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Chefs' Warehouse

CHEF on Nasdaq. Chefs' Warehouse sells specialty food and ingredients to chefs and restaurants. Market value $4.5bn.

Watch this stockFree. We tell you when something changes.

Price checks use the past 12 months to June 2026. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to December 2025.

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 Everyday goods stocks that passed both tests

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

Compare with another stock

Cash yield
past 12 months to June 2026
2.8%low

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $2.77 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
past 12 months to June 2026
30.2×full

You pay 30.2 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to December 2025
7.4%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 7 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 62 of 100. Price score: 26 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$111.21 a share, 109% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $53.24 to $118.51.

Pays no dividend

Prices from Tuesday’s close (6 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

-0.1
-0.0
0.0
0.1
0.1
0.1
2021202220232024202512 monthsto Jun '26

Spare cash swings from quarter to quarter here: $126 million in the past 12 months, $88 million in the year to December 2025.

Revenue
$1.7bn$2.6bn$3.4bn$3.8bn$4.1bn
Operating margin
0.6%3.3%2.9%3.4%3.5%
Debt to equity
1.171.691.631.401.42
Shares outstanding
0.04bn0.04bn0.04bn0.04bn0.04bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive3 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Nothing unusual
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)7 of 9
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
  • Debt1.42× equity
  • Revenue growth, five yearsStrong, 30.1% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesNo, 7% more shares since 2021

The quarter to June 2026

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

  • Sales: $1.2 billion last quarter, up 13% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $34 million, up 59% on a year ago.
  • It keeps 4 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, about the same as a year earlier.
  • Spare cash over the past 12 months: $126 million, up from $118 million.
  • About the same number of shares as a year ago.
  • Debt is $720 million more than cash, up from $693 million a year ago.
  • Sales grew on a year ago in each of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$931m
December 2024$1.0bn
March 2025$951m
June 2025$1.0bn
September 2025$1.0bn
December 2025$1.1bn
March 2026$1.1bn
June 2026$1.2bn
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$14m
December 2024$24m
March 2025$10m
June 2025$21m
September 2025$19m
December 2025$22m
March 2026$17m
June 2026$34m

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
n/a
Last annual report (10-K)
24 February 2026
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
28 October 2026

Who owns it

2 long-term investors we follow own it, unchanged from 2 last quarter. 287 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

4 investors own more than 5%.

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. 5 sold $36m, $525,000 of it under preset trading plans.

  • Aldous Alexandros
    General Counsel
    Sold
    Date
    14 August 2026
    Shares
    35,000
    Price
    $110.97
    Value
    $4m
  • Polychroni Christina
    Chief Human Resources Officer
    Sold
    Date
    14 August 2026
    Shares
    2,752
    Price
    $112.00
    Value
    $308,224
  • Pappas Christopher
    President and CEO, Director
    Sold
    Date
    14 August 2026
    Shares
    100,000
    Price
    $110.11
    Value
    $11m
  • Polychroni Christina
    Chief Human Resources Officer
    Sold
    Date
    19 May 2026
    Shares
    4,500
    Price
    $79.21
    Value
    $356,445
  • Pappas Christopher
    President and CEO, Director
    Sold
    Date
    5 May 2026
    Shares
    125,000
    Price
    $78.00
    Value
    $10m
  • Pappas Christopher
    President and CEO, Director
    Sold
    Date
    3 March 2026
    Shares
    95,908
    Price
    $62.53
    Value
    $6m
  • Polychroni Christina
    Chief Human Resources Officer
    Sold
    Date
    2 March 2026
    Shares
    3,317
    Price
    $65.45
    Value
    $217,098
  • Polychroni Christina
    Chief Human Resources Officer
    Sold
    Date
    27 February 2026
    Shares
    3,084
    Price
    $71.33
    Value
    $219,982
  • Aldous Alexandros
    General Counsel
    Sold
    Date
    27 February 2026
    Shares
    29,500
    Price
    $71.22
    Value
    $2m
  • McCauley Tim
    Chief Accounting Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    18 February 2026
    Shares
    7,500
    Price
    $70.00
    Value
    $525,000

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 24 Feb 2026, plus the 10-Q filed 29 Jul 2026 and 4 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: 30.2× 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
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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.