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Lothbury Research

Event-driven equity research

Arithmetic on public filings · No ratings · No forecasts

Case studies › QBTS

D-Wave and Rigetti report tomorrow and neither has a revenue base to defend

When a company's revenue is small enough to fit in a footnote, the earnings print stops being about growth and becomes a funding question. What is the burn, and how many quarters does the balance sheet buy.

Both names trade on a technology narrative that is years from commercial volume. That is a legitimate thing to own, but it is closer to venture exposure than to an earnings trade, and venture exposure does not reprice on a quarterly beat.

Read the cash flow statement before the income statement. The runway number is the only one that survives the print.

Written from public disclosure. Where a figure is quoted it is the company's own, dated in the text; no figure here is a forecast by Lothbury Research.

Published for information only. Nothing here is investment advice or a recommendation. This note is not prepared in accordance with the legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research. No position is held in the security covered.

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