Value Investor
Start free

Cracker Barrel Old Country Store

CBRL on Nasdaq. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store sells food and retail items to customers. Market value $1.3bn.

Watch this stockFree. We tell you when something changes.

Price checks use the past 12 months to July 2026. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to July 2026.

Recent profit includes a one-time gain, so we price the company excluding that gain.

Should I look at this?

Not a fit for our list right now

Why it could be worth it

What to watch out for

See Retail & consumer stocks that passed both tests

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

Compare with another stock

Cash yield
past 12 months to July 2026
7.0%high

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $7.02 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
past 12 months to July 2026, without the one-off
438.8×full

You pay 438.8 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to July 2026
4.8%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 5 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 61 of 100. Price score: 40 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$56.32 a share, 127% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $24.85 to $60.26.

Dividend: 1.8% a year

Paid every year for at least 5 years

Prices from Tuesday’s close (6 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

0.1
0.1
0.0
0.1
0.1
20222023202420252026
Revenue
$3.3bn$3.4bn$3.5bn$3.5bn$3.3bn
Operating margin
4.7%3.5%1.3%1.6%-0.4%
Debt to equity
0.830.861.081.050.71
Shares outstanding
0.02bn0.02bn0.02bn0.02bn0.02bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive5 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Not enough data
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)8 of 9
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
  • Debt0.71× equity
  • Revenue growth, five yearsSlow, 3.3% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesRoughly flat

The quarter to July 2026

How the business did, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

  • Sales: $849 million last quarter, down 2% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $12 million, up 81% on a year ago.
  • It keeps 0 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, down from 2 cents a year earlier.
  • Spare cash over the past 12 months: $88 million, up from $60 million.
  • Debt is $301 million more than cash, down from $445 million a year ago.
  • Sales did not grow on a year ago in any of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
October 2024$845m
January 2025$949m
April 2025$821m
July 2025$868m
October 2025$797m
January 2026$875m
April 2026$797m
July 2026$849m
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
October 2024$5m
January 2025$22m
April 2025$13m
July 2025$7m
October 2025-$25m
January 2026$1m
April 2026$43m
July 2026$12m

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
n/a
Last annual report (10-K)
25 September 2026
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
8 September 2026

Who owns it

2 long-term investors we follow own it, unchanged from 2 last quarter. 273 funds in all.

Jun '25
Dec '25
Jun '26
Largest holders overall

From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.

Big holders and activists

5 investors own more than 5%; 1 of them is pushing for change.

From Schedule 13D and 13G filings: anyone owning more than 5% must file one.

What insiders did

No insider bought shares on the open market in the last 12 months. 1 sold $182,280.

  • Roberts Donna
    SVP, Chief HR Officer
    Sold
    Date
    1 October 2026
    Shares
    3,500
    Price
    $52.08
    Value
    $182,280

From Form 4 filings: insiders must report trades in their own company's shares within two days.

Warning signs in its filings

Problems the company itself reported to the SEC, in its own words.

None of the warning signs we check for were found.

We look for five warning signs: doubt it can keep going, weak checks on its own accounts, a notice that its past accounts can't be relied on, a change of auditor, and one customer bringing in a big share of sales. We don't check lawsuits, investigations or debt yet.

We checked the auditor's report, internal controls, restatement notices, auditor changes and big customers in the 10-K filed 25 Sep 2026, and no later 8-Ks.

A 10-K is the yearly report every US company files with the SEC. An 8-K is a short notice of a big event.

What could go wrong

  • It isn't cheap on profits: 438.8× operating profit.

Whether the price already reflects the risks is what the deep dive is for.

The deep dive

Everything above is arithmetic on public filings. The deep dive reads the last ten years of annual reports, the proxy statements, and the earnings calls, then argues the case the way Buffett, Klarman, and Hohn would, and checks every claim against the source.

  • What the business is worth, as a range, and the margin of safety at today’s price
  • Prices to start buying, buy, and buy hard
  • The three things that would make this a mistake
  • Every number footnoted to the filing it came from
Create a free account to run it

Your first deep dive is free.

What a finished deep dive looks like

Not advice. Numbers on this page come from SEC filings and are updated each night; prices are updated again after the US market closes. The five-year figures are rounded.