One-glance verdict
Overvalued
$0.23 our estimate vs market $1.03
Wall Street consensus: $5.50 (2,286.5% higher than our fair-value estimate)
347% above our estimate, beyond the bull case
Fundamentals snapshot
Lineage Cell Therapeutics, Inc.
LCTX · ASE · Healthcare · Biotechnology
Current price
$1.03
52-week range
$0.91 - $2.09
Market cap
$260.49M
Balance sheet
Healthy
-12.88x Concerning
Net cash $48.53M. Interest coverage shows how many times profit covers the interest bill.
What stands out
1 Reward
3 Risks
1 rewards · 3 risks
- Reward Free cash flow was positive in 1/10 years.
- Risk Operating margin compressed from -153.2% to -834.7% over 3 years.
- Risk Return on equity was -60.1% last year — the company lost money on shareholders' equity.
- Risk Insider ownership is only 4.9% (peer median: 8.1%).
What this company does
Lineage Cell Therapeutics, Inc.
Lineage Cell Therapeutics is a medical research company developing treatments that replace damaged cells in the body to help with serious conditions like blindness from macular degeneration and spinal cord injuries. The company currently makes no money from sales because its therapies are still in clinical trials (the required human testing phase before a product can be sold to the public). Therefore, its value is based on the potential that its treatments will one day be approved by government health agencies and become successful products.
How the company got here
Founded in 1990 as BioTime, the company initially focused on a blood volume expander. It later shifted to regenerative medicine, concentrating on stem cell therapies. A major change occurred in 2018 with the appointment of a new CEO, leading to a rebranding as Lineage Cell Therapeutics in 2019 to reflect its focus on developing specialized human cells to treat diseases. This new direction involved acquiring other companies, like Asterias Biotherapeutics, to strengthen its cell therapy programs.
What it actually does
Lineage Cell Therapeutics is a biotechnology company that develops treatments for serious medical conditions by replacing or supporting damaged cells in the body. Think of it like transplanting healthy, specialized cells into a patient to repair what's broken due to disease or injury. They create these cells from a special type of cell that can be coaxed into becoming different types of cells needed by the body, like those for the eyes or spinal cord. Because these cells are grown in a lab, they can be made in large batches and used for many different patients, which is why they are called "off-the-shelf" therapies.
OpRegen® - Vision Loss Therapy
This is Lineage's leading program, aimed at treating a form of age-related vision loss called dry age-related macular degeneration (dry AMD). OpRegen involves transplanting new retinal pigment epithelium cells into the eye to replace the ones that have died off. The company is working with Genentech, a part of the major healthcare company Roche, to develop and hopefully one day sell this treatment worldwide. This partnership is a significant source of the company's current revenue (money earned from business activities) through upfront and milestone payments.
OPC1 - Spinal Cord Injury Therapy
This therapy is being developed to help people who have had spinal cord injuries. It uses specific cells called oligodendrocyte progenitor cells, which are important for supporting nerve cells in the spinal cord. The goal is to transplant these healthy cells into the injured area to help restore some of the function that was lost. This program is in the clinical trial phase, which means it is being tested in people to see if it is safe and effective.
Other Preclinical Programs
Lineage has several other potential treatments in earlier stages of development, known as the preclinical stage (research done in a lab before testing in humans). These include therapies for hearing loss (ReSonance), other types of vision loss (PNC1), and corneal diseases of the eye (COR1). The company is also exploring how its cell technology could be used to treat other conditions like Type 1 Diabetes (ILT1) and even to help the immune system fight cancer (VAC2). These programs represent potential future growth for the company but are not yet being tested in large human studies.
What management is betting on now
Management's main strategy is to use its specialized technology platform, called AlloSCOPE, to create a pipeline (a series of products in development) of cell therapies. Instead of trying to sell all these therapies themselves, they often partner with larger pharmaceutical companies, like the deal with Roche for OpRegen. This approach brings in money through collaboration fees and milestone payments, which helps fund their ongoing research without having to sell a lot of new stock, a process which can lead to dilution (when the ownership percentage of existing shareholders is reduced). Their focus is on advancing their clinical trials and expanding their manufacturing capabilities to produce these cell therapies on a larger scale.
Price history
How the share price has moved
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Earnings history
Last 8 quarters — what happened
Click any quarter to read the call summary and what the numbers say.
FY2024 Q3
$-5.90M
FY2024 Q4
$-6.71M
FY2025 Q1
$-4.98M
FY2025 Q2
$-5.55M
FY2025 Q3
$-3.63M
FY2025 Q4
$-5.28M
FY2026 Q1
$-8.13M
FY2026 Q2
$-7.35M
Revenue
$1.07M
Net income
$1.48M
Diluted EPS
-0.03
Operating cash flow
$-7.24M
Free cash flow
$-7.35M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$1.73M
Net income
$-4.81M
Diluted EPS
-0.03
Operating cash flow
$-8.08M
Free cash flow
$-8.13M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$6.61M
Net income
$851.00K
Diluted EPS
0.00
Operating cash flow
$-4.88M
Free cash flow
$-5.28M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$3.68M
Net income
$-29.78M
Diluted EPS
-0.13
Operating cash flow
$-3.62M
Free cash flow
$-3.63M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$2.77M
Net income
$-30.46M
Diluted EPS
-0.13
Operating cash flow
$-5.54M
Free cash flow
$-5.55M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$1.50M
Net income
$-4.14M
Diluted EPS
-0.02
Operating cash flow
$-4.89M
Free cash flow
$-4.98M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$2.87M
Net income
$-3.27M
Diluted EPS
0.00
Operating cash flow
$-6.35M
Free cash flow
$-6.71M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$3.78M
Net income
$-3.03M
Diluted EPS
-0.02
Operating cash flow
$-5.79M
Free cash flow
$-5.90M
Fetching…
Sources
Is it cheap or expensive?
Fair value $0.23 vs current price $1.03
Wall Street consensus is the average analyst price target: $5.50 (2,286.5% higher than our fair-value estimate).
Our most-likely fair value is $0.23 a share — about 77.6% below today's price of $1.03, so the stock currently looks expensive (overvalued).
Is it drowning in debt?
Healthy
Net cash $48.5M - more cash than debt. Interest coverage -12.9x.
Net debt
$-48.53M
Interest coverage
-12.88x
Lineage Cell Therapeutics, Inc.'s profit covers its interest bill about 0.0 times over. which is weaker than most peers shown here and 2 peers sit below 1x, which is the danger zone where profit does not fully cover the interest bill.
Healthy
Worse cushion
Baseline
Better cushion
LCTX
BASELINE
Lineage Cell Therapeutics, Inc.
Total debt $2.30M Interest coverage -12.88x This is the baseline the peer rows are being compared against.
Total debt $73.54M Interest coverage -7.87x Neither company has much profit cushion over interest right now.
Total debt $26.66M Interest coverage -17,024.25x Neither company has much profit cushion over interest right now.
Total debt $66.95M Interest coverage 36.18x This peer still has a real interest-payment cushion, while LCTX does not.
What you should know
The case for and against LCTX
1 Reward
3 Risks
Rewards
-
Free cash flow was positive in 1/10 years.
Risks
-
Operating margin compressed from -153.2% to -834.7% over 3 years.
-
Return on equity was -60.1% last year — the company lost money on shareholders' equity.
-
Insider ownership is only 4.9% (peer median: 8.1%).
The numbers
All the key metrics, grouped by purpose
Tap any ? icon to learn what it means.
Valuation
How expensive the stock looks
P/E (TTM)
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Forward P/E
-10.10x
P/B
4.27x
P/S
19.91x
EV/EBITDA
-8.07x
PEG ratio
10.64x
Profitability
How much profit each dollar creates
Gross margin
-57.4%
Operating margin
-834.7%
Net margin
-246.6%
ROE
-60.1%
ROA
-17.0%
Health
Liquidity and balance-sheet strength
Debt / equity
0.04x
Current ratio
6.61x
Quick ratio
6.46x
Total debt
$2.30M
Total cash
$50.83M
Growth
How the business has been compounding
Revenue TTM
$13.08M
Revenue 5Y CAGR
35.3%
EPS TTM
-0.19
EPS 5Y CAGR
—
Cash flow
How much cash the business throws off
Operating CF TTM
$-23.82M
Free CF TTM
$-19.44M
FCF margin
-148.6%
Dividend
Shareholder payout
Yield
—
Payout ratio
0.0%
Last ex-div date
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