NVDA — NVIDIA Corp.

Will it survive?

• Can it pay its interest? 503.4×
  Comfortable
  Operating income $130.4B ÷ interest expense $259M

  Operating profit covers interest with the kind of margin Graham wanted for a defensive holding. Necessary, not sufficient — it says solvent, not cheap.

• How heavy is the debt? 0.1×
  Conservative
  Total debt $8.5B ÷ operating income $130.4B

  Years of operating profit it would take to repay all debt. A first read, not a credit rating: it's gross debt (not netted against cash) over EBIT (not EBITDA), and a cyclical year distorts it.

• How long is cash tied up? 133d
  Capital-hungry
  DSO 65 + DIO 125 − DPO 57 days

  Days cash is tied up between paying suppliers and collecting from customers. Lower is better; a long cycle means growth itself eats cash.

Is it a good business?

• Return on invested capital 71%
  Exceptional
  NOPAT $110.7B ÷ invested capital $155.2B (debt + equity − cash)

  The rate the business earns on the money tied up in it — Buffett's north star, because over time a stock tracks the ROIC beneath it. Above ~15% sustained hints at a moat; below ~8% the company may destroy value as it grows. Asset-light businesses (R&D expensed, little capital) read artificially high — pair this with Owner Earnings.

• Owner Earnings (free cash) margin 45%
  Cash machine
  Owner Earnings $96.7B = operating cash $102.7B − capex $6.0B

  What an owner could take out without starving the business. That's 45% of revenue. Treating stock comp as the real expense it is (less $6.4B of SBC) leaves $90.3B. Honest caveat: capex here blends maintenance and growth, so steady-state Owner Earnings may run higher (see capex vs. depreciation).

• Are earnings backed by cash? 0.86×
  Mostly cash-backed
  Cash from ops $102.7B ÷ net income $120.1B

  How much of reported profit showed up as operating cash. Above 1× is reassuring; well below suggests earnings lean on accruals. One year is noisy — growth and working-capital swings distort it, and this is operating cash, not free cash. Watch the multi-year trend.

How is the cash used?

• Where do the earnings go? 42%
  Returns about half
  Dividends + buybacks $41.1B ÷ Owner Earnings $96.7B

  Of $96.7B Owner Earnings, $41.1B (42%) went back to shareholders — $974M dividends, $40.1B buybacks. Net of $6.4B stock comp, the real buyback was about $33.7B. Returning most of it signals a mature cash machine; reinvesting most could mean a long runway — or empire-building. The split doesn't say which; the return earned on it (see ROIC) does.

• Investing or harvesting? 2.13×
  Expanding
  Capex $6.0B ÷ depreciation $2.8B

  Descriptive, not a grade. Above ~1× means investing faster than assets wear out (growth — or, sustained for years, today's earnings carrying less depreciation than tomorrow's will). Below means spending less than it's wearing out (efficiency — or a melting asset base). The ratio won't tell you which; the filings will.

Durability & moat — 2017–2026

A moat is a high return that doesn’t fade, reinvested at high returns. Here is what the record says — judgments, not another chart of the numbers.

• Profitable years 10 of 10

  Never lost money over the record — the earnings stability Graham insisted on.

• Return on capital ≥ 15% 9 of 10 yrs

  A moat shows up as a high return on invested capital that holds year after year — not one good vintage.

• Operating margin 31% → 61%

  Margins are widening — pricing power intact or improving.

• Reinvestment — incremental ROIC 78%

  Every extra dollar the company reinvested earned a high return — it is still compounding, not coasting on an old moat.

• Owner earnings growth +33%/yr

  Free cash to owners grew about 33% a year over the record.

• Worst year 2023 · 15.7% op. margin

  Stayed profitable even in its hardest year — the resilience that survives recessions.

• Dividend record rising

  Paid and raised the dividend across the record — the continuity Graham prized.