Alpha Teknova, Inc. (TKNO) Stock Analysis

Price updated 5 days ago · SEC data refreshed 3 months ago · Not investment advice

Alpha Teknova, Inc.

TKNO Healthcare Pharmaceuticals📄 SEC filings ↗
Valuation N/A
▾ What's in the 37/100 risk score? (higher = riskier)
Fundamental health (43%) 20/100 → +8.6
leverage 20/100 · Altman Z not scored — input unavailable (see Financial Health)
Smart money (short interest + insider buying) (31%) 57/100 → +17.9
Macro backdrop (VIX, curve, credit, fear/greed + week-over-week momentum) (26%) 39/100 → +10.0
early-warning: macro conditions deteriorating week-over-week
Total37/100

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.

💵 Price $6.71 · 5 days ago 📄 Financials SEC EDGAR · refreshed 3 months ago

How to read TKNO (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.

Where to start — the sections that matter most for this stock
  1. 1 Reverse-DCF — the growth the price demands ↓
    It shows exactly how fast the business must grow to justify today's price. Compare that to what comparable companies have actually achieved.
  2. 2 Cash runway ↓
    Can it reach profitability before it has to raise money and dilute shareholders?
  3. 3 Interactive calculator ↓
    Set your own growth + margin assumptions and see what the business would be worth if you are right.
Or — what are you trying to decide?
A note on process: fear-driven decisions — including fear of missing out — tend to be the expensive ones. A stock up 10% a day for three days is excitement, not evidence. Whichever reader you are, the data below is there to be checked before anything is decided.
🚀
"It's surging — should I chase it?"
The momentum / FOMO trade. Before you chase, see whether the people who know it best are quietly selling into the rally.
🏷️
"Is it a cheap bargain?"
The deep-value trade. How far below assets and our value it trades — and whether it's cheap for a reason.
ⓘ Using the right valuation lens for this business type

Standard DCF doesn't fit TKNO 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. Reverse DCF + Football Field also work as cross-checks.

ⓘ Why does TKNO trade at $6.71?

Alpha Teknova, Inc. has 53.5 million shares outstanding. At $6.71 per share, the market values all outstanding TKNO equity at $359 million. That's market capitalization, not enterprise value — enterprise value also accounts for debt and cash. The share price by itself tells you almost nothing — a company can pick any share price by splitting or issuing more shares. What matters is the total value (Market Cap?Market Cap — The total dollar value the market is assigning to the entire company.
Why it matters: This is the number that actually matters when comparing companies. Two companies with the same business but different share counts have the same market cap.
Reference: Mega cap >$200B · Large $10–200B · Mid $2–10B · Small $300M–2B · Micro <$300M
Full explanation →
) compared to what the business actually produces. This page values TKNO in Per Share?Per Share — A company-level figure divided by total shares — what one share represents.
Why it matters: Per-share metrics are the only way to fairly compare two companies with different share counts.
Full explanation →
economics — what each share represents of the underlying business. Play with the share-price calculator on the homepage →

Loading insider & short-seller data…
Checking filings for failure warnings…

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.

$2$3$5$6$8Current price $6.71EV / Sales (p25→p75)$1.76$7.44
The current price sits inside each method's range — roughly fair on this blended view.

Industry multiples sourced from: industry: Pharmaceuticals. See the Peer Basket section below for the peer comparison and its limited-comparables caveat.

How does TKNO stack up against its closest peers?

We take the 6 same-industry companies most similar to TKNO (similar size) and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If TKNO 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.

What peers trade at (p25 / median / p75)

Bold middle number = median peer. Half the peers trade above it, half below. Computed over 6 same-industry peers; implausible multiples excluded.

Peer-implied value check
Not enough clean peer EV/Sales multiples to derive a reliable median (some were dropped as implausible/outliers). The EV/EBIT and FCF-yield rows above are the better read here; also lean on the DCF.

⚠️ 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/GPEV/EBIT FCF Yield
NUVL Nuvalent, Inc. Pharmaceuticals $345M
VSTM Verastem, Inc. Pharmaceuticals $380M 12.3x 5.6%
VNDA Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc. Pharmaceuticals $388M 1.8x 3.7%
XOMAP XOMA Royalty Corp Pharmaceuticals $319M 40.2x 36.5x 0.4%
XOMAO XOMA Royalty Corp Pharmaceuticals $318M 40.0x 36.4x 0.1%
ZNTL Zentalis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Pharmaceuticals $285M
USNA USANA HEALTH SCIENCES INC Pharmaceuticals ·fallback $338M 0.4x 0.5x9.0x 30.6%
CYDY CytoDyn Inc. Pharmaceuticals ·fallback $301M

Quality & solvency checks

Cheap stocks can be cheap for a reason. These screens warn when a low valuation comes paired with structural fragility.

Altman Z-Score?Altman Z-Score — A bankruptcy-risk score combining 5 financial ratios into one number. Predictive of bankruptcy within 2 years.
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 →
n/a
Not reliably computable

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.

Piotroski F-Score?Piotroski F-Score — A 9-point quality checklist scoring profitability, leverage, and operating efficiency.
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 →
5 / 9
Mediocre
▾ The checks — what passed, what didn't (and what we couldn't measure)
  • Positive net income
    Net income -$17.3M 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.
  • Positive operating cash flow
    Operating cash flow -$8.6M (was -$12.4M 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.
  • Cash flow backs up reported profit
    Operating cash flow -$8.6M vs net income -$17.3M.
  • Return on assets improving
    Return on assets -16.7% vs -22.5% a year ago.
  • Debt load (vs assets)
    Long-term debt is 12.7% of assets vs 8.0% a year ago ($13.1M of $103.6M 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.
  • Short-term liquidity (current ratio)
    Current ratio 4.58x vs 3.82x a year ago.
  • Share count (dilution)
    Share count rose 14.4% (46.7M → 53.5M 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.
  • Pricing power (gross margin)
    Gross margin 33.2% vs 19.2% a year ago.
  • Sales per asset (asset turnover)
    Asset turnover 0.39x vs 0.32x 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.

Cash Runway
8 mo
TIGHT — under a year; likely needs to raise capital soon

Plain English: the company holds about $6M in cash and is burning roughly $9M/year in operations. At that pace, the cash lasts 8 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 Rate?Discount 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 TKNO. 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.

4.5% (risk-free)9-10% normal18% (deep-risk)
0%2-3% (GDP)5% (rarely sustainable)

A full intrinsic value isn't shown for TKNO 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.

For comparison — the revenue growth today's price already assumes

⚙ Advanced — tinker with every input (beta, growth, rate path, margin → full intrinsic value)
Where the discount rate comes from — discount rate = risk-free + beta × equity-risk-premium
What you'd earn risk-free from government bonds — the floor under every other rate. Slide it down to model the market expecting rate cuts (value rises); up for higher-for-longer.
The extra yearly return investors demand for owning stocks instead of safe bonds — the price of risk. History runs ~4.5–6.5%; we default to 5.5% (slightly conservative). It's an estimate, not a law — lower it if you think equities are less risky than that.
Inflation reduces the purchasing power of a nominal return: a 9% gain at 3% inflation is about 6% in real terms. The intrinsic value above is already in today's dollars (a nominal DCF carries inflation in both the growth and the discount rate), so this switch does not change the value — it restates the return in real terms.
Higher beta → higher discount rate (sets the rate above). 1.0 = moves with the market.
What you think TKNO can grow revenue for ~5 years, then fades to terminal.
For a pre-profit company: the % of revenue that eventually becomes free cash flow once mature. (Our published value uses the sector norm.)
All inputs start at the values our model used.

    Copy shareable link to this scenario →

    Price$6.71
    Model IVNot applicable — DCF couldn't price this stock. The other valuation lenses on this page (reverse-DCF, peers, sector lens — whichever apply to this filer) carry the read instead.

    A standard discounted cash flow?DCF — 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 Alpha Teknova, Inc. because the company exhibits negative operating cash flow and net income, indicating it is not currently generating profits. Valuing TKNO would require projecting a clear path to sustained profitability and positive free cash flow?Free 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 →
    , which is not evident in its recent financial history. Investors are likely betting on the company's potential to scale its life science tools and services, with the primary quantifiable risk being its compressing gross margins, which could hinder future profitability even with revenue growth. The market may be assigning value to the potential for new product development or strategic partnerships in the life sciences sector, which is not in the model.

    ⚠️ FCF negative: revenue/margin growth model projects future cash flows from revenue trajectory.

    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.

    TKNO Alpha Teknova, Inc. stock anatomy showing per-share revenue, operating expenses, free cash flow, and debt
    −42.6%
    loss
    Where each $1 of revenue goes
    For every $1 of revenue, TKNO currently loses 42.6¢ — costs exceed sales. A money-losing business can still be a good investment if losses are shrinking toward profitability; check the trend, not just the snapshot.
    Net margin = net income ÷ revenue (most recent fiscal year).
    Plain English: each share (at $7) represents $0.76 of revenue per share per year, $0.32 lost per share per year, and $0.25 of cash burned per share (negative free cash flow) from the latest fiscal year. Each share carries $0.25 of total debt (interest-bearing borrowings, current + long-term).
    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.

    🐂 The Bull Case
    Operating cash flow must turn positive and sustain growth to demonstrate a viable path to profitability, as it has been negative for the last five years.
    🐻 The Bear Case
    The compressing gross margin, from 47.8% to 33.2%, implies that even with revenue growth, profitability will be challenging to achieve if this trend continues.
    📌 Signposts to watch — update your view as these print
    • Improvement in gross margin percentage
    • Positive operating cash flow in future quarters
    • Acceleration in revenue growth beyond 2.4% annually

    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.

    ✅ Improving
    • Revenue grew +7% to $40.5M.
    • Free cash flow is negative at -$13.2M — the cash burn narrowed vs last year.
    • Gross margin improved to 33% (+14 pts).
    • Still unprofitable at -$17.3M — loss narrowing.

    Nothing was clearly worsening year-over-year.

    Management & Leadership

    Stephen Gunstream serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Alpha Teknova, Inc. since 2020. He leads the company's strategy in providing critical reagents for life science research and bioprocessing. Prior to Teknova, he held leadership roles in other life science companies.

    Stephen Gunstream
    Chief Executive Officer
    Matt Lowell
    Chief Financial Officer

    What They Make

    Alpha Teknova, Inc. manufactures and supplies reagents for life science research and bioprocessing. Its products are used by academic institutions, government labs, and pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

    End Markets

    Biopharmaceutical researchAcademic researchClinical diagnostics

    Revenue Drivers

    Cell culture media
    Molecular biology reagents
    Custom solutions
    Market Cap: 358.9MBeta: 1.34

    Why Is It Priced Like This?

    Why Customers Pay

    High-quality, consistent reagents
    Customizable product formulations
    Reliable supply chain
    No discounted-cash-flow value for this filer This company's reported free cash flow is negative, so a discounted-cash-flow valuation has no positive cash stream to discount. That is a fact about the business, not missing data — the reported figures below are complete.

    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 TKNO is likely driven by expectations of future growth in the life sciences sector, rather than current cash flow, as the company has negative net income and operating cash flow. The market may be assigning value to the potential for the company to expand its product portfolio or gain market share in specialized reagent markets, which is not in the model. The adequate current ratio of 4.58 provides some short-term stability, but long-term viability hinges on turning cash flow positive.

    Business Model & Valuation

    How They Make Money

    Sales of standard reagents and buffers
    Sales of custom-formulated solutions
    Provision of contract manufacturing services

    The company funds itself through equity raises and has rising long-term debt, as it is not currently generating positive operating cash flow or net income.

    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 Growth2.4%

    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

    Growth-stage life sciences

    Moat Signals

    Specialized product formulations
    Customer-specific solutions
    Quality and consistency reputation

    Revenue has been roughly flat, growing at 2.4% per year over the last four years, from $37M to $41M.

    Geography & Markets

    Alpha Teknova, Inc. is headquartered in the US and primarily serves customers in North America, with some international reach. Specific geographic revenue mix data is not available from current data sources.

    Geographic Risks

    Concentration risk in life science research sector
    Competition from larger, more established reagent suppliers

    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.

    Model neutral, tape neutral - aligned.
    RSI?RSI — Relative Strength Index — a 0-100 momentum gauge. Above 70 = overbought; below 30 = oversold.
    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)
    81.2OverboughtBought up hard recently — stretched; pullbacks are common from here.
    MACD?MACD — Moving Average Convergence Divergence — compares a fast and a slow price trend to gauge momentum direction.
    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.
    50-Day Average$3.35Price above (+100.3%)Price above its 50-day average = near-term uptrend.
    200-Day Average$3.92Price aboveThe 200-day line is the long-term trend divider — above it is generally considered a bull market for the stock.
    50 vs 200 CrossDeath50-day below 200-dayA "death cross" — the medium trend is below the long trend (often read as bearish).

    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.

    Data Quality & Risk Flags (6 notes — click to expand/collapse)

    Guardrail Notes (6)
    • FCF negative: revenue/margin growth model projects future cash flows from revenue trajectory.
    • Terminal growth (3%) capped to 1.9% (80% of near-term growth 2.4%).
    • 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.

    Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)

    From Alpha Teknova, Inc.'s SEC filings (EDGAR).

    Income (5yr)

    YearRevenueNet IncomeEPS
    202540.5M-17.3M$-0.32
    202437.7M-26.7M$-0.57
    202336.7M-36.8M$-1.16
    202241.4M-47.5M$-1.69
    202136.9M-9.8M$-0.61

    Cash Flow (5yr)

    YearOperating CFCapEx− SBC & adj.Free Cash Flow
    2025 -8.6M 1.1M 3.4M -13.2M
    2024 -12.4M 1.1M 3.7M -17.2M
    2023 -18.8M 7.9M 4.1M -30.9M
    2022 -27.4M 28.1M 3.7M -59.3M
    2021 -9.1M 19.9M 1.6M -30.5M

    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: -8.6M − 1.1M − 3.4M (SBC & adj.) = -13.2M. 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 Assets103.6M
    Total Liabilities34.8M
    Equity68.8M
    Total Debt13.1M

    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.

    PG
    Methodology by Pouyan Golshani, MD — founder of Gighz. Savng was built by a physician for busy professionals: every number on this page comes from SEC filings (EDGAR) and FINRA data through transparent, rules-based models — no analyst opinions, no hidden inputs. How we calculate every number →
    ⚠️ Not investment advice. Automated model outputs, last refreshed May 30, 2026 (the analysis-refresh date, not the latest filing period). All models have blind spots. Full disclaimer →
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