Phase Space AI

Financial Model Notes

Clear Secure [YOU]

Clear Secure, Inc. [YOU] — Financial Model Notes

Every figure below is traced to a filed document. Units are USD thousands unless marked.

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1. Revenue — quarterly, as filed (never last-FY; TTM built from four quarterly XBRL periods)

TTM to 2026-03-31 = 942,414 (= FY2025 900,779 − Q1-2025 211,368 + Q1-2026 253,003). Matches the screen exactly. TTM revenue was the one input the screen got right.

Fiscal years: FY2022 437,434 · FY2023 613,579 · FY2024 770,488 · FY2025 900,779. 3-year CAGR FY2022→FY2025 = 27.3% (screen: 27.2% — agrees).

Growth shape: a monotonic deceleration from +46.2% to +15.5% across eleven quarters, then a two-quarter turn back up to +19.7%, with Q2-2026 guided to +22.8%. Any single-number "demonstrated CAGR" hides this.

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2. Operating income and margin

Screen recorded op_margin_pct: 20.7 and op_margin_delta_pp: 4.7 — both correct on an FY2025-vs-FY2024 basis, but stale: the TTM margin is 22.4% and the latest quarter is 24.5%. Using 22.4% as the terminal margin (rather than 20.7%) raises the required CAGR modestly and is the more honest input.

Cost structure note. Direct salaries and benefits fell YoY in Q1-2026 (50,742 → 48,252) on +19.7% revenue. That is the source of most of the 6.8pp of margin expansion in the quarter, and it is a labour-model change (Ambassador productivity), not mix. Whether it repeats is the key margin question and the filings do not explain it.

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3. Net income, EPS and the FY2024 discontinuity

FY2024 net income is not comparable — it contains a $158.6m income tax benefit (valuation-allowance release) against a $37.9m expense in FY2025. Model off operating income.

EPS cross-check (the brief's net income ÷ shares ≈ filed EPS test), Q1-2026: 38,795 ÷ 99,206,588 (weighted-average Class A) = $0.391 vs filed $0.39. ✓

Trap embedded in that check: the EPS denominator is Class A + Class B only. It is not the economic share count. Using 99.2m as the share count for market cap understates it by 25%; using the screen's 87.8m understates it by 34%. The correct economic count is Class A + B + C + D = 133,546,442, because Class C and D are each paired 1:1 with an exchangeable Alclear Holdings LLC unit.

Independent NCI check: (C+D) ÷ total = 32,897,033 ÷ 133,546,442 = 24.6%; 24.6% × Q1-2026 pre-tax income 70,745 = 17,403 vs 17,589 actually attributed to NCI. ✓ (Small gap is entity-level tax at the LLC.)

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4. Share count — the reconstruction, by class, from filed balance sheets

The buyback is real and the Class A count hides it. Total economic shares fell 12.6% from 152.8m to 133.5m over 3.25 years, while the Class A count rose 14.5% (87.8m → 100.5m) as Class C/D exchanged into Class A. Anyone tracking Class A alone sees dilution where there is retirement.

Where the screen's number came from — the exact fact. The FY2022 10-K balance-sheet parenthetical carries an undimensioned us-gaap:CommonStockSharesOutstanding = 87,760,831 at 2022-12-31, which is Class A only. Every filing since tags share counts only with a StatementClassOfStockAxis dimension. SEC companyfacts drops dimensions, so the API returns exactly one observation for this concept across the company's entire history — the 2022 Class-A figure. dei:EntityCommonStockSharesOutstanding is likewise dimensioned by class and is absent from companyfacts entirely (the dei namespace for CIK 1856314 contains only EntityPublicFloat).

Generalisable rule for the scanner: for any filer where companyfacts returns a share count whose latest end date is more than ~120 days stale, or where dei:EntityCommonStockSharesOutstanding is missing entirely, the filer is multi-class and the balance-sheet parenthetical must be read. Both conditions were true here and both were visible without opening a filing.

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5. Balance sheet and the net-cash build

Net cash used in this memo: $550,475 = 802,927 − 252,452 (TRA). Sensitivity at 802,927 moves the required CAGR by 0.9pp only.

The screen used $170,675 — the cash line alone. Marketable securities have been $543m–$666m on this balance sheet in every year since 2022; this is not an edge case for this filer, it is the norm. Debt is zero: the $100m revolver was undrawn at 2026-03-31 with $67,725 of remaining capacity net of standby letters of credit.

Accrued liabilities decomposition (Q1-2026 / FY2025) — the screen would have had no way to see these from the aggregate:

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6. Bookings, deferred revenue and cash conversion

Identity verified twice (Bookings = revenue + Δdeferred revenue): - Q1-2026: 253,003 + (554,894 − 516,201) = 291,696 vs reported $291.7m ✓ - FY2025: 900,779 + (516,201 − 439,753) = 977,227 vs reported $977.2m ✓

Deferred revenue rollforward (10-K Note 4):

Q1-2026 cash conversion: net income 56,384 → CFO 190,354 → FCF 185,500. The two working-capital sources are deferred revenue +38,693 and accrued partnership liabilities +80,235, together 118,928 = 64% of FCF. FY2026 FCF guidance of ≥$465m therefore embeds continued float expansion, and float only grows while bookings grow.

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7. Model conventions used

• TTM built from four filed quarterly XBRL periods, never from the last fiscal year (valuation.md data hygiene).
• Terminal margin = TTM realised EBIT margin (22.4%), not a forecast and not a peer median.
• Historical EV/Sales series uses the economic share count interpolated linearly between the five filed balance-sheet dates above, and a net-cash timeline interpolated the same way. This is an approximation — intra-year exchanges and buybacks are not stepwise linear — and it is the one number in the valuation that is constructed rather than filed.
• Filing recency asserted: latest 10-Q filed 2026-05-06 for the period ended 2026-03-31 (84 days before the memo date). Not stale.
• No consensus estimates were used anywhere. Forward quarters in YOU_Valuation.md are company guidance (Q2-2026) plus a labelled extrapolation.