Aardvark Therapeutics, Inc. (AARD) stock intrinsic value fair value estimate & owner earnings analysis

Aardvark Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company with no revenue and no approved product. Its lead candidate, ARD-101, is an oral treatment for hyperphagia (constant, insatiable hunger) in Prader-Willi Syndrome. The Phase 3 HERO trial was initiated in December 2024, and a second program, ARD-201, is in the POWER and STRENGTH trials. On February 27, 2026, the company voluntarily paused enrollment and dosing in the HERO trial and its open-label extension after reversible cardiac observations in a healthy volunteer study. The POWER and STRENGTH trials were paused as well. The company no longer expects HERO results in the third quarter of 2026 and says it is working with the FDA on next steps. What the business actually earns today is negative. Operating cash flow was a loss of $54.2 million in 2025 (compared with a loss of $18.1 million in 2024), and after stock-based compensation of $3.9 million our measure of owner earnings was a loss of about $58.9 million, or $3.00 per share. The company held $110.0 million of cash and short-term investments at December 31, 2025, and management states this funds operations for at least a year. Bear, base and bull cases: we credit value only to things that are contracted, already achieved or a proven repeating process. Nothing here meets that bar. There is no revenue, and the one late-stage trial is paused with its timing and design under review. An eventual approval, a launch and any peak sales would rest on trial results that do not yet exist, so we leave them out of all three cases. Each case therefore comes to $0 per share. In every case the cash is consumed by trial spending and overhead at a rate near the 2025 burn of about $54 million a year, which leaves nothing that we can name and evidence as remaining value. Cash on hand is roughly $5 per share on 21.8 million shares, but it is being spent and is not earnings. The margin-of-safety price is $0. That is not a forecast of the share price; it reflects that on the evidence available today we cannot support a positive value. A different conclusion would require the safety review to clear, the FDA to agree a path for HERO, and positive Phase 3 data. Any of these would change the picture materially, and if HERO succeeds the shares could be worth far more than our cases show. What could make this wrong: The FDA has granted ARD-101 Orphan Drug and Rare Pediatric Disease designations, and approval would create real value. We have not credited this because the outcome is unknown and the trial is currently on hold. The 2024 per-share loss uses a share count from before the company's February 2025 IPO, so it is not directly comparable with 2025.