Value Investor
Start free

Papa Johns International

PZZA on Nasdaq. Papa Johns sells pizza to customers through its restaurants. Market value $643m.

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
5.3%fair

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $5.31 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

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

You pay 16.3 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to December 2025
40.0%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 40 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 59 of 100. Price score: 78 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$19.58 a share, 3% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $18.92 to $55.74.

Dividend: 9.5% a year

Paid every year for at least 5 years

Yields this high often come before a cut. Check the company's latest news.

Prices from Tuesday’s close (6 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

0.1
0.0
0.1
0.0
0.1
0.0
2021202220232024202512 monthsto Jun '26

Spare cash swings from quarter to quarter here: $34 million in the past 12 months, $61 million in the year to December 2025.

Revenue
$2.1bn$2.1bn$2.1bn$2.1bn$2.1bn
Operating margin
8.1%5.2%6.9%7.6%4.3%
Debt to equity
n/an/an/an/an/a
Shares outstanding
0.04bn0.03bn0.03bn0.03bn0.03bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive5 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Not enough data
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)7 of 9
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)No
  • DebtUnknown
  • Revenue growth, five yearsSlow, 2.5% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesYes, 7% fewer since 2021

The quarter to June 2026

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

  • Sales: $482 million last quarter, down 9% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $9 million, down 10% on a year ago.
  • It keeps 4 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, down from 7 cents a year earlier.
  • Spare cash over the past 12 months: $34 million, down from $58 million.
  • About the same number of shares as a year ago.
  • Debt is $737 million more than cash, up from $734 million a year ago.
  • Sales grew on a year ago in 1 of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$507m
December 2024$531m
March 2025$518m
June 2025$529m
September 2025$508m
December 2025$498m
March 2026$479m
June 2026$482m
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$42m
December 2024$15m
March 2025$9m
June 2025$10m
September 2025$5m
December 2025$7m
March 2026$7m
June 2026$9m

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
n/a
Last annual report (10-K)
26 February 2026
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
5 November 2026

Who owns it

2 long-term investors we follow own it, unchanged from 2 last quarter. 258 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

7 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.

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 26 Feb 2026, plus the 10-Q filed 6 Aug 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

  • It owes more than it owns on paper (negative equity). Often that's from borrowing to buy back shares.

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.