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Dave & Buster's Entertainment

PLAY on Nasdaq. Dave & Buster's sells food, drinks, and games to adults and families. Market value $235m.

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 January 2026.

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
-6.7%low

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $-6.70 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
past 12 months to July 2026
49.4×full

You pay 49.4 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to January 2026
13.7%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 14 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 68 of 100. Price score: 0 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$6.86 a share, 10% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $6.26 to $22.10.

Pays no dividend

Prices from Tuesday’s close (6 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

0.2
0.2
0.0
-0.2
-0.1
-0.0
2022202320242025202612 monthsto Jul '26

Spare cash swings from quarter to quarter here: a shortfall of $16 million in the past 12 months, a shortfall of $101 million in the year to January 2026.

Revenue
$1.3bn$2.0bn$2.2bn$2.1bn$2.1bn
Operating margin
14.4%13.4%13.9%10.3%4.1%
Debt to equity
1.603.145.3310.4517.39
Shares outstanding
0.05bn0.04bn0.04bn0.03bn0.03bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive3 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Not enough data
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)5 of 9
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
  • Debt17.39× equity
  • Revenue growth, five yearsStrong, 36.9% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesYes, 28% fewer since 2022

The quarter to July 2026

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

  • Sales: $544 million last quarter, down 2% on a year ago.
  • A loss of $13 million, after a profit of $11 million a year ago.
  • It keeps 2 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, down from 8 cents a year earlier.
  • Over the past 12 months it spent $16 million more cash than it brought in, compared with $313 million a year earlier.
  • 1% fewer shares than a year ago. Each share owns a bit more of the company.
  • Debt is $1.6 billion more than cash, about the same as 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$453m
January 2025$535m
April 2025$568m
July 2025$557m
October 2025$448m
January 2026$530m
April 2026$559m
July 2026$544m
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
October 2024-$33m
January 2025$9m
April 2025$22m
July 2025$11m
October 2025-$42m
January 2026-$40m
April 2026$6m
July 2026-$13m

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
n/a
Last annual report (10-K)
31 March 2026
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
14 December 2026

Who owns it

1 long-term investor we follow owns it, down from 3 last quarter. 170 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

In the last 12 months, 4 insiders bought $140,363 of shares on the open market. 1 sold $102,668.

  • Hatton Cory
    Interim CFO
    Bought
    Date
    28 September 2026
    Shares
    4,000
    Price
    $6.50
    Value
    $26,000
  • Lipman Nathaniel
    Director
    Bought
    Date
    17 September 2026
    Shares
    12,000
    Price
    $6.78
    Value
    $81,300
  • Klohn Steve
    SVP Chief Information Officer
    Sold
    Date
    17 April 2026
    Shares
    6,989
    Price
    $14.69
    Value
    $102,668
  • Rodriguez Rodolfo Jr
    SVP, Chief Legal Officer
    Bought
    Date
    16 January 2026
    Shares
    730
    Price
    $20.10
    Value
    $14,673
  • Lal Tarun
    Chief Executive Officer, Director
    Bought
    Date
    21 October 2025
    Shares
    1,000
    Price
    $18.39
    Value
    $18,390

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 31 Mar 2026, plus the 10-Q filed 14 Sep 2026 and 6 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 carries a lot of debt: 17.4× its equity.
  • It isn't cheap on profits: 49.4× 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.