SM Energy Co (SM) Stock Analysis
SM Energy Co
▾ What's in the 43/100 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 SM (cyclical commodity producer)
A miner or energy producer earns whatever the commodity price is, so a single DCF swings with the cycle. Judge it against peers and where you think the commodity cycle is heading.
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EV/Sales peer comparison ↓
How the price compares to similar producers is more meaningful than a through-cycle DCF.
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Interactive calculator (test cycle assumptions) ↓
Flex the growth/discount inputs to see how sensitive the value is to where we are in the cycle.
Standard DCF doesn't fit SM well — but that's expected for this kind of business. The EV/Sales Peer Comparison below uses the metrics actually used by analysts who value oil & gas extraction. Reverse DCF + Football Field also work as cross-checks.
Miners, metals and energy producers earn whatever the commodity price is at the time. A discounted-cash-flow model leans on recent cash flow, so it swings with the cycle: the result is dominated by where we are in the commodity cycle rather than by durable business economics.
For this business type, lean on the EV/Sales peer comparison and Reverse-DCF below (how today's price compares to similar producers and what growth it implies), and weigh the commodity-price outlook. Treat the DCF number as a rough mid-cycle reference, not a buy/sell trigger.
How does SM stack up against its closest peers?
We take the 8 same-industry companies most similar to SM (similar size) and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If SM 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, EV/EBIT and FCF yield (both in the table) are 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 → |
2.3x / 4.0x / 5.3x |
| EV / EBITEV / EBITDA — Enterprise value divided by earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization. Why it matters: A classic "what would a private buyer pay" multiple — used in M&A. Strips out tax and capital-structure noise. Reference: 8–12x for mature businesses · 15–25x for growth · Below 5x often signals distress Full explanation → |
8.5x / 10.9x / 12.4x |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CNX | CNX Resources Corp | Oil & Gas Extraction | $4.8B | 2.0x | — | — | 9.2% |
| HESM | Hess Midstream LP | Oil & Gas Extraction | $4.8B | 5.3x | — | 8.5x | 13.1% |
| MGY | Magnolia Oil & Gas Corp | Oil & Gas Extraction | $5.1B | 4.2x | — | 12.4x | 13.8% |
| MUR | MURPHY OIL CORP | Oil & Gas Extraction | $5.2B | 2.4x | — | 21.4x | 26.5% |
| CRC | California Resources Corp | Oil & Gas Extraction | $5.3B | 2.3x | — | 10.9x | 7.8% |
| CRK | COMSTOCK RESOURCES INC | Oil & Gas Extraction | $3.9B | 4.2x | — | 7.2x | 9.0% |
| VIST | Vista Energy, S.A.B. de C.V. | Oil & Gas Extraction | $6.3B | 3.8x | 7.7x | — | 16.6% |
| VNOM | Viper Energy, Inc. | Oil & Gas Extraction | $6.5B | 6.4x | — | — | 7.9% |
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 $648.0M in FY2025.
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✓ Positive operating cash flowOperating cash flow $2,011.0M (was $1,783.0M the prior year).
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✓ Cash flow backs up reported profitOperating cash flow $2,011.0M vs net income $648.0M.
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✗ Return on assets improvingReturn on assets 7.0% vs 9.0% 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 $9,253.0M).
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✓ Short-term liquidity (current ratio)Current ratio 0.69x vs 0.55x a year ago — improved, but still below 1.0: the ✓ grades the trend, the level remains a caution flag.
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✓ Share count (dilution)Share count declined 0.9% (116.0M → 115.0M year-over-year), so the no-dilution check passed. (One-year change; the multi-year buyback pace can differ.)
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· Pricing power (gross margin) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
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✓ Sales per asset (asset turnover)Asset turnover 0.34x vs 0.31x 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.
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 SM. 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 SM 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 SM Energy Co due to its cyclical nature and reliance on normalized cash flow rather than predictable 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 →. Investors are likely focused on its consistent profitability and positive operating cash flow, which has been positive for 5/5 years. The company's long-term debt has been reduced to $0M, a significant positive. The primary quantifiable risk is its current ratio of 0.69, indicating current liabilities exceed liquid assets.
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.
- Changes in commodity prices (oil, gas)
- Quarterly operating cash flow trends
- Improvements in the current ratio
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 +17% to $3.14B.
- Free cash flow rose to $1.98B.
- Net income fell -16% to $648.0M.
Management & Leadership
Herbert "Herb" Vogel has served as the President and CEO of SM Energy since 2015, bringing extensive experience in the energy sector. Wade Pursell is the Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, overseeing the company's financial strategy.
What They Make
SM Energy Co is an independent energy company engaged in the acquisition, exploration, development, and production of oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids in the United States. Their primary customers are refiners, marketers, and industrial users of these commodities.
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 SM Energy based on its consistent profitability and positive operating cash flow, which has been positive for 5/5 years, rather than 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 → model. The significant reduction of long-term debt to $0M also plays a key role in investor confidence, despite the cyclical nature of the sector.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
Normalized FCF
Cyclical/commodity sector (Oil & Gas Extraction): normalized FCF uses 5-year median to smooth peak/trough distortions.
Show advanced inputs
| Revenue Growth | 4.8% |
| Eps Growth | 109.4% |
| Historical Fcf Growth | 14.8% |
| Sector Default | 4.0% |
| Best Estimate | 4.6% |
| Method | blend(70% revenue_cagr, 30% sector) |
| Growth Basis | total |
What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings FCF model. Standalone segment assumptions: none. It does not project production volumes, realized commodity prices and unit cash costs 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 has been growing at 4.8%/yr over 4 years, from $2598M to $3138M.
Geography & Markets
SM Energy Co primarily operates in the United States, focusing on key basins for oil and natural gas production. 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)48.3NeutralMomentum 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 (5 notes — click to expand/collapse)
Guardrail Notes (5)
- Cyclical sector: using normalized cash flow (median OCF minus estimated maintenance capex).
- Median OCF: $1.69B, est. maintenance capex: $337.28M, normalized FCF: $1.35B.
- Illiquidity discount 7% 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 SM Energy Co's SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 3.1B | 648.0M | $5.64 |
| 2024 | 2.7B | 770.0M | $6.67 |
| 2023 | 2.4B | 818.0M | $6.86 |
| 2022 | 3.3B | 1.1B | $8.96 |
| 2021 | 2.6B | 36.2M | $0.29 |
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 | 2.0B | — | 29.0M | 2.0B |
| 2024 | 1.8B | — | 25.0M | 1.8B |
| 2023 | 1.6B | — | 20.0M | 1.6B |
| 2022 | 1.7B | — | 18.8M | 1.7B |
| 2021 | 1.2B | — | 18.8M | 1.1B |
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: 2.0B − — − 29.0M (SBC & adj.) = 2.0B. This is the same owner-earnings FCF definition the valuation model uses, though the DCF's starting value is a mid-cycle estimate (median operating cash flow less estimated maintenance capex and stock compensation — by design NOT the table's FCF, which deducts every year's full capex), not this single year.
Balance Sheet
| Total Assets | 9.3B |
| Total Liabilities | 4.4B (derived) |
| Equity | 4.8B |
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.