Martin Whitman
Safe first. The balance sheet decides whether cheap is even worth asking.
| Measure | Formula | Median | Middle half | Reporting it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Debt to equity | Total debt ÷ shareholders’ equity | 0.79x | 0.39x – 1.45x | 442 |
| Current ratio | Current assets ÷ current liabilities | 1.25x | 0.89x – 1.79x | 446 |
| Interest cover | Operating income ÷ interest expense | 4.43x | 2.16x – 9.09x | 429 |
Where each comes from
| Debt to equity | “Safe” in his pairing means a financial position strong enough that the business is never a forced seller. |
|---|---|
| Current ratio | Near-term obligations covered without recourse to a lender who may not be there. |
| Interest cover | What is already owed, measured against what the business earns to pay it. |
Source: The Aggressive Conservative Investor, and Third Avenue shareholder letters.
What this cannot tell you
The “cheap” half is a price against net asset value, and this site publishes no prices. It also rests on reading the footnotes for asset values a screen cannot see.
This page describes a published method and applies its measures to filings. It is not a score, not a ranking and not a recommendation, and no page here aggregates these into a verdict. · All 11 metrics