Weekly analysis
One company a week, taken apart. What a multiple built on a full cycle of operating profit says about the price, what a valuation giving no credit for growth says it is worth, and what the board found that the screen could not see.
Every figure is computed in Python from SEC EDGAR filings, not written by a language model. None of it is a recommendation to buy or sell.
September 12, 2026 · 11 min read
Four flat years, and twenty-six percent on capital
A. O. Smith has sold the same $3.8bn of water heaters for four years, earned the same $730m or so of operating profit on them, turned all of its net income into cash and retired a tenth of its shares. The market has marked it down 28% in a year. This piece is about a business that has stopped growing being priced as if it will shrink — and about a number in our own output that would have overstated it.
AOS
September 6, 2026 · 8 min read
Forty percent on its capital, and four percent of earnings growth
Paychex earns about forty percent on the capital it employs, and its share count has barely moved — so none of the earnings growth is arithmetic. There is just not much of it. Revenue compounds at eight to nine percent, earnings at four, and this piece is about holding both of those facts at once.
PAYX
August 30, 2026 · 6 min read
Cigna added $94 billion of revenue and $2.2 billion of gross profit
The two-line screen that removed eleven of thirteen traps last week passed Cigna on 52.7% revenue growth. Look through the growth and almost none of it reached the profit line. The company may still be cheap — for a reason that has nothing to do with growth.
CI
August 23, 2026 · 5 min read
A hospital operator at 7.6x earnings, valued as if it never grows again
Rank the index by the gap between the market price and a valuation that gives no credit to growth, then ask two questions of the thirteen widest: is revenue up over three years, is earnings per share up over one. Eleven are out. Universal Health Services is the cheaper of the two left standing.
UHS
August 21, 2026 · 4 min read
Why a full-cycle EV/EBIT disagrees with every free screener
Free screeners rank the index on the last twelve months of profit. Sperio ranks it on the median of up to fifteen fiscal years. On a cyclical business the two numbers are not close, and one of them is measuring the weather.
VZ
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