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Lithia Motors

LAD on NYSE. Lithia Motors sells cars, trucks, and related services to customers. Market value $6.7bn.

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 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 June 2026
-7.8%low

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $-7.84 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
past 12 months to June 2026
10.2×fair

You pay 10.2 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to December 2025
10.7%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 11 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 68 of 100. Price score: 66 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$292.51 a share, 22% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $239.78 to $439.49.

Dividend: 0.8% a year

Paid every year for at least 5 years

Prices from Tuesday’s close (6 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

1.5
-0.9
-0.7
0.1
0.0
-0.5
2021202220232024202512 monthsto Jun '26

Spare cash swings from quarter to quarter here: a shortfall of $504 million in the past 12 months, $6 million in the year to December 2025.

Revenue
$22.8bn$28.2bn$31.0bn$36.2bn$37.6bn
Operating margin
7.3%6.9%5.5%4.3%4.2%
Debt to equity
0.741.061.171.261.49
Shares outstanding
0.03bn0.03bn0.03bn0.02bn0.02bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive3 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Nothing unusual
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)4 of 9
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
  • Debt1.49× equity
  • Revenue growth, five yearsStrong, 23.5% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesYes, 20% fewer since 2021

The quarter to June 2026

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

  • Sales: $9.8 billion last quarter, up 2% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $260 million, up 2% on a year ago.
  • It keeps 4 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, about the same as a year earlier.
  • Over the past 12 months it spent $504 million more cash than it brought in. A year earlier it had $322 million spare.
  • 13% fewer shares than a year ago. Each share owns a bit more of the company.
  • Sales grew on a year ago in each of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$9.2bn
December 2024$9.2bn
March 2025$9.2bn
June 2025$9.6bn
September 2025$9.7bn
December 2025$9.2bn
March 2026$9.3bn
June 2026$9.8bn
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$207m
December 2024$213m
March 2025$210m
June 2025$256m
September 2025$217m
December 2025Not reported
March 2026$100m
June 2026$260m

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

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

Who owns it

12 long-term investors we follow own it, down from 14 last quarter. 443 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

5 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. 4 sold $423,346, $97,880 of it under preset trading plans.

  • Loretz Congdon Stacy
    Director
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    11 September 2026
    Shares
    75
    Price
    $370.73
    Value
    $27,805
  • Stork David
    Chief Administrative Officer
    Sold
    Date
    8 September 2026
    Shares
    320
    Price
    $373.49
    Value
    $119,515
  • Loretz Congdon Stacy
    Director
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    12 June 2026
    Shares
    75
    Price
    $315.00
    Value
    $23,625
  • McIntyre Shauna
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    10 June 2026
    Shares
    165
    Price
    $305.65
    Value
    $50,432
  • Bailey Richard J Jr
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    26 May 2026
    Shares
    297
    Price
    $280.58
    Value
    $83,332
  • McIntyre Shauna
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    11 May 2026
    Shares
    245
    Price
    $294.64
    Value
    $72,187
  • Loretz Congdon Stacy
    Director
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    12 March 2026
    Shares
    75
    Price
    $259.33
    Value
    $19,450
  • Loretz Congdon Stacy
    Director
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    12 December 2025
    Shares
    75
    Price
    $360.00
    Value
    $27,000

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 25 Feb 2026, plus the 10-Q filed 29 Jul 2026 and 5 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

Cheap for a reason is the question the numbers cannot answer.

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.