Suburban Propane Partners LP
SPH on NYSE. Suburban Propane Partners LP sells newspapers, magazines and property space to readers, advertisers and tenants. Market value $1.1bn.
Price checks use the past 12 months to June 2026. Some use the latest annual report instead, as marked. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to September 2025.
Should I look at this?
Worth a closer look
Why it could be worth it
What to watch out for
Nothing stood out in the numbers we check.
This is not advice. Check the numbers below.
For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $10.22 of spare cash last year. A savings account pays about $4.
You pay 11.1 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.
The filings do not give us enough to work this out.
Quality score: 79 of 100. Price score: 100 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.
$16.77 a share, 3% above its 1-year low
Over the past year the price has ranged from $16.25 to $20.80.
Prices from Monday’s close (5 October).
Five years of cash, in billions
| Revenue | |||||
| Revenue | $1.3bn | $1.5bn | $1.4bn | $1.3bn | $1.4bn |
| Operating margin | |||||
| Operating margin | 16.5% | 13.7% | 14.5% | 12.9% | 14.4% |
| Debt to equity | |||||
| Debt to equity | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Shares outstanding | |||||
| Shares outstanding | 0.06bn | 0.06bn | 0.06bn | 0.07bn | 0.07bn |
Health checks
- Free cash flow positive5 of 5 years
- Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Not enough data
- Financial strength (Piotroski)6 of 8 checks we could run
- Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
- DebtUnknown
- Revenue growth, five yearsSlow, 5.3% a year
- Buying back its own sharesNo, 6% more shares since 2021
The quarter to June 2026
How the business did, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.
- Sales: $261 million last quarter, about the same as a year ago.
- A loss of $18 million, compared with a loss of $15 million a year ago.
- It keeps 15 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, up from 14 cents a year earlier.
- 2% more shares than a year ago. Each share owns a bit less of the company.
- Debt is $1.2 billion more than cash, about the same as a year ago.
- Sales grew on a year ago in 2 of the last 4 quarters.
| Quarter to | Amount |
|---|---|
| September 2024 | $209m |
| December 2024 | $373m |
| March 2025 | $588m |
| June 2025 | $260m |
| September 2025 | $211m |
| December 2025 | $370m |
| March 2026 | $551m |
| June 2026 | $261m |
| Quarter to | Amount |
|---|---|
| September 2024 | -$45m |
| December 2024 | $19m |
| March 2025 | $137m |
| June 2025 | -$15m |
| September 2025 | -$35m |
| December 2025 | $46m |
| March 2026 | $138m |
| June 2026 | -$18m |
From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.
Dates
- Next results (estimated)
- n/a
- Last annual report (10-K)
- 26 November 2025
- Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
- 5 November 2026
Who owns it
None of the long-term investors we follow own it. 144 funds in all.
Largest holders overall
- Alps Advisors$252mCut
- Mirae Asset Global Etfs Holdings$77m
- Goldman Sachs Group$27mAdded
- JPMorgan Chase$25mAdded
- Bowen Hanes$20m
- Morgan Stanley$11mCut
- UBS Group AG$9mAdded
- Blackstone$7mCut
- Jane Street Group$5mNew
- Fractal Investments$4m
From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.
Big holders and activists
2 investors own more than 5%.
- ALPS Advisors, Inc.Passive investorat least 22.2%−1.0 pts(filed with 1 related holder)Since 30 June 2026
- Global X Management CO LLCPassive investor6.5%Since 31 March 2025
| Holder | Stake | Since | |
|---|---|---|---|
ALPS Advisors, Inc. Passive investor | at least 22.2%−1.0 pts (filed with 1 related holder) | 30 June 2026 | |
Global X Management CO LLC Passive investor | 6.5% | 31 March 2025 |
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. 3 sold $251,810, $193,100 of it under preset trading plans.
- Swift JaneDirectorSold
- Date
- 29 September 2026
- Shares
- 148
- Price
- $16.39
- Value
- $2,426
- Swift JaneDirectorSold
- Date
- 28 September 2026
- Shares
- 364
- Price
- $16.53
- Value
- $6,017
- Koepke Bryon LVP,General Counsel & SecretarySold
- Date
- 31 August 2026
- Shares
- 2,848
- Price
- $17.65
- Value
- $50,267
- Chanin Matthew JDirectorSoldunder a preset trading plan
- Date
- 2 December 2025
- Shares
- 10,000
- Price
- $19.31
- Value
- $193,100
| Date | Who | Did | Shares | Price | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 September 2026 | Swift Jane Director | Sold | 148 | $16.39 | $2,426 |
| 28 September 2026 | Swift Jane Director | Sold | 364 | $16.53 | $6,017 |
| 31 August 2026 | Koepke Bryon L VP,General Counsel & Secretary | Sold | 2,848 | $17.65 | $50,267 |
| 2 December 2025 | Chanin Matthew J Director | Sold under a preset trading plan | 10,000 | $19.31 | $193,100 |
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 Nov 2025, plus the 10-Q filed 6 Aug 2026 and 12 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
Your first deep dive is free.
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.