Nkarta, Inc. (NKTX) stock intrinsic value fair value estimate & owner earnings analysis

Nkarta is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing off-the-shelf natural killer (NK) cell therapies. Its lead program, NKX019, is a CD19-targeted CAR NK product in early Phase 1 trials for autoimmune diseases: lupus nephritis and membranous nephropathy (Ntrust-1), and scleroderma, myositis and ANCA-associated vasculitis (Ntrust-2), plus investigator-run studies in myasthenia gravis. The company has no approved product and reports no revenue. It has lost money every year since it listed in 2020. What the numbers show. On our measure of cash earnings per share (operating cash flow, less working-capital swings, less stock compensation, less capital spending), the company has been negative every year, from a loss of about $3.39 per share in 2020 to about $1.39 in 2025. The loss per share has narrowed because spending on facilities fell after the 2022-2023 build-out of its manufacturing space, and stock compensation fell to $8.6 million in 2025 from $16.7 million in 2024. Operating cash burn was $88.7 million in 2025. In the first half of 2026 it was $52.4 million, which is a somewhat faster pace, so the improvement should not be assumed to continue. Capital spending is treated as maintenance because there is no revenue against which to separate growth spending. How we valued it. A business earns value only from things that are already contracted or already proven. Nkarta has no contracted revenue, no approved product and no repeat record of turning trials into sales, so the NKX019 pipeline is credited with no value in any case. Earlier-stage trials of this kind can succeed, but nothing in the filings makes success a named, evidenced driver today. What Nkarta does have is cash: $295.1 million in cash and investments at December 31, 2025. Since then, first-half 2026 operating burn of about $52 million implies roughly $240 million remained by mid-2026, our estimate. The value of a share therefore depends on how much of that cash is spent before shareholders get anything back, which is a choice management makes. Bear case, about $0.30 per share. Trials continue at about $100 million a year for two more years without evidence strong enough to justify a pivotal trial, then the company winds down, with about $15 million of closing costs, leaving roughly $25 million for shareholders. Base case, about $1.00 per share. Spending continues for about 18 months at the recent burn rate, then the programs are stopped or sold on a wind-down basis, with about $15 million of closing costs, leaving roughly $75 million. Bull case, about $2.30 per share. Management stops spending after about six months, once the current data readouts inform a decision, and about $175 million remains after closing costs. This case is capped at that level because no product revenue is credited. If NKX019 succeeded in a pivotal program it would be worth more, but that outcome is not yet supported by anything in the filings, so we leave it out. What could make this wrong. The upside case is a clinical success: NKX019 showed deep B-cell depletion in every patient dosed with fludarabine and cyclophosphamide preconditioning in the trial updates, and any durable clinical benefit could make the company worth far more than its cash. The downside is that the trials continue to consume roughly $100 million a year with nothing to show for it, in which case the bear case would apply and further share issuance would dilute holders. The company states that advancing NKX019 into pivotal trials will require raising additional capital.