Upstart trades at $52.05 and has moved in lockstep with the market. Its shares have returned 20.7% over the last six months while the S&P 500 has gained 22.7%.
Is now the time to buy Upstart, or should you be careful about including it in your portfolio? Get the full breakdown from our expert analysts, it’s free for active Edge members.
Why Is Upstart Not Exciting?
We're swiping left on Upstart for now. Here are three reasons why UPST doesn't excite us and a stock we'd rather own.
1. Long Payback Periods Delay Returns
The customer acquisition cost (CAC) payback period measures the months a company needs to recoup the money spent on acquiring a new customer. This metric helps assess how quickly a business can break even on its sales and marketing investments.
Upstart’s recent customer acquisition efforts haven’t yielded returns as its CAC payback period was negative this quarter, meaning its incremental sales and marketing investments outpaced its revenue. The company’s inefficiency indicates it operates in a competitive market and must continue investing to grow.
2. Cash Burn Ignites Concerns
If you’ve followed StockStory for a while, you know we emphasize free cash flow. Why, you ask? We believe that in the end, cash is king, and you can’t use accounting profits to pay the bills.
Upstart’s demanding reinvestments have drained its resources over the last year, putting it in a pinch and limiting its ability to return capital to investors. Its free cash flow margin averaged negative 16.2%, meaning it lit $16.17 of cash on fire for every $100 in revenue.
3. Short Cash Runway Exposes Shareholders to Potential Dilution
As long-term investors, the risk we care about most is the permanent loss of capital, which can happen when a company goes bankrupt or raises money from a disadvantaged position. This is separate from short-term stock price volatility, something we are much less bothered by.
Upstart burned through $137.8 million of cash over the last year, and its $1.48 billion of debt exceeds the $701.5 million of cash on its balance sheet. This is a deal breaker for us because indebted loss-making companies spell trouble.
Unless the Upstart’s fundamentals change quickly, it might find itself in a position where it must raise capital from investors to continue operating. Whether that would be favorable is unclear because dilution is a headwind for shareholder returns.
We remain cautious of Upstart until it generates consistent free cash flow or any of its announced financing plans materialize on its balance sheet.
Final Judgment
Upstart’s business quality ultimately falls short of our standards. That said, the stock currently trades at 4.4× forward price-to-sales (or $52.05 per share). This valuation multiple is fair, but we don’t have much faith in the company. We're pretty confident there are superior stocks to buy right now. We’d suggest looking at an all-weather company that owns household favorite Taco Bell.
Stocks We Would Buy Instead of Upstart
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