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PRLD, Prelude Therapeutics Incorporated
Prelude is a precision oncology company built on a foundation of drug discovery excellence to deliver novel precision cancer medicines to underserved patients.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
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.
- What moves the needle
- The pipeline against the patent cliff, and pricing. What decides it: whether new drugs replace those losing exclusivity, the odds in the clinical pipeline, and how durable pricing stays against payers and generics. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, 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.
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 turned a $99M loss into ($56M) of owner earnings: more cash than the profit line showed, after the non-cash charges and the capital it put back in.
| FY2025 | FY2024 | |
|---|---|---|
| Reported net income | ($99M) | ($127M) |
| Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back | +$2M | +$2M |
| Stock-based compensationreal costnon-cash, but a real cost | +$12M | +$21M |
| Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items | +$30M | +$1M |
| Cash from operations | ($56M) | ($103M) |
| Capital expenditurecash put back in to keep running and to grow | −$67K | −$764K |
| Owner earnings | ($56M) | ($104M) |
| Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue | -464% | -1481% |
Owner earnings is the cash an owner could pull out without starving the business: operating cash less the capital it must spend to hold its position . The cash-flow statement also adds stock comp back as non-cash, but it is a real cost paid in shares; counted as the expense it is (less $12M), owner earnings is nearer ($68M).
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.
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
Will it survive?
- No meaningful interest burdenLittle or no interest expense reported
What this means
Little or no interest expense reported, the business isn't leaning on lenders to operate.
- Net cash, debt-freeCash $35M + ST investments $68M − debt $0
What this means
Cash and short-term investments exceed every dollar of debt by $103M, 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 dataIndustry peers: median -62%
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
- Owner-earnings margin -464%Consumes cashOwner earnings ($56M) = operating cash ($56M) − maintenance capex $67KIndustry peers: median -590%
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 -464% of revenue this year. Treating stock comp as the real expense it is (less $12M of SBC) leaves ($68M).
- Are earnings backed by cash? ($56M)Loss, and burning cashNet income ($99M) · cash from operations ($56M)
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? 0.04×HarvestingCapex $67K ÷ depreciation $2M
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 · 0 of 2 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 MissRevenue ≥ $2B · $12M
What this means
Big enough to weather a storm. Graham's 1972 floor was ~$100M of sales (≈ $700M today); we use a $2B revenue line as a conservative modern stand-in.
- Strong liquidity NearCurrent ratio ≥ 2× · 1.99×
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 $-1.42/share (latest year $-1.25), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $0.86/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 contestabilityThe moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.
Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat, in language that was not in the prior year's filing.
“Moreover, we face increased competition from other companies that are using artificial intelligence, some of whom may be able to more quickly and effectively identify and develop novel product candidates compared to us and our business partners, which could impair our ability to compete effectively and have a material …”
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.
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 the latest quarter, Mar 31, 2026Can 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.
- Cash & short-term investments$82M
- Other current assets$3M
- Accounts payable$2M
- Other current liabilities$40M
From the company's latest filing.
Management, ownership & pay
read the proxy →From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid.
- Insider ownership5%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- Stock-based compensation$12M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 98% of revenue. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.
What an owner would ask, FY2025
read the 10-K →- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Revenue recognition, Stock compensation as critical estimates
each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →
The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.
Peers, Pharmaceuticals
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.
| Company | Revenue | Gross margin | Op. margin | ROIC | Owner earn. margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IRDOpus Genetics Inc. | $14M | 99% | -205.8% | — | -248% |
| ABUSArbutus Biopharma Corporation | $14M | — | -936.4% | -85% | -685% |
| EVMNEvommune Inc. | $13M | — | -623.6% | -40% | -590% |
| PRLDPrelude Therapeutics Incorporated | $12M | — | -861.3% | -247% | -464% |
| CBIOCrescent Biopharma Inc. | $11M | — | -957.2% | — | -530% |
| XOMAXOMA Royalty Corporation | $10M | — | -177.6% | -16% | -250% |
| ZBIOZenas BioPharma Inc. | $10M | — | -3277.8% | -144% | -1724% |
| PRTAProthena Corporation plc | $10M | — | -1390.3% | — | -1090% |
| Group median | — | — | -898.9% | -85% | -560% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFPrelude Therapeutics Incorporated 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.
Enter a price to run it.
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
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.
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