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GRDN, Guardian Pharmacy Services Inc.
We are a leading, highly differentiated pharmacy services company that provides an extensive suite of technology-enabled services designed to help residents of LTCFs adhere to their appropriate drug regimen, which in turn helps reduce the cost of care and improve clinical outcomes.
More than two-thirds of our annual revenue for each of the past three years has been generated from residents of ALFs and BHFs, which are our target markets, while the remainder has been generated primarily from residents of skilled nursing facilities ("SNFs").
Certain characteristics of ALFs and BHFs, which are not typical of SNFs, create additional challenges and complexities for pharmacy service providers that Guardian is well suited to address.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
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
- Unit economics, and whether the moat is real low cost or genuine convenience. What decides it: same-store sales, how fast inventory turns back into cash, and whether thin margins survive the next price war or the shift online. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
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.
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 $49M of profit into $87M of owner earnings: more cash than the profit line showed, after the non-cash charges and the capital it put back in.
| FY2025 | FY2024 | |
|---|---|---|
| Reported net income | $49M | ($110M) |
| Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back | +$22M | +$20M |
| Stock-based compensationreal costnon-cash, but a real cost | +$14M | +$131M |
| Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items | +$15M | +$17M |
| Cash from operations | $100M | $58M |
| Capital expenditurecash put back in to keep running and to grow | −$13M | −$15M |
| Owner earnings | $87M | $43M |
| Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue | 6% | 4% |
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 $14M), owner earnings is nearer $73M.
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.
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
Will it survive?
- Can it pay its interest? 109.3×ComfortableOperating income $73M ÷ interest expense $665K
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.
- Net cash, debt-freeCash $66M − debt $0
What this means
Cash and short-term investments exceed every dollar of debt by $66M, on net the company owes nothing, and can act from strength when others can't. Net debt is the leverage figure that matters: the cash is already set against the debt. Strategic or illiquid investments aren't counted here.
- TightDSO 26 + DIO 14 − DPO 37 days
What this means
Days cash is tied up between paying suppliers and collecting from customers. Lower is better; a long cycle means growth itself eats cash.
Is it a good business?
- Very high (≥25%)NOPAT $49M ÷ invested capital $152M (debt + equity − cash)Industry peers: median 22%
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. Asset-light businesses (R&D expensed, little capital) read artificially high, pair this with Owner Earnings.
- SolidOwner earnings $87M = operating cash $100M − maintenance capex $13MIndustry peers: median 4%
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 6% of revenue this year. Treating stock comp as the real expense it is (less $14M of SBC) leaves $73M.
- Cash-backedCash from ops $100M ÷ net income $49M
In the filing’s words The filing leans on adjusted, non-GAAP earnings, but the GAAP profit is itself cash-backed — the adjustments are not papering over a cash shortfall here.
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?
- Not enough data
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
- Investing or harvesting? 0.60×HarvestingCapex $13M ÷ depreciation $22M
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 · 1 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 NearRevenue ≥ $2B · $1.4B
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 MissCurrent ratio ≥ 2× · 1.38×
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 PassDebt ≤ working capital · $0 vs $61M 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 $-0.48/share (latest year $0.78), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $3.44/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.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Moderate contestabilityAI is likely to reshape costs and some products here without clearly contesting or sparing the core moat; how the company itself frames it is the tell.
Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat.
“We cannot predict the effect of technological changes on our business, and new services and technologies in the future, including those implementing or created using artificial intelligence, could be superior to, or render obsolete, the technologies we currently use in our business.…”
The question is whether a moat the record shows as durable outlasts a technology that lowers the cost of part of what the firm sells. The durability is read in the record above, the filing's own framing of AI beside it; the industry label decides nothing on its own.
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, 2026Can 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.
- Cash & short-term investments$65M
- Receivables$112M
- Inventory$47M
- Other current assets$11M
- Accounts payable$109M
- Other current liabilities$52M
From the company's latest filing.
Acquisitions & goodwill
from the balance sheet & the 2-year cash-flow recordGoodwill 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.
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 2-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.
- Insider ownership35%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- Stock-based compensation$14M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 1% of revenue, equal to 19% 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.
What an owner would ask, FY2025
read the 10-K →- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Income taxes, Credit & receivables 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, Food & Drug Retailing
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BNEDBarnes & Noble Education Inc | $1.6B | 23% | -2.3% | -8% | 1% |
| GRDNGuardian Pharmacy Services Inc. | $1.4B | 20% | 5.0% | 32% | 6% |
| SPHSuburban Propane Partners L.P. | $1.4B | 60% | 12.8% | — | 12% |
| GCTGigaCloud Technology Inc | $1.3B | — | 11.2% | 84% | 13% |
| EZPWEZCORP Inc. Class A Non Voting | $1.3B | 79% | 7.7% | 6% | 7% |
| SFIXStitch Fix Inc. | $1.3B | 44% | -3.0% | -35% | 3% |
| LESLLeslie's | $1.2B | 41% | 13.1% | 38% | 3% |
| RVLVRevolve Group | $1.2B | 53% | 6.6% | 39% | 4% |
| Group median | — | 44% | 7.2% | 32% | 5% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFType today's close and see the owner-earnings growth you'd have to believe to justify it, beside what Guardian Pharmacy Services Inc. has delivered.
—
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.
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
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.
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 $75M on 63M shares outstanding (a weighted cover-text, the only count this filer tags); net cash $36M. The base is the latest year by default; Normalize values it on the through-cycle median owner-earnings margin (to avoid paying on a peak year). 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.
Manual order: ← GRCE its page in the Manual GREEL →
Industry order: ← GO the Food & Drug Retailing chapter IMKTA →