vTv Therapeutics Inc. (VTVT) Stock Analysis
vTv Therapeutics Inc.
▾ What's in the 31/100 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 VTVT (speculative micro-cap)
No model can pin a precise fair value on a company this small — but that does not mean there is nothing to learn. The useful questions are what the price is betting on, and whether the company can survive long enough to deliver it.
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1
Reverse-DCF — what growth the price assumes ↓
The single most useful number here: it backs out the growth the market is paying for. If that figure is "historically unprecedented," the price is running on hype, not fundamentals.
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2
Cash runway ↓
A pre-profit micro-cap lives or dies on whether it can fund itself to profitability before running out of money and diluting you.
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3
The raw financial statements + the 10-K ↓
At this scale, the actual numbers, insider ownership, and share-count trend tell you more than any ratio.
Standard DCF doesn't fit VTVT 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.
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.
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 -$27.0M 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 -$25.3M (was -$25.3M 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 -$25.3M vs net income -$27.0M.
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✓ Return on assets improvingReturn on assets -30.0% vs -48.2% a year ago.
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✓ Debt load (vs assets)The filing reports no interest-bearing debt in either year (total assets $89.9M).
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✓ Short-term liquidity (current ratio)Current ratio 13.54x vs 7.34x a year ago.
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· Share count (dilution) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
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· Pricing power (gross margin) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
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· Sales per asset (asset turnover) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
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 $89M in cash and is burning roughly $25M/year in operations. At that pace, the cash lasts 3.5 yrs 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 vTv Therapeutics Inc. because the company has consistently negative net income and operating cash flow, indicating it is not yet profitable. Investors are likely betting on the success of its drug pipeline and future revenue growth, rather than current cash flows. The market may be assigning value to the potential for successful drug development and commercialization, which is not captured in backward-looking models. The #1 quantifiable risk is the continued negative operating cash flow, which implies ongoing cash burn.
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 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.
- Results from ongoing clinical trials
- New licensing or partnership agreements
- Progress towards regulatory 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 fell -100% to $0.
- Free cash flow is negative at -$29.0M — the cash burn widened vs last year.
- Still unprofitable at -$27.0M — loss widening.
Nothing was clearly improving year-over-year.
Management & Leadership
vTv Therapeutics Inc. is led by its CEO, Richard S. Nelson, who has been with the company since 2018. The company focuses on developing new therapies for various medical conditions. Its leadership team is focused on advancing its clinical pipeline.
What They Make
vTv Therapeutics Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing orally administered small molecule drugs for the treatment of a range of diseases. Its primary customers are patients suffering from conditions targeted by its drug candidates.
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 pricing vTv Therapeutics based on expectations for its future drug pipeline success and potential for significant revenue growth, rather than its current financial performance. The company has negative net income and operating cash flow, indicating it is in a cash-burning growth stage. The market may be assigning value to the potential for successful clinical trial outcomes and subsequent commercialization of its drug candidates, which is not in the model.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
The company funds itself primarily through equity raises and strategic partnerships, as it has negative operating cash flow and does not pay dividends or engage in buybacks.
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 Growth | 15.0% |
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
Moat Signals
The company has a track record of negative net income and operating cash flow over the last five years.
Geography & Markets
vTv Therapeutics Inc. is headquartered in the United States, with its research and development activities primarily conducted domestically. Specific geographic revenue 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)46.8NeutralMomentum 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 →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.
QUALITY
Data Quality & Risk Flags (8 notes — click to expand/collapse)
Guardrail Notes (8)
- FCF negative: revenue/margin growth model projects future cash flows from revenue trajectory.
- INVARIANT: weighted IV is non-positive. Model may not be appropriate.
- Model implies no positive equity value under these assumptions. Valuation is speculative/low-confidence.
- Shares from unknown — per-share values may be less accurate.
- Illiquidity discount 25% applied (small/micro-cap — harder to exit, demand a margin).
- Shares/market cap missing or defaulted; per-share valuation unreliable.
- Shares defaulted to 1; IV is NOT meaningful — treat as data-unavailable.
- DATA UNAVAILABLE: per-share values suppressed due to missing/unreliable shares data.
FINANCIALS
Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)
From vTv Therapeutics Inc.'s SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | — | -27.0M | — |
| 2024 | 1.0M | -18.5M | — |
| 2023 | — | -20.3M | — |
| 2022 | 2.0M | -19.2M | — |
| 2021 | 4.0M | -13.0M | — |
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 | -25.3M | — | 3.8M | -29.0M |
| 2024 | -25.3M | — | 2.8M | -28.1M |
| 2023 | -19.1M | — | 1.6M | -20.7M |
| 2022 | -16.0M | 21,000 | 1.3M | -17.3M |
| 2021 | -19.3M | — | 2.4M | -21.7M |
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: -25.3M − — − 3.8M (SBC & adj.) = -29.0M. 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 Assets | 89.9M |
| Total Liabilities | 25.5M |
| Equity | 64.4M |
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