Owner Scorecard


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TEM, Tempus AI Inc.

Software asset-light UnprofitableDistress / turnaround

Tempus is a technology company focused on healthcare that straddles two converging worlds.

Unlike other technology companies, we are deeply rooted in clinical care delivery as one of the largest sequencers of cancer patients, and patients with other diseases, in the United States.

To accomplish this, we built both a technology platform to free healthcare data from silos and an operating system to make this data useful, the combination of which we refer to as our Platform.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K
TEM · Tempus AI Inc.
I

The business

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

Revenue · FY2025
$1.3B
+83.4% YoY · 58% 3-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 4-yr average
Revenue $1.4B 4-yr avg $704M
Operating margin −19.7% 4-yr avg −59.8%
ROIC −225% 4-yr avg −210%
Owner-earnings margin −16% 4-yr avg −38%
Free cash flow margin −16% 4-yr avg −39%

The business in brief

read the 10-K →

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

What it is
Revenue is led by Diagnostics (75%) and Insights Product (20%), with 2 more lines behind.
Situation
Unprofitable. No sustained operating profit across the record; an earnings multiple has nothing to rest on. What the record does show is revenue, the gross-margin trajectory, and the burn against the cash on hand. Distress / turnaround. Thin interest coverage, or operating cash burned against real debt, across the record. The balance sheet carries this situation; the debt schedule sets the clock.
What moves the needle
Operating margin has run around −83% through the cycle, the operating line deeply negative — so the lever is the path to a margin at all: revenue growth against the cost curve and the cash runway, not the level of a margin that isn't there yet. Read this kind of business on retention and the cost of growth. 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.

Where the money comes from

read the 10-K →

Diagnostics is 75% of revenue, with Insights Product the other meaningful line at 20%.

Revenue by product line, FY2025
  • Diagnostics75%$955M
  • Insights Product20%$258M
  • Trials Product3%$39M
  • AI Applications2%$20M

From the segment footnote of the company's own 10-K. Shares are of total revenue; the profit bar shows each segment's share of segment operating profit, before unallocated corporate costs.

II

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

The record, 2022–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left
2022’222023’232024’242025’25TTMTTMMar 2026
Income statement
$321M$532M$693M$1.3B$1.4BRevenueRevenue
73%56%109%58%58%SG&A / revenueSG&A/rev
26%17%22%14%14%R&D / revenueR&D/rev
($265M)($196M)($691M)($253M)($269M)Operating incomeOp. inc.
−82.8%−36.9%−99.7%−19.9%−19.7%Operating marginOp. mgn
($290M)($214M)($706M)($245M)($303M)Net incomeNet inc.
Cash flow & returns
($168M)($214M)($189M)($218M)($186M)Operating cash flowOp. cash
$17M$21M$26M$32M$32MDepreciationDeprec.
$105M($22M)($44M)($130M)($69M)Working capital & otherWC & other
$18M$35M$22M$21M$27MCapexCapex
5.7%6.5%3.2%1.7%2.0%Capex / revenueCapex/rev
($187M)($236M)($211M)($239M)($213M)Owner earningsOwner earn.
−58.2%−44.3%−30.5%−18.8%−15.6%Owner earnings marginOE mgn
($187M)($249M)($211M)($239M)($213M)Free cash flowFCF
−58.2%−46.8%−30.5%−18.8%−15.6%Free cash flow marginFCF mgn
$40M$6M$0$377M$0AcquisitionsAcquis.
$6M$6M$6M$0$0Dividends paidDiv. paid
-210%-225%ROICROIC
-1253%-50%-73%Return on equityROE
n/m−50%−73%Retained to equityRetained/eq
Balance sheet
$303M$166M$341M$605M$521MCash & investmentsCash+inv
$94M$155M$311M$309MReceivablesReceiv.
$29M$38M$52M$52MInventoryInvent.
$54M$54M$82M$41MAccounts payablePayables
$69M$139M$281M$319MOperating working capitalOper. WC
$350M$668M$1.2B$1.1BCurrent assetsCur. assets
$233M$291M$372M$318MCurrent liabilitiesCur. liab.
1.5×2.3×3.1×3.3×Current ratioCurr. ratio
$53M$73M$73M$470M$470MGoodwillGoodwill
$564M$926M$2.3B$2.1BTotal assetsAssets
$193M$168M$209M$199MTotal debtDebt
$27M($173M)($396M)($322M)Net debt / (cash)Net debt
($1.1B)($1.4B)$56M$491M$416MShareholders’ equityEquity
0.0%0.0%77.0%9.8%11.3%Stock comp / revenueSBC/rev
Per share
126K127K120K174K179KShares out (diluted)Shares
$2543.69$4200.41$5785.60$7298.06$7622.58Revenue / shareRev/sh
$-2298.92$-1691.14$-5889.15$-1406.07$-1692.58EPS (diluted)EPS
$-1480.05$-1860.95$-1761.93$-1372.28$-1189.74Owner earnings / shareOE/sh
$-1480.05$-1966.22$-1761.93$-1372.28$-1189.74Free cash flow / shareFCF/sh
$44.62$44.43$46.93$0.00$0.00Dividends / shareDiv/sh
$145.78$273.34$184.57$120.79$151.86Cap. spending / shareCapex/sh
$-8955.98$-10916.52$470.08$2819.43$2326.75Book value / shareBVPS

Share counts before 2024 are restated ×2 for a stock split, so per-share figures sit on one basis.

The diluted share count moved ×1.45 into 2025 — shares issued, not a split the totals corroborate — and the per-share figures carry the counts as filed.

Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
3-yr5-yr
Revenue / share+42.1%/yr+42.1%/yr (3-yr)
Capital spending / share−6.1%/yr−6.1%/yr (3-yr)

The record, charted

FY2022–2025

Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked. Share counts on the current split basis.

Share count
174Kpeak FY2025

Owner earnings vs. net income

Owner earningsNet income

The accountant's number, and the cash an owner can take; the gap is the tell.

($239M)owner earningsvs.($245M)net incomelow FY2025

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 $245M loss into ($239M) of owner earnings: more cash than the profit line showed, after the non-cash charges and the capital it put back in.

FY2025FY2024FY2023FY2022
Reported net income($245M)($706M)($214M)($290M)
Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back+$32M+$26M+$21M+$17M
Stock-based compensationreal costnon-cash, but a real cost+$125M+$534M
Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items−$130M−$44M−$22M+$105M
Cash from operations($218M)($189M)($214M)($168M)
Maintenance capital expenditurethe spending needed just to hold position and volume−$21M−$22M−$21M−$18M
Owner earnings($239M)($211M)($236M)($187M)
Growth capital expenditurediscretionary; spent to get bigger, not to stand still−$13M
Free cash flow($239M)($211M)($249M)($187M)
Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue-19%-30%-44%-58%

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 $125M), owner earnings is nearer ($364M).

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 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →

Will it survive?

  • No meaningful interest burden
    Little 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
    Cash $605M − debt $209M
    What this means

    Cash and short-term investments exceed every dollar of debt by $396M, 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?

  • Below average
    NOPAT ($200M) ÷ invested capital $95M (debt + equity − cash)
    Industry peers: median -2%
    What this means

    The rate the business earns on the money tied up in it, Buffett's north star, because over time a stock tracks the ROIC beneath it. Above ~15% sustained hints at a moat; a return below the cost of capital (~8%) erodes value as a business grows rather than building it — the test Buffett weighs most. Asset-light businesses (R&D expensed, little capital) read artificially high, pair this with Owner Earnings.

  • Consumes cash through the cycle
    4-yr median margin, range -58%–-19%; latest ($239M) = operating cash ($218M) − maintenance capex $21M
    Industry peers: median 8%
    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 -19% of revenue this year, a -44% median across 4 years. Treating stock comp as the real expense it is (less $125M of SBC) leaves ($364M).

  • Loss, and burning cash
    Net income ($245M) · cash from operations ($218M)
    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?

  • No surplus to allocate
    What this means

    The business didn't generate positive Owner Earnings this year, so any distributions came from the balance sheet or borrowing, not from operations.

  • Investing or harvesting? 0.66×
    Harvesting
    Capex $21M ÷ depreciation $32M
    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 · 2 of 3 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 Near
    Revenue ≥ $2B · $1.3B
    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 Pass
    Current ratio ≥ 2× · 3.13×
    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.

  • Conservative debt Pass
    Debt ≤ working capital · $209M vs $795M WC
    What this means

    Graham's rule that borrowings not exceed net current assets. Capital-heavy and buyback-heavy firms routinely fail it, read it next to interest coverage, not alone.

  • 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 $-2170.83/share (latest year $-1369.79), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $2746.68/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.

Durability & moat, 2022–2025

Whether the record’s returns held, and what the capital reinvested earned.

  • Profitable years 0 of 4
    What this means

    Lost money in 4 year(s), look at what happened there before trusting the average.

  • Operating margin −60% → −60% (2-yr avg ends)
    What this means

    Through the cycle the operating margin held roughly steady — about −60% early, −60% lately, median −83%.

  • Reinvestment, incremental ROIC returns capital
    What this means

    The capital base barely grew: this business returns cash through dividends and buybacks rather than reinvesting. Judge it on the cash returned, not on compounding.

  • Worst year 2024 · −99.7% op. margin
    What this means

    Operations went underwater in 2024, understand why before trusting the good years.

  • Dividend record paid
    What this means

    Paid a dividend in 3 of the years on record.

Does AI threaten the moat?

Elevated contestability

The product is software or information, the very thing capable AI now produces more cheaply, so the moat is more contestable than the record alone implies.

In its own filing A competitive risk, new this year

Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat, in language that was not in the prior year's filing.

“The development and deployment of foundation models could ultimately reduce demand for our Data and applications products, as once a company is able to utilize a foundation model to advance its business objectives, it may no longer have a need to license our de-identified data.”

AI has collapsed the cost of building a capable substitute for the very thing this business sells. When a credible alternative can be assembled for a fraction of the incumbent's price, it is pricing power that erodes first, not revenue tomorrow. The live question is whether the moat survives that, not whether it held in the past. Whether that question is answerable at all is yours to decide, against your own circle of competence.

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, 2026

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 assets$1.1B
  • Cash & short-term investments$521M
  • Receivables$309M
  • Inventory$52M
  • Other current assets$172M
Current liabilities$318M
  • Accounts payable$41M
  • Other current liabilities$277M
Current ratio3.31×all current assets ÷ what's due · Graham looked for 2×
Quick ratio3.15×stricter: inventory excluded
Cash ratio1.64×strictest: cash alone against what's due
Working capital$736Mthe cushion left after near-term bills
Cash runway2.4 yrsthe business is consuming cash; this is how long the cash on hand lasts at that rate
Revenue, latest quarter vs. a year ago+36.1%the freshest read on whether the business is still growing
Current ratio, recent quarters3.7× → 3.3×
Deeper floors
Tangible book value($384M)equity stripped of goodwill & intangibles
Net current asset value($665M)Graham's net-net: current assets less all liabilities
Debt incl. operating leases$85M$85M of it operating leases
Deferred revenue$94Mcustomer cash collected before delivery; operating float

From the company's latest filing.

Acquisitions & goodwill

from the balance sheet & the 4-year cash-flow record

Goodwill grows only when a company acquires and falls only when it concedes it overpaid. The size of that bet, the cash put into buying rather than building, and how much has already been written off.

Goodwill & intangibles$825M36% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired
Against book equity96%goodwill is this share of book equity; the rest is the company’s own retained and paid-in capital
Cash spent acquiring$422Mover 4 years buying other businesses, against $96M of capital spent building

None written down over the record; the goodwill is still carried at full cost. That is the deals holding their value on the books so far; whether they keep doing so is the test an owner watches, since the write-down, when it comes, is the admission the price was too high.

Goodwill, acquired intangibles and equity from the latest balance sheet; acquisition spend and write-downs summed across the 4-year record, from the company's own filings.

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 ownership<1%

    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$125M

    The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 10% 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, Acquisitions, 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, Software

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
IACIAC Inc.$2.4B66%-3.9%-2%3%
TBLATaboola.com Ltd.$1.9B30%0.3%-2%6%
TRIPTripAdvisor Inc.$1.9B93%6.9%9%10%
TEMTempus AI Inc.$1.3B-59.8%-210%-37%
BMBLBumble Inc.$966M71%-14.5%-6%
DOCNDigitalOcean$901M60%-2.6%-0%15%
DVDoubleVerify$748M83%12.5%7%18%
EVEREverQuote Inc.$693M94%-3.7%-34%1%
Group median-3.2%-2%6%
IV

The price

What a price has to assume.

What the price implies

reverse-DCF

Tempus AI 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.

$
The assumptions

Revenue, delivered55%/yr’22→’25

Enter a price to run it.

Owner earnings it must reach
Margin the price demands
Owner-earnings margin today−16%

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, "Tempus AI Inc. (TEM), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/TEM, data as of 2026-07-09.

Manual order: ← TEL its page in the Manual TENB →

Industry order: ← TEAM the Software chapter TENB →