ZWS

Zurn Elkay Water Solutions

Industrials · fiscal year ending 2025-12-31

Through the investors’ lenses

4 of 4 cleared9 of 9 criteria

Each of these investors has said in public what they look at before buying. Click a name to see how this company measures up — a tick where it passes one of their tests, a cross where it does not.

Warren Buffett 3/3

Measure	ZWS	Checked against
Owner earnings	—	positive	—
Return on equity	12.3%	US median 2.8%	✓
Debt to equity	0.31x	US median 0.57x	✓
Operating margin	16.4%	US median 3.1%	✓

Passes 3 of 3. These are the measures Warren Buffett published, applied to Zurn Elkay Water Solutions’s own figures — their criteria, not their view of this company. What he looks at, and why →

Benjamin Graham 3/3

Measure	ZWS	Checked against
Current ratio	3.13x	2.00x published	✓
Long-term debt to working capital	0.90x	1.00x published	✓
Positive earnings, ten years running	10 yrs	10 published	✓

Passes 3 of 3. These are the measures Benjamin Graham published, applied to Zurn Elkay Water Solutions’s own figures — their criteria, not their view of this company. What he looks at, and why →

Joel Greenblatt 1/1

Measure	ZWS	Checked against
Return on capital employed	13.3%	US median 5.1%	✓

Passes 1 of 1. These are the measures Joel Greenblatt published, applied to Zurn Elkay Water Solutions’s own figures — their criteria, not their view of this company. What he looks at, and why →

Peter Lynch 2/2

Measure	ZWS	Checked against
Debt to equity	0.31x	US median 0.57x	✓
Net margin	11.7%	US median 2.0%	✓

Passes 2 of 2. These are the measures Peter Lynch published, applied to Zurn Elkay Water Solutions’s own figures — their criteria, not their view of this company. What he looks at, and why →

Free cash flow is not shown for this company. It cannot be computed from what this company files — the inputs are absent from its XBRL, not zero. The figure marked in the table is operating cash flow instead.

Basis	Payout	Why
GAAP earnings	33.0%	why The figure most screeners publish.
Operating cash flow	18.4%	why Before capital spending.

No free cash flow figure is shown. This company does not report the inputs for it in its XBRL filings — capital expenditure, in particular, is often folded into a single investing total rather than tagged on its own. The figure is absent from the filings, not zero, and inventing one from a balance-sheet movement would be a guess dressed as a measurement.

Spread between highest and lowest: 14.6 percentage points. Same filings, different denominators.

Coverage rating 52 / 100 — Tight. ? Peer standing · not ranked Direction 18/30Stability 8/20

Operating cash flow payout, last 6 years

Fiscal year	Payout
2025-12-31	18.4%
2024-12-31	19.3%
2023-12-31	19.9%
2022-12-31	33.5%
2021-12-31	16.3%
2020-12-31	12.1%

Coverage has improved three years running, 33.5% to 18.4%.

The arithmetic

GAAP earnings — dividends declared per share $0.380 ÷ diluted EPS $1.15
Operating cash flow — dividends paid $63.9m ÷ operating cash flow $346m

Where the figures came from

10-K filed 2026-02-09 · accession 0001628280-26-006372

Every one is public at sec.gov and free to check. That is the point — you should not have to take our word for any of it.

Computed by an open pipeline reading SEC XBRL directly. If any number here looks wrong to you, tell us — that is more useful to us than agreement.

What the operating cash flow payout ratio measures, and where every company here sits on it.

Also on: rated tight · when it files.

Who else looks like this

Every figure above is computed from Zurn Elkay Water Solutions’s own filing, and every company here is measured the same way. Screen all of them on any of these twelve measures, or on the rules four investors published — free, and nothing you screen leaves your browser.

Screen every company →

A subscription screens every company on this site at once, and turns a whole portfolio into one document — what that adds.