Value Investor
Start free

Cintas

CTAS on Nasdaq. Cintas sells uniforms, cleaning supplies, and safety products to businesses. Market value $78.2bn.

Watch this stockFree. We tell you when something changes.

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

Should I look at this?

Good business, but not cheap right now

Why it could be worth it

What to watch out for

See cheaper Industrials stocks on the list

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

Compare with another stock

Cash yield
past 12 months to May 2026
2.4%low

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $2.40 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
past 12 months to May 2026
30.9×full

You pay 30.9 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to May 2026
25.3%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 25 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 100 of 100. Price score: 27 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$195.96 a share, 22% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $161.16 to $219.17.

Dividend: 0.9% a year

Paid every year for at least 5 years

Prices from Tuesday’s close (6 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

1.3
1.3
1.7
1.8
1.9
20222023202420252026
Revenue
$7.9bn$8.8bn$9.6bn$10.3bn$11.3bn
Operating margin
20.2%20.4%21.6%22.8%23.1%
Debt to equity
0.850.640.570.520.47
Shares outstanding
0.10bn0.10bn0.40bn0.40bn0.40bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive5 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Nothing unusual
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)7 of 9
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
  • Debt0.47× equity
  • Revenue growth, five yearsSlow, 9.6% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesNo, 293% more shares since 2022

The quarter to May 2026

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

  • Sales: $2.9 billion last quarter, up 9% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $511 million, up 14% on a year ago.
  • It keeps 23 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, about the same as a year earlier.
  • Spare cash over the past 12 months: $1.9 billion, up from $1.8 billion.
  • Debt is $2.1 billion more than cash, down from $2.2 billion a year ago.
  • Sales grew on a year ago in each of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
August 2024$2.5bn
November 2024$2.6bn
February 2025$2.6bn
May 2025$2.7bn
August 2025$2.7bn
November 2025$2.8bn
February 2026$2.8bn
May 2026$2.9bn
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
August 2024$452m
November 2024$448m
February 2025$463m
May 2025$448m
August 2025$491m
November 2025$495m
February 2026$502m
May 2026$511m

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
17 December 2026
Last annual report (10-K)
29 July 2026
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
7 July 2026

Who owns it

9 long-term investors we follow own it, unchanged from 9 last quarter. 1,426 funds in all.

Jun '25
Dec '25
Jun '26

Sold out this quarter

Largest holders overall

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

Big holders and activists

1 investor owns 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. 2 sold $4m.

  • TYSOE RONALD W
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    22 July 2026
    Shares
    4,363
    Price
    $199.90
    Value
    $872,164
  • Barstad Melanie W.
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    16 July 2026
    Shares
    9,142
    Price
    $202.94
    Value
    $2m
  • TYSOE RONALD W
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    20 April 2026
    Shares
    4,666
    Price
    $178.87
    Value
    $834,607

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.

We couldn’t fully check Cintas’ latest annual report.

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 couldn't fully read the 10-K filed 29 Jul 2026, so we can't say there are no warning signs.

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: 30.9× 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.