Forensic Analysis · Healthcare / Pharmaceuticals / Biotech · as of Sep 25, 2026
Sutro Biopharma, Inc. (STRO)
A forensic read on Sutro Biopharma, Inc. built from its complete SEC filings — financial-health screens, earnings quality, red flags and a price-aware rating. Reproducible math, not opinion.
F · Poor — capital at risk
Forensic grade
Distress
Financial health
-20.7
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
3
Forensic signals
$261M
Market cap
65.2%
Revenue growth
This free snapshot doesn't read filing or proxy text, so the auditor-quality and governance checks that can lower a grade were not evaluated (red flags, auditor quality, say on pay, board independence, going concern, valuation). Those checks only ever lower a grade, so the full analysis can land below the grade above but never above it — treat it as the most favourable reading, not the settled one.
Sutro Biopharma, Inc. earns an F (Poor — capital at risk) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads -20.7, placing it in the Distress zone. 3 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
-308.4%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -308.4% in the latest fiscal year and slipping across FY2023–FY2025 from -22.6%. After-tax operating profit was ($71M) in FY2023 and ($125M) in FY2025, with operating income at -58.1% of revenue in FY2023, -384.3% in FY2024 and -154.5% in FY2025. The capital base behind it cannot be compared across FY2023–FY2025: short-term debt and long-term debt are tagged in one of those two fiscal years and not the other, and an untagged line enters this calculation as zero, so any change in the base would be a change in what the filer tagged.
n/m (stock split)
FY2023–FY2025
Share count (stock split).Diluted share count changed -86% over the last 2 years to FY2025, but that includes a large one-time change around FY2024 consistent with a stock split or reverse split, not gradual buybacks or issuance — a split changes the count with NO effect on any holder's proportional ownership, so the raw -62.4%/yr figure isn't a real buyback/dilution read here.
14% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 14% of revenue in FY2025 — about $1.65 per diluted share. No cash left the business to pay it, which is why operating cash flow adds it back. Net of repurchases the diluted count still rose about 9.8% a year, above the level at which the count is a material claim on a stake, and only one year's change is on file — enough to state what a holder gave up, not enough to say whether the rate is climbing or coming down. Stock compensation is one source of that issuance; acquisition consideration, equity raises, convertibles and other employee plans also net into the count, and these figures do not separate them.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$102.5M
Revenue Growth YoY+65.2%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)-18.3%
Net Margin-186.5%
The forensic grade and screens above are free — no account needed. Want the AI investment read on top — the 0–100 rating, thesis, bull-vs-bear, red flags and the 12-month scenario, written from Sutro Biopharma, Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?