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MPTI, M-tron Industries Inc.

Electronic Components & Instruments asset-light

Tron Industries, Inc. is engaged in the designing, manufacturing and marketing of highly engineered, high reliability frequency and spectrum control products used to control the frequency or timing of signals in electronic circuits in various applications.

Mtron's primary markets are aerospace and defense, avionics, industrials, and space.

Our component-level devices and integrated modules are used extensively in electronic systems for applications in aerospace and defense, avionics, satellites, global positioning systems, down-hole drilling, medical systems, instrumentation, and industrial devices.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K

MPTI · M-tron Industries Inc.

The business

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

Revenue · FY2025

$54M

+11.0% YoY · 19% 4-yr CAGR

Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average

Revenue $56M 5-yr avg $41M

Operating margin 19.3% 5-yr avg 13.1%

ROIC 41% 5-yr avg 21%

Owner-earnings margin 18% 5-yr avg 11%

Free cash flow margin 16% 5-yr avg 9%

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: Operating margin has run about 10% through the cycle, a solid margin the cost base and competition set as much as the price does. The operating margin has swung widely — from 7.9% to 19% over the years — so the through-cycle figure carries more than any single year, and the worst year more than the best. Inventory runs near 20% 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 5 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 9% 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 →

23% of revenue comes from outside the United States.

Revenue by geography, FY2025

United States77%$42M
Malaysia11%$6M
All Other Foreign Countries6%$3M
Australia5%$3M
Greece1%$537K

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.

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

The record, 2021–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left

2021’21	2022’22	2023’23	2024’24	2025’25	TTMTTMMar 2026
						Income statement
$27M	$32M	$41M	$49M	$54M	$56M	RevenueRevenue
8%	6%	5%	6%	6%	6%	R&D / revenueR&D/rev
$2M	$3M	$4M	$9M	$10M	$11M	Operating incomeOp. inc.
7.9%	9.0%	10.4%	19.2%	18.9%	19.3%	Operating marginOp. mgn
$2M	$2M	$3M	$8M	$8M	$9M	Net incomeNet inc.
25%	31%	21%	22%	23%	21%	Effective tax rateTax rate
						Cash flow & returns
$3M	$2M	$4M	$8M	$11M	$11M	Operating cash flowOp. cash
$488K	$671K	$797K	$968K	$1M	$1M	DepreciationDeprec.
$598K	($885K)	($2M)	($2M)	$45K	($387K)	Working capital & otherWC & other
$1M	$936K	$1M	$2M	$3M	$2M	CapexCapex
4.1%	2.9%	3.1%	3.9%	4.7%	4.3%	Capex / revenueCapex/rev
$2M	$1M	$4M	$7M	$10M	$10M	Owner earningsOwner earn.
9.3%	4.3%	8.8%	13.4%	17.6%	17.8%	Owner earnings marginOE mgn
$2M	$1M	$3M	$6M	$8M	$9M	Free cash flowFCF
7.0%	3.5%	7.6%	11.5%	14.9%	15.5%	Free cash flow marginFCF mgn
11%	15%	21%	39%	19%	41%	ROICROIC
9%	13%	18%	24%	13%	13%	Return on equityROE
9%	13%	18%	24%	13%	13%	Retained to equityRetained/eq
						Balance sheet
$3M	$926K	$4M	$13M	$21M	$52M	Cash & investmentsCash+inv
$4M	$5M	$5M	$7M	$7M	$8M	ReceivablesReceiv.
$5M	$8M	$9M	$10M	$10M	$10M	InventoryInvent.
$1M	$2M	$1M	$1M	$2M	$2M	Accounts payablePayables
$8M	$10M	$12M	$15M	$15M	$16M	Operating working capitalOper. WC
$12M	$14M	$18M	$30M	$61M	$72M	Current assetsCur. assets
$3M	$5M	$4M	$5M	$5M	$6M	Current liabilitiesCur. liab.
4.0×	2.9×	4.1×	5.7×	12.5×	11.8×	Current ratioCurr. ratio
$40K	$40K	$5K	—	—	$40K	GoodwillGoodwill
$20M	$19M	$24M	$37M	$68M	$79M	Total assetsAssets
$145K	$76K	—	—	—	$59K	Total debtDebt
($2M)	($850K)	—	—	—	($52M)	Net debt / (cash)Net debt
$17M	$14M	$20M	$31M	$63M	$73M	Shareholders’ equityEquity
1.1%	1.4%	5.9%	1.3%	2.0%	2.2%	Stock comp / revenueSBC/rev
						Per share
2.7M	2.7M	2.7M	2.9M	3.2M	3.6M	Shares out (diluted)Shares
$9.97	$11.90	$15.06	$16.99	$16.87	$15.78	Revenue / shareRev/sh
$0.59	$0.67	$1.28	$2.65	$2.62	$2.58	EPS (diluted)EPS
$0.92	$0.51	$1.32	$2.27	$2.97	$2.81	Owner earnings / shareOE/sh
$0.70	$0.41	$1.14	$1.95	$2.51	$2.45	Free cash flow / shareFCF/sh
$0.41	$0.35	$0.47	$0.66	$0.79	$0.68	Cap. spending / shareCapex/sh
$6.30	$5.36	$7.28	$10.84	$19.59	$20.45	Book value / shareBVPS

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

	4-yr	5-yr
Revenue / share	+14.0%/yr	+14.0%/yr (4-yr)
Owner earnings / share	+33.9%/yr	+33.9%/yr (4-yr)
EPS	+45.1%/yr	+45.1%/yr (4-yr)
Capital spending / share	+17.8%/yr	+17.8%/yr (4-yr)
Book value / share	+32.8%/yr	+32.8%/yr (4-yr)

The record, charted

FY2021–2025

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

Share count

3Mpeak FY2025

ROIC

19%low FY2021

Owner earnings vs. net income

Owner earningsNet income

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

$10Mowner earningsvs.$8Mnet incomelow FY2022

Where the cash went

ReinvestBuybacksDividendsAcquisitionsRetained

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

FY2021FY2025

Owner-earnings bridge

FY2021–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 earned $10M of owner earnings, the operating cash left after the $1M it takes just to hold its position. It put $1M more into growth; free cash flow, after that spending, was $8M.

Reported net income$8M

Owner earnings$10M · 18% of revenue

	FY2025	FY2024	FY2023	FY2022	FY2021
Reported net income	$8M	$8M	$3M	$2M	$2M
Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back	+$1M	+$968K	+$797K	+$671K	+$488K
Stock-based compensationreal costnon-cash, but a real cost	+$1M	+$636K	+$2M	+$458K	+$292K
Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items	+$45K	−$2M	−$2M	−$885K	+$598K
Cash from operations	$11M	$8M	$4M	$2M	$3M
Maintenance capital expenditurethe spending needed just to hold position and volume	−$1M	−$968K	−$797K	−$671K	−$488K
Owner earnings	$10M	$7M	$4M	$1M	$2M
Growth capital expenditurediscretionary; spent to get bigger, not to stand still	−$1M	−$930K	−$484K	−$265K	−$611K
Free cash flow	$8M	$6M	$3M	$1M	$2M
Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue	18%	13%	9%	4%	9%

Owner earnings is the cash an owner could pull out without starving the business: operating cash less the maintenance capital it must spend to hold its position (here about $1M, roughly its depreciation, the rate its assets wear out). The other $1M of its capital spending is growth it chose, not upkeep it owed; charged only with the maintenance it must do, the business earns well more than the year's free cash flow shows. 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 $1M), owner earnings is nearer $8M.

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? —

No meaningful interest burden

Little or no interest expense reported

What this means
Little or no interest expense reported, the business isn't leaning on lenders to operate.
How heavy is the debt, net of cash? +$21M

Net cash

Cash $21M − debt $76K

What this means
Cash and short-term investments exceed every dollar of debt by $21M, 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.
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 19%

High through the cycle

5-yr median, range 11%–39%; 19% latest = NOPAT $8M ÷ invested capital $42M

Industry peers: median -28%

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 5 years (it ran 19% 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 9%

Solid through the cycle

5-yr median margin, range 4%–18%; latest $10M = operating cash $11M − maintenance capex $1M

Industry peers: median -28%

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 18% of revenue this year, a 9% median across 5 years. It chose to put $1M more into growth, so free cash flow this year was $8M — the gap is investment, not weakness. Treating stock comp as the real expense it is (less $1M of SBC) leaves $8M.
Are earnings backed by cash? 1.26×

Cash-backed

Cash from ops $11M ÷ net income $8M

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? —

Not enough data

What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
Investing or harvesting? 2.35×

Expanding

Capex $3M ÷ depreciation $1M

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 · 3 of 5 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 Miss

Revenue ≥ $2B · $54M

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 Pass

Current ratio ≥ 2× · 12.52×

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 · $76K vs $56M 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 Pass

A profit every year (5-yr record) · no losses

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 · none paid

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.
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 $1.51/share (latest year $1.95), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $14.63/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, 2021–2025

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

Profitable years 5 of 5

What this means
Never lost money over the record, the earnings stability Graham insisted on.
Operating margin 8% → 19% (2-yr avg ends)

What this means
Through the cycle the operating margin widened — about 8% early to 19% lately, median 10% — 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 +43%/yr

What this means
Owner earnings grew about 43% a year over the record.
Worst year 2021 · 7.9% op. margin

What this means
Stayed profitable even in its hardest year, the resilience that survives recessions.
Share count +4.8%/yr

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

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 Raised, but not as a competitor

The filing raises AI among its risks, but in other terms (security, regulation, energy or the like), not as a competitor to its product.

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.

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$72M

Cash & short-term investments$52M
Receivables$8M
Inventory$10M
Other current assets$2M

Current liabilities$6M

Accounts payable$2M
Other current liabilities$4M

Current ratio11.76×all current assets ÷ what's due · Graham looked for 2×

Quick ratio10.07×stricter: inventory excluded

Cash ratio8.50×strictest: cash alone against what's due

Working capital$66Mthe cushion left after near-term bills

Revenue, latest quarter vs. a year ago+15.3%the freshest read on whether the business is still growing

Current ratio, recent quarters4.6× → 11.8×

Deeper floors

Tangible book value$73Mequity stripped of goodwill & intangibles

Net current asset value$66MGraham's net-net: current assets less all liabilities

Debt incl. operating leases$197K$197K of it operating leases

From the company's latest filing.

How the cash was used, 2021–2025

Over the record, the business generated $28M of operating cash; how management split it reads as a cash builder, a large share of cash simply built up on the balance sheet.

Reinvested$8M · 28%
Retained (debt / cash)$20M · 72%

Source of fundingOperating cash
Operating cash covered reinvestment and returns; over the span debt fell $86K and cash and short-term investments rose $49M.
Net change in share count33.5%
The diluted count rose from 3M to 4M: issuance (stock pay, deals) outran any buybacks, so owners were diluted on net.
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 retained18%
Of the earnings it kept rather than paid out ($23M over the span), annual owner earnings (first three years vs last three) grew $4M, so each retained $1 added about 0.18 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
2023	Mr. Ferrantino	$225k	$254k	$4M
2024	Mr. Ferrantino	$376k	$376k	$7M
2025	Mr. Ferrantino	$1.2M	$1.4M	$10M

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.
Stock-based compensation$1M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 2% of revenue, equal to 11% 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 M-tron Industries 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 2021–2025.

1 of the 5 tests turned up something to look into; the other 4 came back clean.

Look hereDid the share count rise anyway?33.5%
Diluted shares grew 33.5% over 2021–2025. Owners were diluted on net; each share owns less of the business than it did. Read the buyback line beside this one, not on its own.

And these came back clean

Is it less profitable than it was?
Did debt outgrow the business?
Did reported profit become cash?
Did receivables and inventory outpace sales?

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 →

How much of the revenue rides on one buyer?
≈$20M · 36% of revenue on the largest customers (TTM)
“For the year ended December 31, 2025, our largest and second largest customers accounted for 36.0% and 14.9% of the Company's total revenues, respectively.”verify →
Which reported numbers are a judgment call?
Management names Income taxes, Inventory 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
NNDMNano Dimension Ltd.	$102M	43%	-155.1%	-14%	-70%
AXTIAXT Inc	$88M	32%	6.0%	4%	-16%
AMBQAmbiq Micro Inc.	$73M	44%	-54.5%	-141%	—
AIPArteris Inc.	$71M	90%	-56.0%	—	-3%
MPTIM-tron Industries Inc.	$54M	—	10.4%	19%	9%
NVTSNavitas Semiconductor Corporation	$46M	33%	-196.7%	-41%	-108%
KOPNKopin Corporation	$39M	35%	-65.8%	-70%	-40%
LPTHLightPath Technologies Inc.	$37M	35%	-4.8%	-5%	-0%
Group median	—	—	-55.3%	-14%	-16%

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 M-tron Industries Inc. has delivered.

M-tron Industries 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, M-tron Industries Inc. earns about $5M on its 9.3% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 17.6% 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 ($5M) Net of stock comp (−$1M) Steady-state · maintenance capex ($10M)

—

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 · ’21→’25+47%/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 $9M on 4M shares outstanding, per the 10-Q cover, as of 2026-04-30; net cash $52M. 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 ($2M) runs well above depreciation ($1M), so this is a build-out; Steady-state swaps total capex for maintenance (≈ depreciation), lifting the base to about $10M, 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 MPTI against another business →

The owners of MPTI: the meeting and the votes →

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

Manual order: ← MPT its page in the Manual MPWR →

Industry order: ← MLAB the Electronic Components & Instruments chapter NNDM →