Owner Scorecard


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ADUR, Aduro Clean Technologies Inc.

Chemicals capital-intensive UnprofitableNet current asset value

Aduro is an early-stage, Ontario-based clean technology company that has developed a highly flexible chemical recycling platform featuring three water-based technologies: Hydrochemolytic Plastics Upcycling, Hydrochemolytic Bitumen Upgrading, and Hydrochemolytic Renewables Upgrading.

Aduro currently directs its HCT platform toward these three principal application areas.

Aduro's technology transforms lower-value feedstocks into useful, higher- value chemical feedstocks and fuels.

Latest annual: FY2025 40-F · figures as filed, in CAD · US listing is the ordinary share
ADUR · Aduro Clean Technologies Inc.
I

The business

What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.

Revenue · FY2025
C$231K
−31.5% YoY
Vital signs · TTM
Cash & investments C$7M
Cash burn · annual C$9M
Runway 9 mo

The business in brief

read the 10-K →

What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.

Situation
Unprofitable. No meaningful revenue yet; the record is the cash on hand against the burn. Net current asset value. Current assets alone exceed every liability combined, and the surplus is most of the balance sheet: the shape Graham called a net-net.
What moves the needle
The spread and utilization. What decides it: the gap between product prices and feedstock costs, how full the plants run, and where it sits when the commodity cycle turns down. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on litigation & contingencies, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.

Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.

II

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

Net income is the accountant's number; owner earnings is the cash an owner could take out. The walk between them, off the cash-flow statement, and whether the gap is widening or holding.

In fiscal 2025 the business earned (C$10M) of owner earnings, the operating cash left after the C$536K it takes just to hold its position. It put C$904K more into growth; free cash flow, after that spending, was (C$10M).

FY2025FY2024
Reported net income(C$12M)(C$7M)
Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back+C$536K+C$431K
Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items+C$3M+C$2M
Cash from operations(C$9M)(C$5M)
Maintenance capital expenditurethe spending needed just to hold position and volume−C$536K−C$431K
Owner earnings(C$10M)(C$6M)
Growth capital expenditurediscretionary; spent to get bigger, not to stand still−C$904K−C$717K
Free cash flow(C$10M)(C$6M)
Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue-4117%-1671%

Owner earnings is the cash an owner could pull out without starving the business: operating cash less the maintenance capital it must spend to hold its position (here about C$536K, roughly its depreciation, the rate its assets wear out). The other C$904K of its capital spending is growth it chose, not upkeep it owed; charged only with the maintenance it must do, the business earns well more than the year's free cash flow shows.

Maintenance capex is estimated as depreciation where a growing business invests above it; free cash flow is the figure the scorecard's free-cash margin reads.

III

Quality & stewardship

Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.

Owner’s Scorecard

FY2025 40-F · source on SEC EDGAR →

Will it survive?

  • Does not cover its interest
    Operating income (C$12M) ÷ interest expense C$12K
    What this means

    A full year of operating profit didn't cover the interest bill. This is the zombie zone: the business depends on refinancing, asset sales, or forbearance to service its debt.

  • Net cash, debt-free
    Cash C$7M − debt C$0
    What this means

    Cash and short-term investments exceed every dollar of debt by C$7M, on net the company owes nothing, and can act from strength when others can't. Net debt is the leverage figure that matters: the cash is already set against the debt. Strategic or illiquid investments aren't counted here.

  • Not enough data
    What this means

    The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.

Is it a good business?

  • Not enough data
    Industry peers: median -22%
    What this means

    The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.

  • Consumes cash
    Owner earnings (C$10M) = operating cash (C$9M) − maintenance capex C$536K
    Industry peers: median -267%
    What this means

    What an owner could take out without starving the business: operating cash less the maintenance capital it must spend to hold its position — Buffett's owner earnings. That's -4117% of revenue this year.

  • Loss, and burning cash
    Net income (C$12M) · cash from operations (C$9M)
    What this means

    The company reported a net loss, so a conversion ratio isn't meaningful. What matters then is whether operations still threw off cash, here, they did not.

How is the cash used?

  • Not enough data
    What this means

    The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.

  • Investing or harvesting? 2.69×
    Expanding
    Capex C$1M ÷ depreciation C$536K
    What this means

    Descriptive, not a grade. Above ~1× means investing faster than assets wear out (growth, or, sustained for years, today's earnings carrying less depreciation than tomorrow's will). Below means spending less than it's wearing out (efficiency, or a melting asset base). The ratio won't tell you which; the filings will.

Graham’s defensive tests · 1 of 1 met

Graham’s numerical criteria for the defensive investor (The Intelligent Investor, ch. 14), run on the filings. A floor of safety, not a buy signal; many fine modern businesses fail his strictest liquidity rules by design.

  • Adequate size
    Revenue ≥ $2B (a dollar floor) · C$231K
    What this means

    Big enough to weather a storm. Graham's floor is a dollar figure — about $2B of revenue as a conservative modern stand-in. This company reports in its home currency and we carry no exchange rate, so we show the figure and leave the size bar for you to apply rather than convert it with a number we don't have.

  • Strong liquidity Pass
    Current ratio ≥ 2× · 16.19×
    What this means

    Current assets at least twice current liabilities, near-term bills covered without touching the business. Strict by design: many cash-rich modern firms run leaner and miss it, holding their cushion in longer-dated securities.

  • Moderate price
    P/E ≤ 15 and P/E × P/B ≤ 22.5 · decided by the price
    What this means

    Graham's valuation gate, the wall he kept between a sound business and a sound investment. Three-year average earnings are C$-0.33/share (latest year C$-0.41), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is C$0.40/share. Enter a price in “What the price implies” just below for the P/E, P/B, and whether it clears. But this is the rule Buffett outgrew: there's no hard P/E law, and a wonderful business can deserve a far richer multiple if the thesis holds, treat it as the bargain-hunter's floor, not a verdict on the price.

Does AI threaten the moat?

Low contestability

The moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.

In its own filing Framed as a capability

The filing positions AI as something the company uses, not something it fears.

“These agreements were subsequently all cancelled by June 2020 as the Company looked to pursue more viable opportunities. - 23 - The Company also pursued several other business opportunities between September 2019 until June 2020, including entering a share exchange agreement date…”

AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat, and the company is using it that way.

Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.

All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.

Current Position

as of fiscal year-end, May 31, 2025

Can the business pay what it owes this year, off the freshest balance sheet: the quality of the assets, the debt actually coming due, and what a low ratio means here.

Current assetsC$9M
  • Cash & short-term investmentsC$7M
  • Other current assetsC$2M
Current liabilitiesC$529K
  • Accounts payableC$468K
Current ratio16.19×all current assets ÷ what's due · Graham looked for 2×
Quick ratioinventory untagged this quarter, so withheld rather than shown equal to the current ratio
Cash ratio13.16×strictest: cash alone against what's due
Working capitalC$8Mthe cushion left after near-term bills
Cash runway0.7 yrsthe business is consuming cash; this is how long the cash on hand lasts at that rate
Deeper floors
Tangible book valueC$12Mequity stripped of goodwill & intangibles
Debt incl. operating leasesC$171KC$171K of it operating leases

From the company's latest filing.

Peers, Chemicals

The same industry, side by side on owner economics. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.

CompanyRevenueGross marginOp. marginROICOwner earn. margin
ECVTEcovyst Inc.$724M27%11.8%4%12%
GPREGreen Plains Inc.$189M-32.4%-7%-31%
GEVOGevo Inc.$161M-37%-291.7%-22%-267%
FSIFlexible Solutions International Inc.$39M32%12.5%12%8%
ASPIASP Isotopes Inc.$24M32%-636.0%-81%-414%
PCTPureCycle Technologies Inc.$8M-2171.6%-106%-2057%
LODEComstock Inc.$2M68%-2584.6%-29%-2286%
ADURAduro Clean Technologies Inc.C$231K-5163.2%-195%-4117%
Group median-463.8%-26%-341%
IV

The price

What a price has to assume.

What the price implies

reverse-DCF

Enter the US price, in dollars: the NYSE/Nasdaq quote you hold. Aduro Clean Technologies Inc.'s US listing is the ordinary share itself; figures in this tool are translated at CAD 1 = $0.712 (2026-07-17, reference rate); the dollar quote then reconciles exactly. The record tables elsewhere on this page remain as filed, in CAD.

Aduro Clean Technologies Inc. is profitable, but owner earnings are negative this year because capital spending currently outruns operating cash, a build-out, so the owner-earnings reverse-DCF has no positive base to grow. We read the price from both ends instead: type a price to see the steady-state profitability it demands, then set the mature margin you would believe and weigh the two against each other. Nothing leaves your browser unless you enter it in your notebook.

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The assumptions

Enter a price to run it.

Owner earnings it must reach
Margin the price demands
Owner-earnings margin today−4509%

Two reads of one future. From your price: the owner earnings the company must reach, valued at a mature multiple and discounted back at your rate, expressed as the margin it implies on revenue grown at your rate. From your belief: the mature margin you would credit, set on the dial above. When the margin the price demands runs above the one you would believe, you are paying for a future taken on faith. For a deep cyclical at a trough, normalized through-cycle earnings are the better lens; this mode is for the genuinely unprofitable, and for the profitable business whose capital spending currently outruns its cash.

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Aduro Clean Technologies Inc. (ADUR), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/ADUR, data as of 2026-07-09.

Manual order: ← ADSEW its page in the Manual AEM →

Industry order: ← 6988 the Chemicals chapter ALB →