Upstart Holdings, Inc. (UPST) Stock Analysis

Price updated today · SEC data refreshed 2 months ago ⓘ · Not investment advice

Upstart Holdings, Inc.

UPST Financial Services Financial Services📄 SEC filings ↗
Valuation N/A
Long-term trend (200d) 29% below 200-day Risk 36/100 Moderate
▾ What's in the 36/100 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%) 65/100 → +20.4
Macro backdrop (VIX, curve, credit, fear/greed + week-over-week momentum) (26%) 28/100 → +7.2
Total36/100

Contributions (weight × component score) sum to the total. This near-term score now includes fundamental health (leverage, FCF trend). It excludes the the Altman Z score, whose retained-earnings input this filer does not report separately, which relies on a proxied (estimated) input. See the Financial Health section for the full balance-sheet read.

💵 Price $30.43 · today 📄 Financials SEC EDGAR · refreshed 2 months ago
📍 START HERE

How to read UPST

We are not publishing an intrinsic value for this one — the section below says exactly why. Everything on this page that comes straight from the filings and the tape is still here; treat the missing valuation as a known gap, not as a verdict on the business.

Where to start — the sections that matter most for this stock
  1. 1 Reported earnings & margins ↓
    What the company actually reported — unaffected by the valuation being held.
  2. 2 Balance sheet & book value ↓
    Assets, liabilities and equity as filed.
  3. 3 Who's selling & betting against it ↓
    Insider and short-interest behaviour needs no valuation model.
Or — what are you trying to decide?
One rule first: never trade out of fear — and that includes the fear of missing out. A stock up 10% a day for three days is excitement, not data. If you can't point to the evidence behind a trade, you're more likely to lose. So whichever of these you are, check the data below before you act.
🚀
"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.
ⓘ A share-count quirk blocked the per-share math

The share count we read for UPST looks wrong — common for multi-class / founder-controlled filers that report shares per share-class. That makes per-share figures (including intrinsic value) misleading, so we suppressed them. The company's total financials below are sound.

What to use instead: Lean on the totals — revenue, net income, cash flow — and the balance sheet. Multi-class share counts are being corrected; once fixed, the per-share valuation returns automatically.

This note is only about the single DCF fair-value number — UPST's full financial statements, health scores, and written analysis are all below.

ⓘ Why does UPST trade at $30.43?

Upstart Holdings, Inc. has 107.5 million shares outstanding. At $30.43 per share, the market values all outstanding UPST equity at $3.3 billion. That's market capitalization, not enterprise value — enterprise value also accounts for debt and cash (UPST carries little or no debt, so the two are close here). 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 UPST 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…
PEER BASKET — TIGHT COMPARABLES

How does UPST stack up against its closest peers?

We take the 8 same-industry companies most similar to UPST (similar size) and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If UPST 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 8 same-industry peers; implausible multiples excluded.

What UPST would be worth at the median peer's multiple
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/GP EV/EBIT FCF Yield
SII SPROTT INC. Financial Services $3.4B — — — —
KEEL Keel Infrastructure Corp. Financial Services $3.4B 17.9x — — 0.1%
GPGI GPGI, Inc. Financial Services $3.5B 58.9x 122.6x — 0.0%
LU Lufax Holding Ltd Financial Services $2.9B — — — —
QFIN Qfin Holdings, Inc. Financial Services $3.9B 1.4x — 4.1x 34.2%
NAKA Nakamoto Inc. Financial Services $4.4B 2,392.5x — — —
SUIG SUI Group Holdings Ltd. Financial Services $2.0B 513.6x — — 0.0%
MARA MARA Holdings, Inc. Financial Services $5.5B 154.7x — — 0.0%
FINANCIAL HEALTH SCREENS

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. The classic manufacturing-calibrated model also fits asset-light businesses like this one poorly. Judge financial health from the leverage, cash position, and the measurable Piotroski checks instead.

Piotroski checks
4 passed · 3 failed · 2 n/a
Partial result, not a standard F-score: 4 of 7 measurable checks passed. 2 of the 9 standard checks couldn't be measured, so this is scored out of 7, not 9 — it isn't comparable to a published F-score.
▾ The checks — what passed, what didn't (and what we couldn't measure)
  • ✓ Positive net income
    Net income $53.6M in the latest year.
  • ✗ Positive operating cash flow
    Operating cash flow -$147.7M (was $186.3M 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.
  • ✗ Cash flow backs up reported profit
    Operating cash flow -$147.7M vs net income $53.6M.
    Why this matters: When cash generated exceeds reported earnings, profits are high-quality (not propped up by accruals or one-time items).
  • ✓ Return on assets improving
    Return on assets 1.8% vs -5.4% a year ago.
  • ✓ Debt load (vs assets)
    Long-term debt is 0.0% of assets vs 0.0% a year ago ($0.0M now).
  • · Short-term liquidity (current ratio) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
  • ✗ Share count (dilution)
    Share count rose 20.2% (89.5M → 107.5M 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) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
  • ✓ Sales per asset (asset turnover)
    Asset turnover 0.35x vs 0.27x 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.

INTERACTIVE — TWEAK YOUR ASSUMPTIONS

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 UPST. 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 UPST 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
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—

—

⚙ 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 quietly eats returns: a 9% gain at 3% inflation is only ~6% in real purchasing power. The intrinsic value above is already in today's dollars (a nominal DCF cancels inflation out of both growth and the discount rate), so this doesn't change the value — it shows what's left of your return after the tax.
Higher beta → higher discount rate (sets the rate above). 1.0 = moves with the market.
What you think UPST 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$30.43
    Model IVNot applicable — DCF couldn't price this stock. See Reverse DCF and Football Field below.

    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 Upstart Holdings, Inc. because the model implies no positive equity value and operating cash flow is negative, indicating a cash-burning growth stage. Investors are likely betting on future revenue growth and the potential for their AI lending platform to disrupt traditional credit markets. The #1 quantifiable risk is the continued negative operating cash flow, which could necessitate further capital raises.

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

    As of 2 months ago

    ANATOMY

    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.

    UPST Upstart Holdings, Inc. stock anatomy showing per-share revenue, operating expenses, free cash flow, and debt
    5.1%
    profit
    Where each $1 of revenue goes
    Net profit — 5.1¢ of every dollar ($0.50/sh = latest fiscal-year net income ÷ current shares. The table below shows GAAP diluted EPS of $0.45, computed on that year's weighted-average diluted shares — the share count moved, which is why they differ)
    Costs & taxes — 94.9¢ (on $9.71 revenue/sh)
    Net margin = net income ÷ revenue (most recent fiscal year).
    Plain English: $30/share buys $9.71 of revenue per share per year, generates $0.50 of net income per current share, and $2.61 of cash burned per share (negative free cash flow). Each share carries $0.00 of debt.
    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.

    MOMENTUM — WHAT'S GETTING BETTER & WORSE

    The trend, in plain numbers (2024 → 2025)

    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 +64% to $1.04B.
    • Swung to a profit of $53.6M (from a loss the prior year).
    ⚠ Worsening
    • Free cash flow is negative at -$280.0M — the cash burn widened vs last year.
    WHO

    Management & Leadership

    Dave Girouard is the co-founder and CEO of Upstart Holdings, Inc., a position he has held since the company's inception. As a former Google executive, he brings significant experience in technology and scaling platforms. Anna Counselman is also a co-founder and Head of People, and Paul Gu is a co-founder and Head of Product.

    Dave Girouard
    Chief Executive Officer
    Anna Counselman
    Head of People
    WHAT

    What They Make

    Upstart Holdings, Inc. operates an AI lending platform that partners with banks and credit unions to provide consumer loans. Their technology aims to improve access to affordable credit for consumers while reducing risk and costs for lenders.

    End Markets

    Personal LoansAuto LoansSmall Business Loans

    Revenue Drivers

    Referral Fees
    Platform Fees
    Servicing Fees
    Market Cap: 3.3BBeta: 2.02
    WHY

    Why Is It Priced Like This?

    Why Customers Pay

    Access to credit for underserved borrowers
    Lower fraud and loss rates for lenders
    Automated and efficient loan origination
    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 is pricing Upstart based on its potential to disrupt the traditional lending industry with its AI-driven platform, rather than current cash flows, as operating cash flow is negative. The market may be assigning value to the scalability of its AI platform into new loan categories, which is not in the model, and the potential for network effects as more lenders and borrowers adopt its technology, which is not in the model. Expectations for continued revenue growth, which is 5.3%/yr over 4 years, are a key focus for investors.

    HOW

    Business Model & Valuation

    How They Make Money

    Referral Fees
    Platform Fees
    Servicing Fees

    Growth / Revenue DCF

    Negative free cash flow: revenue/margin growth model used - standard FCF DCF is unreliable for companies still scaling.

    Show advanced inputs
    RevenueGrowth5.3%

    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.

    WHEN

    Maturity & Competitive Position

    Competitive analysis not yet available for this stock.
    WHERE

    Geography & Markets

    Geographic revenue mix not available from current data sources.
    SIGNALS

    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)    64.3NeutralMomentum is balanced — neither overbought nor oversold.
    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$29.42Price above (+3.4%)Price above its 50-day average = near-term uptrend.
    200-Day Average$42.69Price belowThe 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.

    QUALITY

    Data Quality & Risk Flags (4 notes — click to expand/collapse)
    Guardrail Notes (4)
    • 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.
    • Extreme valuation (P/IV 140.7917x, IV $0.24 vs price $33.79); 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 Upstart Holdings, Inc.'s SEC filings (EDGAR).

    Income (5yr)

    YearRevenueNet IncomeEPS
    20251.0B53.6M$0.45
    2024636.5M-128.6M$-1.44
    2023513.6M-240.1M$-2.87
    2022842.4M-108.7M$-1.31
    2021848.6M135.4M$1.43

    Cash Flow (5yr)

    YearOperating CFCapEx− SBC & adj.Free Cash Flow
    2025 -147.7M 347,000 132.0M -280.0M
    2024 186.3M 837,000 133.4M 52.1M
    2023 -111.7M 1.5M 175.0M -288.3M
    2022 -657.9M 8.8M 125.9M -792.6M
    2021 168.4M 8.4M 73.2M 86.7M

    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: -147.7M − 347,000 − 132.0M (SBC & adj.) = -280.0M. 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 Assets3.0B
    Total Liabilities2.2B
    Equity798.8M
    YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

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    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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