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CLS, Celestica Inc.

Electronic Components & Instruments asset-light

Celestica is a technology leader with deep expertise in design, engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, and platform solutions.

In 1993, we began providing electronics manufacturing services to non-IBM customers.

Celestica enables critical data center infrastructure for AI, cloud and hybrid cloud, and advances technologies in high-growth markets.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K

CLS · Celestica Inc.

The business

What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.

Revenue · FY2025

$12.4B

+28.5% YoY · 20% 3-yr CAGR

Vital signs · TTM, with 4-yr average

Revenue $13.8B 4-yr avg $9.3B

Gross margin 12% 4-yr avg 10%

Operating margin 8.6% 4-yr avg 5.7%

ROIC 40% 4-yr avg 22%

Owner-earnings margin 5% 4-yr avg 3%

Free cash flow margin 4% 4-yr avg 3%

The business in brief

read the 10-K →

What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.

What moves the needle: Gross margin has run about 9.5% and operating margin about 4.2% through the cycle, a thin spread that turns the result on volume and the cost of what it sells far more than on the price it sets. On a spread this thin the operating result swings hard on small moves in cost or volume — it has ranged from 4.0% to 8.4% over the years, so the cost line is where the needle moves. Inventory runs near 18% of sales, so how fast it turns back into cash — and the risk of writing it down when demand softens — sits alongside the margin. Read this kind of business on process leadership and the capex cycle. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on customer concentration, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
Is it a good business?: Return on capital has run in the teens (median 19%, above 15% in 3 of 4 years), though buybacks and expensed R&D and brands shrink the capital base, so the figure overstates the underlying economics. Owner earnings, the cash-based check, have been thin too. Returns like these are solid but short of clear franchise economics; whether they hold is what the 10-K settles, not the multiple.

Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

The record, 2022–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left

2022’22	2023’23	2024’24	2025’25	TTMTTMMar 2026
					Income statement
$7.3B	$8.0B	$9.6B	$12.4B	$13.8B	RevenueRevenue
9%	9%	11%	12%	12%	Gross marginGross mgn
4%	4%	3%	2%	2%	SG&A / revenueSG&A/rev
1%	1%	1%	1%	1%	R&D / revenueR&D/rev
$289M	$338M	$599M	$1.0B	$1.2B	Operating incomeOp. inc.
4.0%	4.2%	6.2%	8.4%	8.6%	Operating marginOp. mgn
$180M	$244M	$428M	$833M	$959M	Net incomeNet inc.
25%	20%	20%	15%	15%	Effective tax rateTax rate
					Cash flow & returns
$211M	$326M	$474M	$660M	$886M	Operating cash flowOp. cash
$116M	$131M	$152M	$176M	$178M	DepreciationDeprec.
($136M)	($105M)	($163M)	($419M)	($325M)	Working capital & otherWC & other
$109M	$125M	$171M	$201M	$394M	CapexCapex
1.5%	1.6%	1.8%	1.6%	2.9%	Capex / revenueCapex/rev
$102M	$201M	$303M	$458M	$708M	Owner earningsOwner earn.
1.4%	2.5%	3.1%	3.7%	5.1%	Owner earnings marginOE mgn
$102M	$201M	$303M	$458M	$492M	Free cash flowFCF
1.4%	2.5%	3.1%	3.7%	3.6%	Free cash flow marginFCF mgn
$0	$0	$36M	$0	$0	AcquisitionsAcquis.
$35M	$36M	$152M	$153M	—	BuybacksBuybacks
17%	13%	21%	37%	40%	ROICROIC
11%	14%	23%	38%	46%	Return on equityROE
11%	14%	23%	38%	46%	Retained to equityRetained/eq
					Balance sheet
$375M	$370M	$423M	$596M	$378M	Cash & investmentsCash+inv
—	$2.1B	$1.8B	$2.2B	$2.7B	InventoryInvent.
—	$1.3B	$1.3B	$1.9B	$3.1B	Accounts payablePayables
—	$806M	$466M	$322M	($415M)	Operating working capitalOper. WC
—	$4.5B	$4.5B	$5.7B	$6.4B	Current assetsCur. assets
—	$3.2B	$3.0B	$3.9B	$5.1B	Current liabilitiesCur. liab.
—	1.4×	1.5×	1.4×	1.3×	Current ratioCurr. ratio
$322M	$322M	$341M	$333M	$333M	GoodwillGoodwill
—	$5.9B	$6.0B	$7.2B	$8.3B	Total assetsAssets
—	$675M	$797M	$777M	$772M	Total debtDebt
—	$305M	$373M	$181M	$394M	Net debt / (cash)Net debt
5.6×	4.3×	11.5×	19.8×	21.6×	Interest coverageInt. cov.
$1.7B	$1.8B	$1.9B	$2.2B	$2.1B	Shareholders’ equityEquity
0.7%	0.7%	0.6%	0.6%	0.5%	Stock comp / revenueSBC/rev
					Per share
124M	120M	119M	116M	116M	Shares out (diluted)Shares
$58.66	$66.18	$81.26	$106.63	$119.18	Revenue / shareRev/sh
$1.46	$2.03	$3.61	$7.16	$8.29	EPS (diluted)EPS
$0.83	$1.67	$2.55	$3.94	$6.12	Owner earnings / shareOE/sh
$0.83	$1.67	$2.55	$3.94	$4.25	Free cash flow / shareFCF/sh
$0.88	$1.04	$1.44	$1.73	$3.41	Cap. spending / shareCapex/sh
$13.56	$14.72	$15.97	$19.07	$18.13	Book value / shareBVPS

Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded

	3-yr	5-yr
Revenue / share	+22.0%/yr	+22.0%/yr (3-yr)
Owner earnings / share	+68.4%/yr	+68.4%/yr (3-yr)
EPS	+70.0%/yr	+70.0%/yr (3-yr)
Capital spending / share	+25.2%/yr	+25.2%/yr (3-yr)
Book value / share	+12.0%/yr	+12.0%/yr (3-yr)

The record, charted

FY2022–2025

Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.

Share count

116Mpeak FY2022

ROIC

37%low FY2023

Gross margin

12%low FY2022

Net debt ÷ owner earnings

0.4×peak FY2023

Owner earnings vs. net income

Owner earningsNet income

The accountant's number, and the cash an owner can take; the gap is the tell.

$458Mowner earningsvs.$833Mnet incomelow FY2022

Where the cash went

ReinvestBuybacksDividendsAcquisitionsRetained

Each year's operating cash, by what management did with it: the mix, and how it drifts.

FY2022FY2025

Owner-earnings bridge

FY2022–FY2025cash-flow statement, SEC EDGAR →

Net income is the accountant's number; owner earnings is the cash an owner could take out. The walk between them, off the cash-flow statement, and whether the gap is widening or holding.

In fiscal 2025 the business reported $833M of profit but $458M of owner earnings: $374M less than the profit line, taken out by capital spending and the timing of cash.

Reported net income$833M

Owner earnings$458M · 4% of revenue

	FY2025	FY2024	FY2023	FY2022
Reported net income	$833M	$428M	$244M	$180M
Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back	+$176M	+$152M	+$131M	+$116M
Stock-based compensationreal costnon-cash, but a real cost	+$70M	+$57M	+$56M	+$51M
Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items	−$419M	−$163M	−$105M	−$136M
Cash from operations	$660M	$474M	$326M	$211M
Capital expenditurecash put back in to keep running and to grow	−$201M	−$171M	−$125M	−$109M
Owner earnings	$458M	$303M	$201M	$102M
Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue	4%	3%	3%	1%

Owner earnings is the cash an owner could pull out without starving the business: operating cash less the capital it must spend to hold its position . The cash-flow statement also adds stock comp back as non-cash, but it is a real cost paid in shares; counted as the expense it is (less $70M), owner earnings is nearer $389M.

Much of fiscal 2025's profit didn't arrive as operating cash; it sits in “working capital & other” above. That can be a real inventory or timing swing, or profit that doesn't run through operating cash at all: a heavy tax year, equity-method earnings, or investment income booked through investing. For a year like this, owner earnings understates the cash earned; the full cash-flow statement carries the rest.

Maintenance capex is estimated as depreciation where a growing business invests above it; free cash flow is the figure the scorecard's free-cash margin reads.

III

Quality & stewardship

Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.

Owner’s Scorecard

FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →

Will it survive?

Can it pay its interest? 19.8×

Comfortable

Operating income $1.0B ÷ interest expense $53M

What this means
Operating profit covers interest with the kind of margin Graham wanted for a defensive holding. Necessary, not sufficient, it says solvent, not cheap.
How heavy is the debt, net of cash? $181M · 0.2× operating profit

Modest net debt

Cash $596M − debt $777M

What this means
Netting $596M of cash and short-term investments against $777M of debt leaves $181M owed, about 0.2× a year's operating profit (0.7× on the gross debt, before the cash). Net debt is the leverage figure that matters: the cash is already set against the debt. Strategic or illiquid investments aren't counted here.
How long is cash tied up? —

Not enough data

What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.

Is it a good business?

Return on invested capital 17%

High through the cycle

4-yr median, range 13%–37%; 37% latest = NOPAT $881M ÷ invested capital $2.4B

Industry peers: median 12%

What this means
The rate the business earns on the money tied up in it, Buffett's north star, because over time a stock tracks the ROIC beneath it. Above ~15% sustained hints at a moat; a return below the cost of capital (~8%) erodes value as a business grows rather than building it — the test Buffett weighs most. The headline is the median of the last 4 years (it ran 37% most recently), so one peak or trough year doesn't set the verdict. Asset-light businesses (R&D expensed, little capital) read artificially high, pair this with Owner Earnings.
Owner-earnings margin 3%

Thin through the cycle

4-yr median margin, range 1%–4%; latest $458M = operating cash $660M − maintenance capex $201M

Industry peers: median 3%

What this means
What an owner could take out without starving the business: operating cash less the maintenance capital it must spend to hold its position — Buffett's owner earnings. That's 4% of revenue this year, a 3% median across 4 years. Treating stock comp as the real expense it is (less $70M of SBC) leaves $389M.
Are earnings backed by cash? 0.79×

Mostly cash-backed

Cash from ops $660M ÷ net income $833M

What this means
How much of reported profit showed up as operating cash. Above 1× is reassuring; well below suggests earnings lean on accruals. One year is noisy, growth and working-capital swings distort it, and this is operating cash, not free cash. Watch the multi-year trend.

How is the cash used?

Where do the earnings go? 33%

Reinvests most of it

Dividends + buybacks $153M ÷ Owner Earnings $458M

What this means
Of $458M Owner Earnings, $153M (33%) went back to shareholders, $0 dividends, $153M buybacks. Net of $70M stock comp, the real buyback was about $84M. Returning most of it is the mark of a mature business with little left to reinvest at a high return; reinvesting most could mean a long runway, or empire-building. The split doesn't say which; the return earned on it (see ROIC) does.
Investing or harvesting? 1.15×

Maintaining

Capex $201M ÷ depreciation $176M

What this means
Descriptive, not a grade. Above ~1× means investing faster than assets wear out (growth, or, sustained for years, today's earnings carrying less depreciation than tomorrow's will). Below means spending less than it's wearing out (efficiency, or a melting asset base). The ratio won't tell you which; the filings will.

Graham’s defensive tests · 2 of 3 met

Graham’s numerical criteria for the defensive investor (The Intelligent Investor, ch. 14), run on the filings. A floor of safety, not a buy signal; many fine modern businesses fail his strictest liquidity rules by design.

Adequate size Pass

Revenue ≥ $2B · $12.4B

What this means
Big enough to weather a storm. Graham's 1972 floor was ~$100M of sales (≈ $700M today); we use a $2B revenue line as a conservative modern stand-in.
Strong liquidity Miss

Current ratio ≥ 2× · 1.44×

What this means
Current assets at least twice current liabilities, near-term bills covered without touching the business. Strict by design: many cash-rich modern firms run leaner and miss it, holding their cushion in longer-dated securities.
Conservative debt Pass

Debt ≤ working capital · $777M vs $1.7B WC

What this means
Graham's rule that borrowings not exceed net current assets. Capital-heavy and buyback-heavy firms routinely fail it, read it next to interest coverage, not alone.
Moderate price —

P/E ≤ 15 and P/E × P/B ≤ 22.5 · decided by the price

What this means
Graham's valuation gate, the wall he kept between a sound business and a sound investment. Three-year average earnings are $4.36/share (latest year $7.24), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $19.28/share. Enter a price in “What the price implies” just below for the P/E, P/B, and whether it clears. But this is the rule Buffett outgrew: there's no hard P/E law, and a wonderful business can deserve a far richer multiple if the thesis holds, treat it as the bargain-hunter's floor, not a verdict on the price.

Durability & moat, 2022–2025

Whether the record’s returns held, and what the capital reinvested earned.

Profitable years 4 of 4

What this means
Never lost money over the record, the earnings stability Graham insisted on.
Return on capital ≥ 15% 2 of 3 yrs

What this means
A moat shows up as a high return on invested capital that holds year after year, not one good vintage.
Operating margin 4% → 7% (2-yr avg ends)

In the filing’s words The margin widened even though the filing names price competition — the gain came from volume or cost, not pricing power. Read where.

What this means
Through the cycle the operating margin widened — about 4% early to 7% lately, median 4% — pricing power intact or improving.
Reinvestment, incremental ROIC returns capital

What this means
The capital base barely grew: this business returns cash through dividends and buybacks rather than reinvesting. Judge it on the cash returned, not on compounding.
Owner earnings growth +36%/yr

What this means
Owner earnings grew about 36% a year over the record.
Worst year 2022 · 4.0% op. margin

What this means
Stayed profitable even in its hardest year, the resilience that survives recessions.
Share count −2.0%/yr

What this means
The share count is shrinking, buybacks are quietly growing your slice of the business.

Does AI threaten the moat?

Low contestability

The moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.

In its own filing A competitive risk, new this year

Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat, in language that was not in the prior year's filing.

“For example, competition from lower cost and open source AI models, together with rapid advances in model efficiency, may reduce user switching costs, increase price sensitivity, and limit our customers' ability to maintain or improve pricing for their AI related products and services.…”

AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat, and the company is using it that way.

Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.

All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.

Current Position

as of the latest quarter, Mar 31, 2026

Can the business pay what it owes this year, off the freshest balance sheet: the quality of the assets, the debt actually coming due, and what a low ratio means here.

Current assets$6.4B

Cash & short-term investments$378M
Inventory$2.7B
Other current assets$3.3B

Current liabilities$5.1B

Accounts payable$3.1B
Other current liabilities$2.0B

Current ratio1.26×all current assets ÷ what's due · Graham looked for 2×

Quick ratio0.73×stricter: inventory excluded

Cash ratio0.07×strictest: cash alone against what's due

Working capital$1.3Bthe cushion left after near-term bills

Revenue, latest quarter vs. a year ago+52.8%the freshest read on whether the business is still growing

Current ratio, recent quarters1.5× → 1.3×

Deeper floors

Tangible book value$1.5Bequity stripped of goodwill & intangibles

Net current asset value$235MGraham's net-net: current assets less all liabilities

Debt incl. operating leases$168M$168M of it operating leases

Deferred revenue$389Mcustomer cash collected before delivery; operating float

From the company's latest filing.

How the cash was used, 2022–2025

Over the record, the business generated $1.7B of operating cash; how management split it reads as a balanced allocator, splitting cash between the business, owners, and the balance sheet.

Reinvested$606M · 36%
Buybacks$376M · 22%
Retained (debt / cash)$689M · 41%

Returned to owners$376M
35% of the owner earnings the business produced over the span, $0 as dividends and $376M as buybacks.
Average price paid for buybacks$35.77
Across the years where the filing reports a share count, 11M shares were bought for $376M, about $35.77 each. Year to year the price paid ranged from $10.18 (2022) to $118.00 (2025), and 2025, near the top of that range, was also its heaviest buyback year ($153M).
Net change in share count−6.4%
The diluted count fell from 124M to 116M, so the buybacks outran the stock issued to staff.
Dividend record—
No dividend line was reported in the filing data over the span; the record here neither confirms nor rules out a payout.
Return on what it retained9%
Of the earnings it kept rather than paid out ($1.3B over the span), annual owner earnings (first three years vs last three) grew $119M, so each retained $1 added about 0.09 of yearly owner earnings. Buffett's test, run on owner earnings instead of market value.

Buybacks are gross of stock issued to staff; the share-count line above is the net of that, the figure that decides whether owners gained. The average price paid blends a year of purchases (and any accelerated repurchase), so it is close, not exact. The record of where the cash went and on what terms.

Management, ownership & pay

read the proxy →

From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.

Fiscal year	Chief executive	Pay, as filed	“Actually paid”	Owner earnings
2022	Robert A. Mionis	$12.0M	$17.5M	$102M
2023	Robert A. Mionis	$13.5M	$66.3M	$201M
2024	Robert A. Mionis	$15.0M	$138.9M	$303M
2025	Robert A. Mionis	$17.4M	$320.8M	$458M

Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Owner earnings are the whole business's, from the record above, for the same fiscal years.

Stock-based compensation$70M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 1% of revenue, equal to 7% of operating profit. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.

Inverting the record

Invert: instead of why Celestica Inc. is a good business, the question is what would make owning it a mistake, and whether those marks are in the record. Disconfirming tests across 2022–2025.

None of the 3 tests turned up a mark; each came back clean. A clean panel says only that these particular ways of being wrong are not written into the record.

Each test came back clean

Is it less profitable than it was?
Did the share count rise anyway?
Did reported profit become cash?

Each test is read from the filings and is noisy alone; a flag can mark a cyclical trough or a year of heavy investment as easily as a problem. The filing says which.

What an owner would ask, FY2025

read the 10-K →

Which reported numbers are a judgment call?
Management names Revenue recognition, Income taxes, Acquisitions, Contingencies as critical estimates
each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →

The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.

Peers, Electronic Components & Instruments

The same industry, side by side on owner economics. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.

Company	Revenue	Gross margin	Op. margin	ROIC	Owner earn. margin
JBLJabil Inc.	$29.8B	8%	3.2%	18%	2%
FLEXFlex Ltd.	$27.9B	7%	3.3%	15%	0%
CLSCelestica Inc.	$12.4B	10%	5.2%	19%	3%
NXPINXP Semiconductors N.V.	$12.3B	55%	24.8%	17%	21%
ADIAnalog Devices Inc.	$11.0B	63%	27.0%	8%	35%
VRTVertiv Holdings LLC	$10.2B	33%	5.0%	11%	3%
MRVLMarvell Technology Inc.	$8.2B	50%	-8.7%	-2%	19%
SANMSanmina Corporation	$8.1B	8%	3.6%	12%	3%
Group median	—	22%	4.3%	14%	3%

The price

What a price has to assume.

What the price implies

reverse-DCF

Type today's close and see the owner-earnings growth you'd have to believe to justify it, beside what Celestica Inc. has delivered.

Celestica Inc.’s latest year runs above its own through-cycle margin — the reported figure may flatter a peak. So the tool opens on the through-cycle base, Graham’s averaging cutting both ways; clear the toggle below to read the latest year exactly as reported.

Today’s price $

Through the cycle, Celestica Inc. earns about $351M on its 2.8% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 3.7% margin runs above that; the reported figure may flatter a peak you'd be paying on. Normalize, below, values the price on that through-cycle figure rather than the latest year. It comes pre-checked here for that reason, the same rule that already normalizes a trough; clear it to price the year as filed.

Base Normalize · through-cycle ($351M) Net of stock comp (−$74M) Steady-state · maintenance capex ($684M)

—

The assumptions Required return 9% Years of high growth 10 Terminal growth 2.5%

9.0% = the 4.55% 10-year Treasury (Jul 15, 2026) + 4.45 points of equity premium. The rate you require is yours to set.

Enter a price above to run it.

Implied by the price—

Owner-earnings growth · ’22→’25+36%/yr

Owner-earnings yield—

P/E (3-yr earnings ’23–’25)—

P/B—

Graham’s price gate—

Graham capped the multiple at 15×; Buffett and Munger let that rule go: a wonderful business can deserve 50× if the thesis holds. The gate marks the bargain-hunter's floor.

Against a high-grade bond: Graham’s yardstick bond yield%

Prefilled with the 10-year Treasury (4.55%, as of Jul 15, 2026). Edit it for today’s exact figure, or a AAA corporate yield.

Graham measured a stock against the bond you could own instead, the heart of his margin of safety. Enter a price above to weigh the owner-earnings yield against this bond.

Free cash flow $492M on 115M shares outstanding, per the 10-Q cover, as of 2026-04-22; net debt $394M. The base opens on the through-cycle figure (the latest year sits above the record’s own median, and Graham’s averaging cuts both ways); clear Normalize to use the year as filed. Net of stock comp treats option pay as the expense it is. Capex ($394M) runs well above depreciation ($178M), so this is a build-out; Steady-state swaps total capex for maintenance (≈ depreciation), lifting the base to about $684M, the cash it would throw off if it stopped expanding. The dials set the multiple a growth belief justifies; the price, and every dollar on this page, is yours.

Weigh CLS against another business →

The owners of CLS: the meeting and the votes →

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Celestica Inc. (CLS), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/CLS, data as of 2026-07-09.

Manual order: ← CLPT its page in the Manual CLSK →

Industry order: ← CLMB the Electronic Components & Instruments chapter CNXN →