Acrivon Therapeutics, Inc. (ACRV) Q2 2026 Earnings Analysis
ACRV — Q2 2026 Financial Report Analysis
Q2 · Fiscal year 2026 · Published by Pham Hop
Acrivon's Q2 2026 net loss narrowed to $18.0M from $21.0M, mostly because 2025 had ACR-368 milestone costs and higher stock-based pay; $90.0M in cash is guided to last into Q4 2027, with the key serous endometrial cancer readout due in 2H 2026.
Net income
-$18M
Diluted EPS
$-0.43
Overview
Acrivon Therapeutics is a clinical-stage cancer-drug developer: it has no product sales and no revenue of any kind, so the quarter is about how much it spent, what that bought, and how long its cash lasts. In the second quarter of 2026 (three months to June 30) its net loss shrank to $18.0 million, from $21.0 million a year earlier, as total operating expenses fell 17.6% to $18.7 million. The company says the research-spending drop was "primarily due to milestone achievements recognized in 2025 that did not recur in 2026" for its lead drug ACR-368, and that the cut in overhead came mainly from lower employee costs, including stock-based compensation (pay handed out as shares or options rather than cash). Cash, cash equivalents and investments stood at $90.0 million, which management expects to fund operations "into the fourth quarter of 2027."
At a glance
$18.0M net loss (vs $21.0M): a smaller loss, but roughly $1.7M of the $3.0M improvement is lower stock-based pay, which is a non-cash accounting charge, not money saved.
$35.4M of cash used by operations in the first half: about $17.7M a quarter, almost the same as the $36.1M used in the first half of 2025, so the underlying spending pace has barely changed.
$90.0M of cash and investments, guided to last into Q4 2027: enough for the next ACR-368 readout, but the company also plans to start a Phase 3 trial in the first half of 2027, which that cash is unlikely to fund to completion.
The numbers
All figures in US$ millions except per-share data. Acrivon reports no revenue, so there is no revenue or operating-margin line.
Metric
Q2 2026
Q2 2025
YoY Change
Revenue
—
—
n/a (pre-revenue)
Research & development expense
13.8
16.2
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-14.4%
General & administrative expense
4.8
6.5
-25.4%
Total operating expenses
18.7
22.6
-17.6%
Interest income
0.9
1.7
-50.3%
Net loss
(18.0)
(21.0)
loss 14.5% smaller
Net loss per share (basic and diluted)
(0.43)
(0.55)
loss 21.8% smaller
Direct spend on ACR-368
5.6
7.0
-19.6%
Cash used in operations (six months)
35.4
36.1
-2.1%
Cash, equivalents & investments (period-end)
90.0
118.6 (Dec 31, 2025)
-$28.6M in six months
For the first half of 2026 the net loss was $37.0 million versus $40.7 million a year earlier, and the loss since the company was founded (its accumulated deficit) reached $311.9 million.
Where the money went
Research and development (R&D) is about three-quarters of Acrivon's spending. The filing breaks it down by program:
R&D line (US$ M)
Q2 2026
Q2 2025
Change
ACR-368 (lead drug)
5.6
7.0
-1.4
ACR-2316 (second clinical drug)
1.2
1.8
-0.5
Other discovery programs
0.3
0.6
-0.3
R&D staff costs (incl. stock-based pay)
5.6
5.5
+0.1
Facilities, supplies and other
1.1
1.4
-0.2
Total
13.8
16.2
-2.3
The biggest single move is ACR-368, down $1.4 million. The earnings release says this is "primarily driven by two milestones achieved for ACR-368 in 2025 which did not recur in 2026" — in other words, last year's quarter carried milestone-related costs that were one-time in nature, so the drop does not mean the trial slowed down. ACR-2316 spending fell $0.5 million, which the filing attributes to "scheduled dose escalation activities throughout both periods" — the timing of trial work rather than a cut. Staff costs inside R&D were flat.
General and administrative (G&A) costs — the head office, legal, finance and public-company expenses — fell $1.6 million, and the filing says $1.4 million of that was lower employee-related expenses including stock-based compensation.
The pipeline this cash is paying for
ACR-368 (prexasertib), licensed from Eli Lilly — a drug that blocks two proteins (CHK1/CHK2) that cancer cells rely on to repair DNA damage. It is in a Phase 2b study in endometrial cancer (cancer of the lining of the uterus) that the company describes as "registrational-intent" — designed so that, if results are strong enough, they could support an application for approval. Interim data with a December 4, 2025 cutoff showed a 39% objective response rate (the share of patients whose tumors shrank by a defined amount) in the arm of patients selected with Acrivon's OncoSignature biopsy test, 44% in patients with two or fewer prior treatments, and a 52% confirmed response rate in patients with serous endometrial cancer — an aggressive subtype the company says accounts for about half of endometrial-cancer deaths — who had two or fewer prior treatments. On the back of that, two new arms (Arms 3 and 4) are enrolling serous patients without requiring a biopsy test, one adding ultra-low-dose gemcitabine (an older chemotherapy used here to make tumors more sensitive) and one using ACR-368 alone.
ACR-2316 — an internally designed drug that blocks two other cell-cycle proteins (WEE1 and PKMYT1). Its Phase 1/2 study has moved from dose escalation into a randomized dose-expansion stage comparing 120 mg and 160 mg once-daily doses on a three-days-on, four-days-off schedule, in lung and other tumor types picked by the company's AP3 protein-analysis platform. The release says several patients from dose escalation have stayed on treatment for more than a year; the filing gives no response-rate figures for this drug.
CDK11 program — preclinical (not yet in humans) candidates for acute myeloid leukemia, in studies needed before an FDA filing to start human trials (an IND).
What the headline numbers hide
Much of the smaller loss is an accounting item, not cash saved. Total stock-based compensation fell to $2.2 million from $3.9 million, and in G&A alone it fell to $1.4 million from $2.9 million. Stripping that non-cash charge out, the net loss fell about 8% ($15.8M vs $17.1M), not 14.5%. The cash-flow statement tells the same story: operating cash use in the first half was $35.4 million versus $36.1 million a year ago, only $0.7 million less, which the filing explains as a $3.7 million smaller net loss "partially offset by a decrease in non-cash stock-based compensation expense of $3.3 million."
Cash burn is close to the reported loss. First-half operating cash use ($35.4M) was only slightly below the net loss ($37.0M): the $4.4M of stock-based pay added back was mostly eaten by paying down bills — accounts payable fell $1.4M and accrued expenses $2.7M.
One-off in the prior year. The 2025 quarter included ACR-368 milestone costs that did not repeat, which flatters this year's R&D comparison.
Per-share loss improved faster than the loss itself, partly because there are more shares. The weighted share count rose 8.8% to 41.8 million, mainly because the company sold 4,054,954 new shares in April 2026 at $1.80 each through its "at-the-market" program (selling stock gradually into the market), raising about $7.3 million gross. At last year's share count, this quarter's loss would have been about $0.47 per share rather than $0.43. Shares outstanding also jumped from 31.6 million to 42.8 million since December, but 7.06 million of that was the exercise of pre-funded warrants (shares paid for in advance in a 2024 private placement), which were already counted in the per-share math and brought in no new cash.
Interest income halved to $0.9 million from $1.7 million, which the filing attributes to lower interest and accretion earned on its investments — a direct result of a smaller cash pile, and a drag that grows as cash is spent.
More equity awards outstanding. Options outstanding rose to 8.1 million from 6.2 million at year-end and unvested restricted stock units to 1.0 million from 0.2 million, and shareholders approved an amended equity incentive plan in June — a future source of dilution for existing holders.
Takeaway: Acrivon's smaller loss is mostly lower share-based pay and the absence of last year's milestone costs; its real cash burn (~$17.7M a quarter) is essentially unchanged, and the $90.0M in the bank buys time to the serous endometrial cancer readout in late 2026 — not to the end of the Phase 3 trial the company plans to start in 2027.
Outlook: runway and catalysts
Management's stated milestones from the August 12 earnings release:
Second half of 2026: a prespecified interim analysis and data update from both biopsy-free serous endometrial cancer arms (Arms 3 and 4) of the ACR-368 Phase 2b study.
By Q4 2026: based on that interim read, complete enrollment of whichever of Arm 3 or Arm 4 goes forward as the registrational arm.
First half of 2027: start a Phase 3 confirmatory trial of ACR-368, and file an IND for the CDK11 candidate.
On cash, simple arithmetic lines up with the guidance: $90.0 million divided by the first-half burn of about $17.7 million a quarter is a little over five quarters, which lands in Q4 2027. That guidance leaves little margin, though. The filing says management expects R&D costs "to increase significantly" with ongoing and planned trials, and that "certain discretionary development activities, including initiation of additional studies or earlier-stage programs, may be timed based on the availability of additional capital." A Phase 3 trial starting in the first half of 2027 would begin only months before the stated runway ends, so in our read Acrivon will need to raise more money — through share sales, a partnership or both — and the size and price of that raise will depend heavily on the late-2026 serous endometrial cancer data. The April share sale at $1.80 shows equity is already an expensive source of funding for existing holders. The one number to watch next is whether the biopsy-free serous arms reproduce something close to the 52% response rate seen in earlier serous patients; a clearly weaker result would change both the Phase 3 plan and the funding picture.
Source: Acrivon Therapeutics Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 (filed August 12, 2026) and the accompanying earnings release (Exhibit 99.1 to the Form 8-K of the same date).