Value Investor
Start free

Quanex Building Products

NX on NYSE. Quanex sells building product components to manufacturers in North America and the U.K. Market value $867m.

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 October 2025.

Should I look at this?

Look carefully before going further

Why it could be worth it

What to watch out for

Read the warning sign in its own filings

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

Compare with another stock

Cash yield
past 12 months to July 2026
10.5%very high

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $10.48 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
past 12 months to July 2026
13.2×fair

You pay 13.2 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to October 2025
14.9%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 15 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 90 of 100. Price score: 93 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$18.91 a share, 71% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $11.04 to $23.33.

Dividend: 1.7% a year

Paid every year for at least 5 years

Prices from Monday’s close (5 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

0.1
0.1
0.1
0.1
0.1
0.1
2021202220232024202512 monthsto Jul '26
Revenue
$1.1bn$1.2bn$1.1bn$1.3bn$1.8bn
Operating margin
7.6%9.1%9.8%4.3%-10.6%
Debt to equity
0.130.070.130.770.97
Shares outstanding
0.03bn0.03bn0.05bn0.05bn0.05bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive5 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Nothing unusual
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)6 of 9
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)No
  • Debt0.97× equity
  • Revenue growth, five yearsStrong, 16.6% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesNo, 38% more shares since 2021

The quarter to July 2026

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

  • Sales: $502 million last quarter, up 1% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $27 million, after a loss of $276 million a year ago.
  • It keeps 6 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, after losing 13 cents a year earlier.
  • Spare cash over the past 12 months: $91 million, up from $27 million.
  • About the same number of shares as a year ago.
  • Debt is $601 million more than cash, down from $656 million a year ago.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
October 2024$492m
January 2025$400m
April 2025$452m
July 2025$495m
October 2025Not reported
January 2026$409m
April 2026$462m
July 2026$502m
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
October 2024-$14m
January 2025-$15m
April 2025$21m
July 2025-$276m
October 2025$20m
January 2026-$4m
April 2026$3m
July 2026$27m

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
n/a
Last annual report (10-K)
12 December 2025
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
4 December 2026

Who owns it

3 long-term investors we follow own it, down from 4 last quarter. 180 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

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 or sold on the open market in the last 12 months.

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.

1 serious warning sign in Quanex Building Products’ filings.

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 12 Dec 2025, plus the 10-Q filed 4 Sep 2026 and 9 later 8-Ks.

  • Weak checks on its own accounts

    Serious

    The company said its checks on its own accounts did not work at the end of its latest quarter. Mistakes could slip into the numbers.

    “Until such time and as of July 31, 2026, our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer have concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures were not effective.”
    Show the full paragraph
    As previously disclosed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended October 31, 2025, we identified a material weakness in our internal controls over financial reporting in the design and operation of controls over the preparation and review of our Statement of Cash Flows as of October 31, 2024 which remained unremediated through the year ended October 31, 2025. During the nine months ended July 31, 2026, we implemented remediation efforts related to this material weakness and will continue to monitor the effectiveness of these procedures through testing of the related controls for an appropriate period of time. Until such time and as of July 31, 2026, our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer have concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures were not effective.

    From the 10-Q filed 4 September 2026, Part I, Item 4. Controls and Procedures. Read it in the filing

  • Changed auditor

    Worth knowing

    The company changed its auditor (the firm that checks its books) in the last two years.

    “Following that process, on January 13, 2026, KPMG LLP (“KPMG”) was appointed to serve as the Company’s independent public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending October 31, 2026.”

    From an 8-K filed 16 January 2026: Change of auditor. Read it in the filing

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

It just passed both our tests. The deep dive checks what the numbers can't.

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.