The Almanac
A census of the catalog: what the record of every company the library holds looks like, taken together. This is the universe Owner Scorecard covers, and it is a large but not complete, United-States-centered slice of the world's public companies, not the whole of it: 2,858 US filers, 735 foreign companies with US-listed ADRs, 204 large Japanese companies, and 45 European companies. Read the figures below as "of the companies here," never as "of all companies everywhere." A company listed both as an ADR and in its home market is counted once. Returns and margins are read through the cycle, the median over each company's own record, so one peak or trough year never sets a level. A company appears in a figure only where its record could be read; it is never counted as a zero.
3,842 readable records across the whole catalog, as of September 28, 2026.
Return on capital, over a decade
Return on invested capital, the through-cycle median for each company, then the distribution across the catalog. Not computed for banks, insurers, and property trusts, whose capital is not deployed the same way. The durability lines count the companies that cleared the bar not just at the median but in their worst readable year — Buffett's line between a franchise and a single good year.
| Companies with a readable return | 2,725 |
|---|---|
| Median return on capital | 7.2% |
| The middle 80% (10th to 90th percentile) | -33.8% to 23.9% |
| Cleared 10% through the cycle | 37.6% (1,024 of 2,725) |
| Cleared 15% | 20.8% (567 of 2,725) |
| Cleared 20% | 13.4% (364 of 2,725) |
| Cleared 15% in every year (durable) | 6.2% (170 of 2,725) |
| Cleared 10% in every year | 11.8% (321 of 2,725) |
Return on equity
A high return on equity is the figure Buffett calls the primary test of managerial performance. Read it beside the debt below: equity returns can be lifted by borrowing, so a high return is worth most where it is earned without much debt.
| Median return on equity (through the cycle) | 8.5% (n 3,551) |
|---|---|
| Cleared 15% on equity | 23.8% (845 of 3,551) |
| Cleared 20% | 14.6% (517 of 3,551) |
Margins and growth
| Median operating margin (through the cycle, operating businesses) | 9.2% (n 3,576) |
|---|---|
| Median gross margin (latest year) | 42.5% (n 2,424) |
| Median owner-earnings margin | 8.1% (n 3,340) |
| Median revenue growth (delivered, annualized over the record) | 8.5% (n 3,480) |
| Grew revenue over the record | 85.8% (2,987 of 3,480) |
| Profitable in every year (records of five years or more) | 39.8% (1,367 of 3,433) |
The balance sheet, and what management did with the shares
The current ratio (current assets over current liabilities) and interest coverage (operating profit over interest) are Graham's and Buffett's tests of financial strength — the cushion a business carries into a bad year.
| Carry net cash (cash and investments above all debt) | 42.2% (1,616 of 3,825) |
|---|---|
| Median current ratio | 1.7× (n 3,106) |
| Current ratio above 2 (Graham's defensive bar) | 42.5% (1,321 of 3,106) |
| Median interest coverage | 3.7× (n 2,564) |
| Cover interest at least 10× | 29.7% (761 of 2,564) |
| Reduced the share count over the record (net of issuance) | 40.0% (1,086 of 2,715) |
| Increased the share count | 55.4% (1,504 of 2,715) |
Graham's defensive tests
How many of the applicable defensive-investor tests each company clears (adequate size, strong liquidity, conservative debt, an unbroken earnings record, a dividend record, earnings growth), and the base rate for each test on its own. The price tests are left to the reader and are not counted here.
| Tests passed | Companies | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | 30 | 1.2% |
| 5 | 188 | 7.4% |
| 4 | 391 | 15.3% |
| 3 | 512 | 20.1% |
| 2 | 709 | 27.8% |
| 1 | 470 | 18.4% |
| 0 | 253 | 9.9% |
Passed every applicable defensive test: 6.0% (152 of 2,553). The full worksheet, company by company, is the defensive workbook. The other cross-sectional registers sit beside it: Graham's net-nets, and the flag registers, where each flagged filing is named.
Each test on its own
| Adequate size | 52.5% (1,251 of 2,384) |
|---|---|
| Earnings stability | 39.8% (948 of 2,382) |
| Dividend record | 61.9% (987 of 1,594) |
| Earnings growth | 62.1% (1,003 of 1,615) |
| Strong liquidity | 54.6% (1,304 of 2,390) |
| Conservative debt | 46.9% (1,115 of 2,375) |
The Almanac refreshes as the companies file. It counts and it distributes; it does not rank, and it names no company as better than another. Reading it across a business type slices the same census by our groupings — never a ranking of the groups against one another. To read any single company's record, use the catalog.