Aardvark Therapeutics, Inc. Q2 2025 earnings summary — revenue, EPS & margin

What went well

Reported its first full quarter of results as a public company following its February 2025 Nasdaq IPO, ending June 30, 2025 with $141.8 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments sufficient to fund operations into 2027.
New ARD-201 preclinical data showed the oral obesity candidate not only reduced body weight but helped prevent weight regain after discontinuation of GLP-1RA therapy, prompting an optimized Phase 2 strategy built around the POWER and STRENGTH trials in place of the previously planned EMPOWER trial.
Advanced its lead program by planning to expand the Phase 3 HERO trial of ARD-101 in Prader-Willi syndrome to include pediatric patients under the age of 13, broadening the addressable population at launch.
Strengthened the leadership team with strategic hires in May 2025, including Timothy Kieffer (Chief Scientific Officer), Danny Villeneuve (Chief Commercial Officer), Terrie Kellmeyer (SVP, Regulatory Affairs) and Christian Zapf (General Counsel).

What went wrong

Net loss widened to $14.4 million from $5.4 million a year earlier, driven by higher research and development expense ($13.1 million vs. $4.0 million) and general and administrative expense ($2.7 million vs. $2.0 million) as the company scaled and absorbed new public-company costs.
As a pre-revenue clinical-stage company, Aardvark remained dependent on its cash runway and on multiple as-yet-unread clinical trials, with lead HERO topline data not expected until the third quarter of 2026.

Guidance Changes

Metric	Period	Current guidance
Cash runway	As of June 30, 2025	$141.8M in cash, equivalents and short-term investments; funds projected operations into 2027
ARD-101 HERO Phase 3 topline (PWS)	Q3 2026	Topline data expected in the third quarter of 2026
ARD-201 POWER Phase 2 initiation	2H 2025	Trial initiation expected in the second half of 2025
ARD-201 STRENGTH Phase 2 initiation	1H 2026	Trial initiation expected in the first half of 2026
ARD-101 HONOR Phase 2 (hypothalamic obesity)	2H 2025 / 2H 2026	Initiation expected 2H 2025; topline readout expected 2H 2026

Metric	YoY	Note
Research & development expense	$13.1M (vs $4.0M)	$9.1M increase from higher ARD-101 development costs and personnel-related expenses.
General & administrative expense	$2.7M (vs $2.0M)	Higher professional fees, facilities and personnel costs, partly related to becoming a public company.
Net loss	$14.4M (vs $5.4M)	Driven by increased R&D and G&A spend.
Cash, equivalents & short-term investments	$141.8M	Bolstered by February 2025 IPO proceeds; sufficient to fund operations into 2027.
Diluted net loss per share	$(0.66)	Loss per share on 21.7M weighted-average shares outstanding post-IPO.

Topic	Previous mention	Current period	Trend
ARD-101 in PWS (HERO)	Phase 3 HERO enrolling	Planned expansion to include patients under 13	Up
ARD-201 obesity program	Single planned EMPOWER trial	Reoriented into two Phase 2 trials (POWER, STRENGTH) on new preclinical data	Up
Cash runway	Post-IPO position	$141.8M funding operations into 2027	Steady