative free cash flowFree Cash Flow (FCF) — Operating cash flow minus capital spending: cash left after a company covers operating costs, taxes and interest and reinvests in the business — but BEFORE repaying debt principal or paying dividends. The cash actually available to investors.
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 → after stock comp, reported at -$3.8 million in the latest fiscal year, and negative net income. Valuing KRSA would require projecting a clear path to profitability and sustained positive cash flow, which is not evident from current financials. Investors are likely betting on the potential of their drug pipeline, which is not captured by backward-looking models. The biggest risk to our assumptions is that revenue is DECLINING at -14.8%/yr over 4 years, indicating a shrinking operational base.
As of 11 days 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 cost to shareholders even though no cash leaves the company). 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.
- Announcements of positive clinical trial results
- New licensing or collaboration agreements
- Updates on regulatory submissions or approvals
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.
- Revenue grew 3.7%, from $2.0M to $2.1M.
- Free cash flow is negative at -$3.8M — the cash burn narrowed from -$5.0M the year before.
- Still unprofitable at -$3.5M — loss widening from -$3.1M the year before.
Management & Leadership
Regina Margaret Graul serves as the Chief Executive Officer, and Rhonda M. Chicko is the Chief Financial Officer. Matthew James Leoni is the Chief Medical Officer, focusing on the company's clinical development.
What They Make
Korsana Biosciences, Inc. operates in the pharmaceuticals industry, focusing on developing new therapeutic solutions. The company's primary payers would be pharmaceutical partners, healthcare systems, or potentially patients/insurers upon product commercialization.
End Markets
Revenue Drivers
Why Is It Priced Like This?
Why Customers Pay
What we use instead: operating profit against value (EV/EBIT, in the peer comparison) — computed from the figures this company does report, shown on this page.
The market is likely pricing Korsana Biosciences based on the potential future value of its drug pipeline and the optionality associated with successful clinical trials and regulatory approvals, which are not reflected in its current negative operating cash flow of -$3.2 million. The market may be assigning value to future drug pipeline catalysts, which is not in the model. Investors are looking beyond the current revenue of $2.1 million and negative net income, focusing on long-term growth prospects rather than present profitability.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
The company funds itself primarily through equity raises, as it has negative free cash flowFree Cash Flow (FCF) — Operating cash flow minus capital spending: cash left after a company covers operating costs, taxes and interest and reinvests in the business — but BEFORE repaying debt principal or paying dividends. The cash actually available to investors.
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 → after stock comp of -$3.8 million and no dividends or buybacks are indicated. Long-term debt has fallen from $4M to $0M.
Growth / Revenue DCF
This is the model the pipeline would normally apply to a company like this. Its output failed our checks here, so no intrinsic value is published; the notes below are context, not a valuation.
Show advanced inputs
| Revenue Growth | 2.0% |
What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings cash-flow 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
Revenue is DECLINING at -14.8%/yr over 4 years, from $4M to $2.1 million.
Geography & Markets
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)56.1NeutralMomentum 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 set to 1.6% — the lowest of the applicable caps (binding: 80% of near-term growth (2%)). We use one effective terminal rate everywhere on the page.
- Model implies no positive equity value under these assumptions. Valuation is speculative/low-confidence.
- Illiquidity discount 7% applied (small/micro-cap — harder to exit, demand a margin).
- Extreme valuation: the model output is implausibly high vs the price — usually a share-count or units error. The model value is suppressed.
- VALUATION HELD (EXTREME_MODEL_GAP): per-share values suppressed due to the model output failed plausibility checks.
- Extreme valuation gap (P/IV withheld — see the note above): result may be dominated by model assumptions, share count issues, or sector-specific dynamics. Treat as low confidence.
FINANCIALS
Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)
From Korsana Biosciences, Inc.'s SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | Diluted EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2.07M | -3.53M | $-1.11 |
| 2024 | 2.00M | -3.06M | $-1.21 |
| 2023 | — | -5.26M | $-2.25 |
| 2022 | 297,000 | -44.1M | $-20.28 |
| 2021 | 3.94M | -51.6M | $-1.32 |
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 | Free Cash Flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | -3.31M | not reported | 441,000 | -3.76Mcapital spending not reported |
| 2024 | -4.33M | not reported | 625,000 | -4.96Mcapital spending not reported |
| 2023 | -21.2M | not reported | 1.07M | -22.3Mcapital spending not reported |
| 2022 | -40.6M | not reported | 6.25M | -46.9Mcapital spending not reported |
| 2021 | -36.5M | 7,000 | 9.61M | -46.1M |
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: -3.31M − — − 441,000 (stock-based comp) = -3.76M. This is the same owner-earnings FCF definition the valuation model uses, though the DCF starts from the projected from revenue × terminal margin, not this single year.
Balance Sheet
| Total Assets | 9.99M |
| Total Liabilities | 900,000 |
| Equity | 9.09M |
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.
The questions people ask about KRSA
Is Korsana Biosciences, Inc. (KRSA) a good stock to buy?
We do not publish a single fair value for Korsana Biosciences, Inc., because one number would not be reliable for this business (the page explains why). Judge it on its financial-health checks, its record and what insiders are doing, all shown here from SEC filings. This is educational research from SEC filings, not investment advice.
Is Korsana Biosciences, Inc. (KRSA) overvalued?
A single fair-value number is not reliable for Korsana Biosciences, Inc., so we do not call it overvalued or undervalued. The page shows how the company's finances look and what insiders are doing instead. This is educational research from SEC filings, not investment advice.
Where do these numbers come from?
From Korsana Biosciences, Inc.'s own SEC filings (10-K and 10-Q), Form 4 insider filings and daily market prices. Every figure on the page links to how it was calculated, and the model's weak spots are listed next to its results.