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Watts Water Technologies

WTS on NYSE. Miscellaneous fabricated metal products. 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?

Good business, but not cheap right now

Why it could be worth it

What to watch out for

See cheaper Industrials stocks on the list

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

Compare with another stock

Cash yield
past 12 months to June 2026
2.9%low

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $2.88 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

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

You pay 23.2 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to December 2025
19.4%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 19 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 100 of 100. Price score: 46 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$362.45 a share, 39% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $260.00 to $394.54.

Dividend: 0.6% a year

Paid every year for at least 5 years

Payouts have jumped around in recent years, so this may not repeat.

Prices from Tuesday’s close (6 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

0.2
0.2
0.3
0.3
0.4
0.3
2021202220232024202512 monthsto Jun '26
Revenue
$1.8bn$2.0bn$2.1bn$2.3bn$2.4bn
Operating margin
13.2%15.9%17.1%17.3%18.4%
Debt to equity
0.120.120.200.120.10
Shares outstanding
0.03bn0.03bn0.03bn0.03bn0.03bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive5 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Nothing unusual
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)6 of 8 checks we could run
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
  • Debt0.10× equity
  • Revenue growth, five yearsStrong, 10.1% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesRoughly flat

The quarter to June 2026

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

  • Sales: $763 million last quarter, up 19% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $118 million, up 17% on a year ago.
  • It keeps 19 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, up from 18 cents a year earlier.
  • Spare cash over the past 12 months: $349 million, up from $317 million.
  • About the same number of shares as a year ago.
  • It has $240 million more cash than debt, up from $172 million a year ago.
  • Sales grew on a year ago in each of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$544m
December 2024$540m
March 2025$558m
June 2025$644m
September 2025$612m
December 2025$625m
March 2026$677m
June 2026$763m
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$69m
December 2024$68m
March 2025$74m
June 2025$101m
September 2025$82m
December 2025$84m
March 2026$100m
June 2026$118m

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

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

Who owns it

4 long-term investors we follow own it, unchanged from 4 last quarter. 577 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

6 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. 6 sold $11m, $1m of it under preset trading plans.

  • Melhem Elie
    President- APAC, M. East, Afr.
    Sold
    Date
    4 September 2026
    Shares
    1,096
    Price
    $359.55
    Value
    $394,067
  • Noonan Joseph T
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    1 September 2026
    Shares
    3,650
    Price
    $353.72
    Value
    $1m
  • Dubose Michael J.
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    28 May 2026
    Shares
    398
    Price
    $309.63
    Value
    $123,233
  • Melhem Elie
    President- APAC, M. East, Afr.
    Sold
    Date
    13 May 2026
    Shares
    2,257
    Price
    $301.00
    Value
    $679,357
  • Melhem Elie
    President- APAC, M. East, Afr.
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    19 March 2026
    Shares
    372
    Price
    $292.13
    Value
    $108,672
  • Melhem Elie
    President- APAC, M. East, Afr.
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    18 March 2026
    Shares
    379
    Price
    $300.03
    Value
    $113,711
  • Melhem Elie
    President- APAC, M. East, Afr.
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    17 March 2026
    Shares
    3,029
    Price
    $303.05
    Value
    $917,938
  • Dubose Michael J.
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    12 March 2026
    Shares
    332
    Price
    $301.70
    Value
    $100,164
  • Pagano Robert J Jr
    President and CEO
    Sold
    Date
    19 February 2026
    Shares
    16,066
    Price
    $327.31
    Value
    $5m
  • Lepage Kenneth Robert
    General Counsel
    Sold
    Date
    17 February 2026
    Shares
    5,025
    Price
    $321.08
    Value
    $2m

From Form 4 filings: insiders must report trades in their own company's shares within two days.

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.