CUE

Cue Biopharma is a clinical-stage immunology company whose entire value rests on preclinical assets. Its lead program, CUE-401, is still preclinical with an IND only planned for Q2 2026 and first human safety data not expected until 2H 2026 — meaning there is no clinical proof-of-concept in the pipeline today. Reported FY2025 'revenue' of $27.5M (+195.7%) is collaboration/license income from partnering out CUE-501 (Boehringer Ingelheim) and the CUE-100 oncology series (ImmunoScape), not product sales; the company remains deeply unprofitable with a -96.7% operating margin, -$26.6M net loss, and -$21.7M operating cash flow. The $368M accumulated deficit against just $26.4M of equity tells the real story of two decades of cash burn.

The balance sheet is fragile in absolute terms: $27.1M of cash covers roughly one year of burn, and shares outstanding already ballooned 58% YoY to 97.7M — heavy, ongoing dilution is the funding model. The one bright spot is the liability-to-equity ratio of 0.60x and effectively zero long-term debt, but for a cash-burning biotech the binding constraint is runway, not leverage, and runway here is thin.