Owner Scorecard


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GDDY, GoDaddy Inc.

Software asset-light CyclicalSerial acquirer

GoDaddy is a global leader serving a large market of entrepreneurs, developing and delivering easy-to-use solutions as a one-stop shop provider, backed by proactive, informed and personalized guidance.

Our 20.4 million customers are passionate and determined to transform their ideas into something meaningful.

We design our solutions and tools to help our customers across all aspects of their businesses and to assist them in growing across what we call the "Entrepreneur's Wheel."

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K
GDDY · GoDaddy Inc.
I

The business

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

Revenue · FY2025
$5.0B
+8.3% YoY · 8% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $5.0B 5-yr avg $4.3B
Operating margin 23.7% 5-yr avg 15.5%
ROIC 35% 5-yr avg 21%
Owner-earnings margin 33% 5-yr avg 25%
Free cash flow margin 33% 5-yr avg 25%

The business in brief

read the 10-K →

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

What it is
Revenue is Core platform (62%) and A&C (38%).
Situation
Cyclical. Margins collapse and recover repeatedly across the record; a single year, good or bad, misstates the through-cycle earning power. Serial acquirer. Goodwill and acquired intangibles are 57% of assets, with meaningful acquisition spending in 5 of the record's 10 years; much of what this business is was bought, at prices the record carries.
What moves the needle
Operating margin has run about 8.2% through the cycle, a thin margin, where volume, cost discipline and the price it gets all bear on the result. The operating margin has swung widely — from 2.7% to 23% over the years — so the through-cycle figure carries more than any single year, and the worst year more than the best. Stock-based pay runs about 5.4% of sales, a real and recurring claim on owners that the GAAP margin understates. Read this kind of business on retention and the cost of growth. 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 15%, above 15% in 4 of 8 years), though buybacks and expensed R&D and brands shrink the capital base, so the figure overstates the underlying economics. The steadier read is owner earnings: roughly 21% of revenue reaches owners as cash, consistently. 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.

Where the money comes from

read the 10-K →

Core platform is 62% of revenue, with A&C the other meaningful segment at 38%.

Revenue by reportable segment, FY2025
  • Core platform62%$3.1B
  • A&C38%$1.9B
By geographyUnited States67%International33%

From the segment footnote of the company's own 10-K. Shares are of total revenue; the profit bar shows each segment's share of segment operating profit, before unallocated corporate costs.

II

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

The record, 2016–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left
2016’162017’172018’182019’192020’202021’212022’222023’232024’242025’25TTMTTMMar 2026
Income statement
$1.8B$2.2B$2.7B$3.0B$3.3B$3.8B$4.1B$4.3B$4.6B$5.0B$5.0BRevenueRevenue
12%13%13%12%10%9%9%9%9%8%8%SG&A / revenueSG&A/rev
$50M$67M$150M$203M$272M$382M$499M$547M$894M$1.1B$1.2BOperating incomeOp. inc.
2.7%3.0%5.6%6.8%8.2%10.0%12.2%12.9%19.5%22.8%23.7%Operating marginOp. mgn
($17M)$136M$77M$137M($495M)$242M$352M$1.4B$937M$875M$870MNet incomeNet inc.
-10%4%1%14%20%Effective tax rateTax rate
Cash flow & returns
$387M$476M$560M$723M$765M$829M$980M$1.0B$1.3B$1.6B$1.7BOperating cash flowOp. cash
$160M$206M$234M$210M$203M$200M$195M$171M$135M$117M$110MDepreciationDeprec.
$186M$57M$123M$230M$866M$180M$169M($795M)($84M)$290M$373MWorking capital & otherWC & other
$62M$83M$88M$88M$67M$51M$60M$42M$27M$24M$25MCapexCapex
3.3%3.7%3.3%2.9%2.0%1.3%1.5%1.0%0.6%0.5%0.5%Capex / revenueCapex/rev
$325M$392M$472M$636M$698M$778M$920M$1.0B$1.3B$1.6B$1.6BOwner earningsOwner earn.
17.6%17.6%17.7%21.3%21.0%20.4%22.5%23.6%27.6%31.8%32.7%Owner earnings marginOE mgn
$325M$392M$472M$636M$698M$778M$920M$1.0B$1.3B$1.6B$1.6BFree cash flowFCF
17.6%17.6%17.7%21.3%21.0%20.4%22.5%23.6%27.6%31.8%32.7%Free cash flow marginFCF mgn
$119M$1.9B$147M$40M$425M$368M$73M$0$0$0AcquisitionsAcquis.
$19M$0$0$459M$542M$526M$1.3B$1.3B$677M$1.6BBuybacksBuybacks
3%7%10%14%18%16%26%33%35%ROICROIC
-3%28%10%18%297%2210%135%407%367%Return on equityROE
Balance sheet
$573M$595M$951M$1.1B$765M$1.3B$774M$499M$1.1B$1.1B$1.3BCash & investmentsCash+inv
$8M$18M$26M$30M$42M$64M$60M$77M$91M$83M$85MReceivablesReceiv.
$62M$60M$62M$72M$51M$85M$131M$148M$82M$68M$94MAccounts payablePayables
($54M)($41M)($35M)($42M)($9M)($22M)($71M)($72M)$10M$16M($9M)Operating working capitalOper. WC
$933M$1.1B$1.4B$1.6B$1.3B$1.9B$1.6B$1.3B$2.0B$1.8B$2.1BCurrent assetsCur. assets
$1.3B$1.8B$1.9B$2.0B$2.3B$2.4B$2.5B$2.7B$2.7B$3.0B$3.1BCurrent liabilitiesCur. liab.
0.7×0.6×0.8×0.8×0.6×0.8×0.6×0.5×0.7×0.6×0.7×Current ratioCurr. ratio
$1.7B$2.9B$2.9B$3.0B$3.3B$3.5B$3.5B$3.6B$3.5B$3.6B$3.6BGoodwillGoodwill
$3.8B$5.7B$6.1B$6.3B$6.4B$7.4B$7.0B$7.6B$8.2B$8.0B$8.2BTotal assetsAssets
$1.0B$2.4B$2.4B$2.4B$3.1B$3.9B$3.8B$3.8B$3.8B$3.8B$3.8BTotal debtDebt
$467M$1.8B$1.5B$1.3B$2.3B$2.6B$3.1B$3.3B$2.7B$2.7B$2.5BNet debt / (cash)Net debt
0.9×0.8×1.5×2.2×3.0×3.0×3.4×3.1×5.6×7.5×7.9×Interest coverageInt. cov.
$563M$487M$793M$772M($13M)$82M($332M)$62M$692M$215M$237MShareholders’ equityEquity
3.1%3.4%4.7%4.9%5.8%5.4%6.5%7.0%6.6%6.4%6.2%Stock comp / revenueSBC/rev
Per share
79.8M168M175M151M145M141M134MShares out (diluted)Shares
$23.15$13.29$15.22$28.09$31.48$35.21$37.41Revenue / shareRev/sh
$-0.21$0.81$0.44$9.08$6.45$6.22$6.48EPS (diluted)EPS
$4.07$2.34$2.70$6.64$8.68$11.20$12.22Owner earnings / shareOE/sh
$4.07$2.34$2.70$6.64$8.68$11.20$12.22Free cash flow / shareFCF/sh
$0.77$0.50$0.50$0.28$0.18$0.17$0.19Cap. spending / shareCapex/sh
$7.05$2.90$4.53$0.41$4.76$1.53$1.77Book value / shareBVPS

The diluted share count moved ×2.1 into 2017 — shares issued, not a split the totals corroborate — and the per-share figures carry the counts as filed.

Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
9-yr5-yr
Revenue / share+4.8%/yr+12.0%/yr (2-yr)
Owner earnings / share+11.9%/yr+29.9%/yr (2-yr)
EPS−17.2%/yr (2-yr)
Capital spending / share−15.5%/yr−21.7%/yr (2-yr)
Book value / share−15.6%/yr+93.0%/yr (2-yr)

The record, charted

FY2016–2025

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

Share count
141Mpeak FY2018
ROIC
33%low FY2017
Net debt ÷ owner earnings
1.7×peak FY2017

Owner earnings vs. net income

Owner earningsNet income

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

$1.6Bowner earningsvs.$875Mnet incomelow FY2016

Where the cash went

ReinvestBuybacksDividendsAcquisitionsRetainedBeyond op. cash

Each year's outlays against its operating cash: the mix, and how it drifts. The hatched cap is spending beyond that year's operating cash — financed from the balance sheet or borrowing, not operations.

FY2016FY2025

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 turned $875M of profit into $1.6B of owner earnings: more cash than the profit line showed, after the non-cash charges and the capital it put back in.

Reported net income$875M
Owner earnings$1.6B · 32% of revenue
FY2025FY2024FY2023FY2022FY2021
Reported net income$875M$937M$1.4B$352M$242M
Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back+$117M+$135M+$171M+$195M+$200M
Stock-based compensationreal costnon-cash, but a real cost+$318M+$300M+$296M+$264M+$208M
Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items+$290M−$84M−$795M+$169M+$180M
Cash from operations$1.6B$1.3B$1.0B$980M$829M
Capital expenditurecash put back in to keep running and to grow−$24M−$27M−$42M−$60M−$51M
Owner earnings$1.6B$1.3B$1.0B$920M$778M
Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue32%28%24%22%20%

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 $318M), owner earnings is nearer $1.3B.

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?

  • Comfortable
    Operating income $1.1B ÷ interest expense $151M
    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? $2.7B · 2.4× operating profit
    Meaningful net debt
    Cash $1.1B − debt $3.8B
    What this means

    Netting $1.1B of cash and short-term investments against $3.8B of debt leaves $2.7B owed, about 2.4× a year's operating profit (3.4× 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.

  • Not enough data
    What this means

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

Is it a good business?

  • Solid through the cycle
    8-yr median, range 3%–33%; 33% latest = NOPAT $967M ÷ invested capital $2.9B
    Industry peers: median 8%
    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 8 years (it ran 33% 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.

  • High through the cycle
    10-yr median margin, range 18%–32%; latest $1.6B = operating cash $1.6B − maintenance capex $24M
    Industry peers: median 7%
    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 32% of revenue this year, a 21% median across 10 years. Treating stock comp as the real expense it is (less $318M of SBC) leaves $1.3B.

  • Cash-backed
    Cash from ops $1.6B ÷ net income $875M
    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?

  • Returned more than it generated
    Dividends + buybacks $1.6B ÷ Owner Earnings $1.6B
    What this means

    The company returned more than it generated: against $1.6B of Owner Earnings, $1.6B (103%) went back to shareholders, $19M dividends, $1.6B buybacks — the excess came from the balance sheet or borrowing, not the year's operations. Net of $318M stock comp, the real buyback was about $1.3B. Sustained, that pattern draws down cash or adds debt; the net-debt line above shows where it stands.

  • Investing or harvesting? 0.20×
    Harvesting
    Capex $24M ÷ depreciation $117M
    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 6 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 · $5.0B
    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× · 0.61×
    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 Miss
    Debt ≤ working capital · $3.8B vs ($1.2B) 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.

  • Earnings stability Miss
    A profit every year (10-yr record) · 2 loss years
    What this means

    Graham wanted earnings in each of the past ten years, the stability a defensive owner leans on.

  • Dividend record Miss
    Uninterrupted dividends · 1 of 10 yrs
    What this means

    An unbroken dividend was Graham's mark of durability. He wanted twenty years; the filings show about ten, and a single suspension breaks the streak. Non-payers, many fine modern compounders, fall outside his defensive net by design.

  • Earnings growth Pass
    Earnings +33% over the record · +1518%
    What this means

    At least a third more earnings than a decade ago, averaging three years at each end. Net income (not per-share), so stock splits don't distort it, buybacks and dilution show up in the share-count line instead.

  • 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 $8.02/share (latest year $6.61), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $1.62/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, 2016–2025

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

  • Profitable years 8 of 10
    What this means

    Lost money in 2 year(s), look at what happened there before trusting the average.

  • Return on capital ≥ 15% 4 of 10 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% → 18% (3-yr avg ends)
    What this means

    Through the cycle the operating margin widened — about 4% early to 18% lately, median 8% — pricing power intact or improving.

  • Reinvestment, incremental ROIC 53%
    What this means

    Every extra dollar the business reinvested came back at a high incremental return — the lens GBM read for a moat that reinvests rather than merely harvests. The record and the 10-K are where you check whether the rate holds.

  • Owner earnings growth +17%/yr
    What this means

    Owner earnings grew about 17% a year over the record.

  • Worst year 2016 · 2.7% op. margin
    What this means

    Stayed profitable even in its hardest year, the resilience that survives recessions.

  • Share count +6.5%/yr
    What this means

    The share count is rising, dilution works against you on a per-share basis.

  • Dividend record paid
    What this means

    Paid a dividend in 1 of the years on record.

  • How management talks about it Promotional
    What this means

    The record is compounding, but the filing leans on a promoter’s vocabulary rather than the per-share, return-on-capital terms an owner uses. The results back the talk here; the register is still worth noting.

Does AI threaten the moat?

Elevated contestability

The product is software or information, the very thing capable AI now produces more cheaply, so the moat is more contestable than the record alone implies.

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.

“In addition, advances in AI, including tools that enable customers to create, modify, and deploy websites, applications or digital experiences using AI-powered platforms, including those that utilize natural language or other high-level inputs rather than traditional development workflows, may alter customer expectatio…”

AI has collapsed the cost of building a capable substitute for the very thing this business sells. When a credible alternative can be assembled for a fraction of the incumbent's price, it is pricing power that erodes first, not revenue tomorrow. The live question is whether the moat survives that, not whether it held in the past. Whether that question is answerable at all is yours to decide, against your own circle of competence.

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$2.1B
  • Cash & short-term investments$1.3B
  • Receivables$85M
  • Other current assets$706M
Current liabilities$3.1B
  • Debt due within a year$15M
  • Accounts payable$94M
  • Other current liabilities$2.9B
Current ratio0.67×all current assets ÷ what's due · Graham looked for 2×
Quick ratio0.67×stricter: inventory excluded
Cash ratio0.41×strictest: cash alone against what's due
Working capital($1.0B)the cushion left after near-term bills

Its current ratio is below 1, which usually reads as strain; here it is likely structural strength. What it owes in the near term is money to suppliers and customers (payables and deferred revenue), not to lenders, so the balance sheet is funded by operating float, the way Costco's and Amazon's are. The low ratio can be the edge, not the risk; the cash-conversion cycle and the debt due above say which.

Debt due this year vs. cash$15M due · $1.3B cash covered by cash on hand, no refinancing forced · both figures from the Mar 31, 2026 balance sheet
Revenue, latest quarter vs. a year ago+6.1%the freshest read on whether the business is still growing
Current ratio, recent quarters0.5× → 0.7×
Deeper floors
Tangible book value($4.3B)equity stripped of goodwill & intangibles
Debt incl. operating leases$3.9B$91M of it operating leases
Deferred revenue$3.5Bcustomer cash collected before delivery; operating float

From the company's latest filing.

Not how much it owes, but when it falls due, and against what. The ladder the company files, beside cash on hand and a year's owner earnings.

'26$25M
'27$625M
'28$25M
'29$2.2B
'30$10M
later$935M

Bars scaled to the largest single year; “later” is everything due after 2030, shown apart since it dwarfs the years.

Due in the next 12 months$25Mthe first rung: what must be repaid or rolled over within the year
Within two years$649Mthe near wall, the part most exposed to today’s credit conditions
Biggest single year$2.2Bin 2029the lumpiest maturity, where a refinancing, if needed, is largest
Total scheduled principal$3.8Bevery year plus what lies beyond, as the footnote totals it

Against what the business has and earns

Cash & short-term investments, Mar 31, 2026$1.3B
One year of owner earnings (FY2025)$1.6B
Together, against $25M due next year115.3×

Cash on hand as of Mar 31, 2026 plus a year’s owner earnings comes to $2.8B against the $25M due in the twelve months after the Dec 31, 2025 schedule: 115 times it.

Maturity schedule extracted from the company’s Dec 31, 2025 annual report and reconciled to the balance-sheet debt.

How the cash was used, 2016–2025

Over the record, the business generated $8.7B of operating cash; how management split it reads as a cash returner, paying most of what it earns straight back to owners.

  • Reinvested$590M · 7%
  • Dividends$19M · 0%
  • Buybacks$6.4B · 74%
  • Retained (debt / cash)$1.7B · 19%
  • Returned to owners$6.4B

    79% of the owner earnings the business produced over the span, $19M as dividends and $6.4B as buybacks.

  • Source of fundingOperating cash

    Operating cash covered reinvestment and returns; over the span debt rose $2.7B and cash and short-term investments rose $689M.

  • Average price paid for buybacks

    Buybacks ran $6.4B over the span, but the filings don't tag the share count needed to deduce the average price paid.

  • Net change in share count68.2%

    The diluted count rose from 80M to 134M: issuance (stock pay, deals) outran any buybacks, so owners were diluted on net.

  • Dividend record$0.24/sh

    Paid in 1 of the years on record. It was never cut over the span.

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.

Acquisitions & goodwill

from the balance sheet & the 10-year cash-flow record

Goodwill grows only when a company acquires and falls only when it concedes it overpaid. The size of that bet, the cash put into buying rather than building, and how much has already been written off.

Goodwill & intangibles$4.6B57% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired
Against book equityexceeds itgoodwill alone is larger than the company’s entire book equity; stripped of the acquisition premium, there is no net book worth
Cash spent acquiring$3.0Bover 10 years buying other businesses, against $590M of capital spent building

None written down over the record; the goodwill is still carried at full cost. That is the deals holding their value on the books so far; whether they keep doing so is the test an owner watches, since the write-down, when it comes, is the admission the price was too high.

Goodwill, acquired intangibles and equity from the latest balance sheet; acquisition spend and write-downs summed across the 10-year record, from the company's own filings.

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 yearChief executivePay, as filed“Actually paid”Owner earnings
2021Mr. Bhutani$15.3M$14.9M$778M
2022Mr. Bhutani$18.6M$12.4M$920M
2023Mr. Bhutani$15.9M$30.9M$1.0B
2024Mr. Bhutani$19.5M$72.8M$1.3B
2025Mr. Bhutani$23.0M−$21.6M$1.6B

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.

  • Insider ownership<1%

    The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.

  • CEO pay ratio206:1

    What the chief earns for every dollar the median employee makes, per the 2026 proxy. A high ratio alone settles nothing; some businesses are genuinely top-heavy in scarce skill. A runaway figure is where Buffett starts asking whether the board is doing its job.

  • Stock-based compensation$318M

    The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 6% of revenue, equal to 28% 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 GoDaddy 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 2016–2025.

2 of the 5 tests turned up something to look into; the other 3 came back clean.

  • Look hereDid the share count rise anyway?68.2%

    Diluted shares grew 68.2% over 2016–2025, even as the company spent $6.4B on buybacks. The repurchases were outrun by issuance — to staff, in a raise, or in a deal — and the filing says which; owners' slice still shrank. Read the buyback line beside this one, not on its own.

  • Look hereDid receivables and inventory outpace sales?0% → 2% of sales

    Receivables and inventory grew from $8M to $85M while revenue grew 172%: working capital is climbing faster than sales (0% of revenue then, 2% now). That can mean customers paying slower, stock building up, or revenue pulled forward. The filing's cash-flow and receivables notes say which.

And these came back clean
  • Is it less profitable than it was?
  • Did debt outgrow the business?
  • 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 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, Software

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.

CompanyRevenueGross marginOp. marginROICOwner earn. margin
CACICACI International Inc.$8.6B7%8.0%9%6%
SAICScience Applications International Corporation$7.3B11%6.1%11%6%
PSNParsons Corporation$6.4B22%5.0%6%7%
OTEXOpen Text Corporation$5.2B69%17.6%6%23%
TWLOTwilio Inc.$5.1B52%-19.4%-7%-1%
GENGen Digital$5.0B82%32.2%11%31%
GDDYGoDaddy Inc.$5.0B9.1%15%21%
ZMZoom$4.9B76%11.6%8%33%
Group median8.6%9%14%
IV

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 GoDaddy Inc. has delivered.

GoDaddy 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.

$

Through the cycle, GoDaddy Inc. earns about $1.0B on its 21.2% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 31.8% 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

The assumptions

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 · ’21→’25+14%/yr
Owner-earnings growth · ’16→’25+17%/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.

Owner earnings $1.6B on 132M shares outstanding, per the 10-Q cover, as of 2026-04-24; net debt $2.5B. 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. The dials set the multiple a growth belief justifies; the price, and every dollar on this page, is yours.

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

Manual order: ← GD its page in the Manual GDOT →

Industry order: ← GCL the Software chapter GDS →