VS Trust (SVIX) Stock Analysis
VS Trust
▾ What's in the 51/100 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 SVIX (bank / insurer)
Banks and insurers are valued on what they earn on their capital, not on free cash flow — a normal DCF misleads here.
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Bank / Insurance lens (P/TBV + ROE) ↓
Price-to-tangible-book versus return-on-equity is how analysts actually judge a bank cheap or rich.
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Financial-health screens ↓
Watch the trend in profitability and asset quality, not the (not-applicable) bankruptcy score.
Standard DCF doesn't fit SVIX well — but that's expected for this kind of business. The Bank / Insurance Valuation Lens below uses the metrics actually used by analysts who value investment banking. Reverse DCF + Football Field also work as cross-checks.
How does SVIX stack up against its closest peers?
We take the 8 same-industry companies most similar to SVIX (similar size) and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If SVIX 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.
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/EBIT | FCF Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ETHE | Grayscale Ethereum Staking ETF | Investment Banking | $1.6B | — | — |
| HODL | VanEck Bitcoin ETF | Investment Banking | $1.2B | — | — |
| GSG | iShares S&P GSCI Commodity-Indexed | Investment Banking | $991M | 28.9x | 5.8% |
| USCI | United States Commodity Index Fund | Investment Banking | $2.7B | — | 2.7% |
| OUNZ | VanEck Merk Gold ETF | Investment Banking | $2.8B | — | 39.6% |
| GLTR | abrdn Precious Metals Basket ETF T | Investment Banking | $2.9B | — | 46.6% |
| UVIX | VS Trust | Investment Banking | $2.9B | — | — |
| SPPP | SPROTT PHYSICAL PLATINUM & PALLADI | Investment Banking | $650M | — | 44.7% |
How to value a bank (not a DCF question)
A bank's economic engine is the shareholder equity on its balance sheet — what the accountants say is left over after all loans, deposits, and liabilities are netted out. The bank earns a percentage on that equity each year (its ROE). So the two questions are: (1) what are you paying per dollar of equity (Price / Book)? and (2) how much is that equity actually earning (ROE)? Free cash flow doesn't work here — banks lend out their cash for a living.
Why it matters: For banks and insurers, book value is the regulatory capital they earn returns on. P/B is the cleanest comparison: 1.0× means buying the bank at the same price the accountants say it's worth.
Reference: 0.8–1.2× = fair for average bank · 1.5–2.0× = solid franchise · >2.5× = premium · <0.8× = potentially cheap or distress
Full explanation →
Premium to book — market expects above-average returns on this equity.
Why it matters: For a bank, ROE is the engine. A bank earning 15% on equity will compound book value at ~15%/year if it retains earnings. Combined with P/B, ROE tells you whether a premium price is supported by returns.
Reference: <8% = weak · 10–12% = solid · 15%+ = excellent · >20% sustained = exceptional franchise
Full explanation →
Why it matters: For banks especially, ROA isolates underwriting and operating efficiency from leverage. Two banks with identical ROE may have very different ROAs — one earning it cleanly, one earning it on borrowed money.
Reference: <0.8% = weak · 1.0–1.2% = solid · >1.5% = excellent (very rare for big banks)
Full explanation →
ROA differs from ROE because banks borrow ~10× their equity. Big asset base, smaller equity sliver.
Note: this lens skips Altman Z-Score and Piotroski F-Score (validated on industrial companies, not banks). For deeper bank-specific health analysis: check the 10-K's Tier 1 capital ratio, Non-Performing Loan ratio, and CET1 — these are what regulators actually monitor.
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 →
Altman Z was calibrated on industrial firms and doesn't apply to banks or insurers — their balance sheets are dominated by loans/securities, not working capital. See the Bank Valuation Lens above for P/B, ROE and ROA — the metrics regulators and analysts actually use to assess bank solvency.
Why it matters: High score = fundamentals improving. Low score = deteriorating. Especially powerful for filtering cheap stocks: cheap + high F-score historically outperforms; cheap + low F-score is often a value trap.
Reference: 7–9 = strong · 4–6 = mediocre · 0–3 = weak
Full explanation →
Piotroski F was built for non-financial firms (gross margin, asset turnover, current ratio all assume an industrial cost structure). For banks, the equivalent quality signals are efficiency ratio, net interest margin, and provision coverage — see the Bank Valuation Lens above.
Plain English: the company holds about $125M in cash and is burning roughly $542M/year in operations. At that pace, the cash lasts 3 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 → valuation is not meaningful for SVIX because it has negative operating cash flow and has not been profitable in the last four years. Investors are likely betting on the trust's ability to track inverse volatility, which provides a unique market exposure. The primary quantifiable risk is its consistent negative operating cash flow, indicating a cash-burning operation.
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.
- Performance of VIX futures contracts
- Overall market volatility trends (VIX index)
- Investor sentiment towards inverse volatility products
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.
- Free cash flow is negative at -$542.1M — the cash burn widened vs last year.
- Still unprofitable at -$623.5M — loss widening.
Nothing was clearly improving year-over-year.
Management & Leadership
SVIX is a trust, not a traditional operating company with a CEO. It is managed by the VS Trust, which is overseen by a trustee. As such, there are no individual executives to name in the traditional sense.
What They Make
SVIX (VS Trust) is an exchange-traded note designed to provide inverse exposure to short-term VIX futures. It is primarily bought by investors seeking to profit from declining or stable market volatility.
End Markets
Revenue Drivers
Why Is It Priced Like This?
Why Customers Pay
What we use instead: earnings (P/E, EV/EBIT), book value & return on equity (P/TBV + ROE — how banks are actually judged) — 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 prices SVIX based on its unique exposure to inverse volatility, rather than traditional cash flows, as evidenced by its negative net income and operating cash flow. Investors are likely focused on the performance of the underlying VIX futures and the trust's ability to effectively track its inverse objective, viewing it as a specialized trading instrument or hedge.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
As a trust, SVIX does not engage in dividends or buybacks; it funds itself through the creation and redemption of its shares based on investor demand.
Residual Income
Balance-sheet financial (Investment Banking): residual income model - book value is meaningful anchor.
Show advanced inputs
| Sector Default | 8.0% |
What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings FCF model. Standalone segment assumptions: none. It does not project net interest income and fee-income 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 0 out of the last 4 years.
Geography & Markets
SVIX operates within global financial markets, primarily tracking US-based VIX futures. Its investor base is global, though specific geographic 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)75.3OverboughtBought up hard recently — stretched; pullbacks are common from here.
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.
What's been happening
VS Trust (SVIX) was an exchange-traded note (ETN) designed to provide inverse exposure to the VIX Short-Term Futures Index. It was not a traditional operating company with revenue or product launches. The ETN was delisted in February 2018 following a significant spike in volatility, which led to a near-total loss for investors holding inverse volatility products. Since its delisting, there have been no operational changes, new product launches, or regulatory actions directly pertaining to SVIX itself, as it no longer trades or issues new notes. Discussions around SVIX now primarily focus on its historical context and the risks associated with inverse volatility instruments.
- Delisted product, no ongoing operations
- Historical event, not current business activity
News summary written by Gemini gemini-2.5-flash, refreshed May 29, 2026. AI can be wrong; verify before acting.
QUALITY
Data Quality & Risk Flags (6 notes — click to expand/collapse)
Guardrail Notes (6)
- Financial sector: using residual income model. IV = Book Value + PV(excess earnings).
- Terminal growth (3%) capped to 1.6% (80% of near-term growth 2%).
- Price is far above the model output - market may be pricing optionality, narrative catalysts, or margin expansion beyond what trailing cash flows support.
- 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 VS Trust's SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | — | -623.5M | $-11.77 |
| 2024 | — | -25.4M | $-0.48 |
| 2023 | — | — | $0.00 |
| 2022 | — | -60.7M | $-1.15 |
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 | -542.1M | — | — | -542.1M |
| 2024 | -329.4M | — | — | -329.4M |
| 2023 | -201.2M | — | — | -201.2M |
| 2022 | -232.0M | — | — | -232.0M |
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). This is the same owner-earnings FCF definition the valuation model uses, though the DCF's starting value is a EPS basis (residual-income model), not this single year.
Balance Sheet
| Total Assets | 551.0M |
| Total Liabilities | 7.7M |
| Equity | 543.3M |
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