CREDITRISKMONITOR COM INC (CRMZ) stock intrinsic value fair value estimate & owner earnings analysis

CreditRiskMonitor sells subscription software that helps corporate credit and procurement teams judge whether their customers and suppliers are heading for bankruptcy. Nearly 40% of the Fortune 1000 subscribe, customers pay a year upfront, and no client is more than 1% of revenue, making the revenue sticky and recurring. Sales have compounded near 5% a year for a decade to $20.1 million. Profitability is the problem: operating profit peaked at $2.3 million in 2021 and has fallen every year since to $582,000 in 2025, because salaries and data costs are rising faster than the company can raise prices. Cash earnings after equipment spending and stock compensation ran between $0.10 and $0.22 per share in recent years but fell to roughly $0.06 in 2025, and over half of last year's pretax profit was interest on the $18.9 million of cash and Treasuries rather than the business itself. Our bear case assumes the margin squeeze persists and the business earns about what it did in 2025 indefinitely, worth roughly $1.52 a share. The base case assumes profits recover partway toward their three-year average and then grow 4% a year, worth about $2.79. The bull case assumes 2025 was a trough and earnings grow 7% a year as rising corporate bankruptcies lift demand, worth about $4.09. We anchor on the bear case because the decline stems from the company's own cost structure rather than a passing downturn, and because two risks are hard to size: artificial intelligence could erode the value of aggregated credit data, and the founding family controls 56% of the shares, so a small holder cannot compel that cash to be returned. Confidence is moderate, so the margin of safety is wide and the margin-of-safety price is near $0.90, below tangible book. The debt-free balance sheet limits the downside.