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NGVC, Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage Inc.

Natural Grocers is an expanding specialty retailer of natural and organic groceries and dietary supplements.

We focus on providing high-quality products at affordable prices, exceptional customer service, nutrition education and community outreach.

As their customers gained more knowledge about nutrition, they were empowered to make changes to their diets with the objective of supporting their health.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K

NGVC · Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage Inc.

The business

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

Revenue · FY2025

$1.3B

+7.2% YoY · 5% 5-yr CAGR

Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average

Revenue $1.3B 5-yr avg $1.2B

Operating margin 4.8% 5-yr avg 3.3%

ROIC 22% 5-yr avg 19%

Owner-earnings margin 2% 5-yr avg 2%

Free cash flow margin 1% 5-yr avg 2%

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 Grocery (72%), Dietary Supplements (19%) and Manufactured Product, Other (9%).
What moves the needle: Operating margin has run about 2.7% 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 1.8% to 4.7% over the years — so the through-cycle figure carries more than any single year, and the worst year more than the best. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, 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 10 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.

Where the money comes from

read the 10-K →

Grocery is 72% of revenue, with Dietary Supplements the other meaningful line at 19%.

Revenue by product line, FY2025

Grocery72%$952M
Dietary Supplements19%$253M
Manufactured Product, Other9%$126M
Vendor Reimbursements1%$9M

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, 2016–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left

2016’16	2017’17	2018’18	2019’19	2020’20	2021’21	2022’22	2023’23	2024’24	2025’25	TTMTTMMar 2026
											Income statement
$705M	$769M	$849M	$904M	$1.0B	$1.1B	$1.1B	$1.1B	$1.2B	$1.3B	$1.3B	RevenueRevenue
3%	3%	3%	3%	3%	3%	3%	3%	3%	3%	3%	SG&A / revenueSG&A/rev
$20M	$14M	$15M	$17M	$28M	$28M	$30M	$32M	$47M	$62M	$64M	Operating incomeOp. inc.
2.9%	1.8%	1.8%	1.9%	2.7%	2.7%	2.8%	2.8%	3.8%	4.7%	4.8%	Operating marginOp. mgn
$11M	$7M	$13M	$9M	$20M	$21M	$21M	$23M	$34M	$46M	$48M	Net incomeNet inc.
34%	33%	—	20%	22%	21%	23%	18%	21%	21%	21%	Effective tax rateTax rate
											Cash flow & returns
$29M	$41M	$43M	$37M	$67M	$54M	$40M	$65M	$74M	$55M	$62M	Operating cash flowOp. cash
$26M	$30M	$29M	$29M	$31M	$30M	$28M	$29M	$31M	$32M	$32M	DepreciationDeprec.
($9M)	$4M	($38K)	($2M)	$14M	$3M	($11M)	$11M	$6M	($27M)	($21M)	Working capital & otherWC & other
$54M	$41M	$24M	$30M	$27M	$26M	$28M	$37M	$38M	$31M	$45M	CapexCapex
7.6%	5.3%	2.8%	3.3%	2.6%	2.5%	2.6%	3.2%	3.0%	2.3%	3.4%	Capex / revenueCapex/rev
$3M	$11M	$19M	$7M	$40M	$28M	$12M	$36M	$36M	$24M	$30M	Owner earningsOwner earn.
0.5%	1.5%	2.3%	0.8%	3.8%	2.6%	1.1%	3.1%	2.9%	1.8%	2.3%	Owner earnings marginOE mgn
($25M)	($290K)	$19M	$7M	$40M	$28M	$12M	$28M	$36M	$24M	$17M	Free cash flowFCF
−3.5%	−0.0%	2.3%	0.8%	3.8%	2.6%	1.1%	2.5%	2.9%	1.8%	1.3%	Free cash flow marginFCF mgn
—	—	$0	$0	$6M	$51M	$9M	$9M	$32M	$11M	$12M	Dividends paidDiv. paid
$829K	$261K	$581K	$0	$0	$0	$0	$181K	$0	$0	—	BuybacksBuybacks
9%	6%	10%	9%	15%	16%	15%	16%	23%	25%	22%	ROICROIC
9%	5%	9%	6%	12%	14%	14%	14%	19%	22%	21%	Return on equityROE
—	—	9%	6%	8%	−22%	8%	8%	1%	17%	15%	Retained to equityRetained/eq
											Balance sheet
$4M	$7M	$9M	$6M	$29M	$24M	$12M	$18M	$9M	$17M	$22M	Cash & investmentsCash+inv
$4M	$5M	$5M	$5M	$9M	$8M	$10M	$11M	$13M	$12M	$13M	ReceivablesReceiv.
$54M	$57M	$61M	$63M	$69M	$69M	$71M	$81M	$88M	$81M	$90M	Accounts payablePayables
($50M)	($52M)	($56M)	($58M)	($61M)	($60M)	($61M)	($70M)	($76M)	($69M)	($77M)	Operating working capitalOper. WC
$97M	$108M	$111M	$115M	$143M	$136M	$141M	$153M	$147M	$168M	$171M	Current assetsCur. assets
$67M	$72M	$80M	$83M	$129M	$134M	$138M	$154M	$164M	$159M	$162M	Current liabilitiesCur. liab.
1.5×	1.5×	1.4×	1.4×	1.1×	1.0×	1.0×	1.0×	0.9×	1.1×	1.0×	Current ratioCurr. ratio
$5M	$5M	$5M	$5M	$5M	$5M	$5M	$5M	$5M	$5M	$5M	GoodwillGoodwill
$282M	$300M	$307M	$327M	$682M	$655M	$663M	$669M	$655M	$671M	$685M	Total assetsAssets
$27M	$28M	$13M	$6M	$0	$24M	$16M	$8M	$0	—	$17M	Total debtDebt
$23M	$22M	$4M	($522K)	($29M)	$10K	$4M	($11M)	($9M)	—	($5M)	Net debt / (cash)Net debt
6.7×	3.7×	3.3×	3.4×	13.5×	12.5×	12.7×	9.6×	11.2×	20.2×	23.3×	Interest coverageInt. cov.
$127M	$134M	$147M	$157M	$173M	$143M	$156M	$171M	$174M	$212M	$231M	Shareholders’ equityEquity
0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.3%	0.3%	Stock comp / revenueSBC/rev
											Per share
22.5M	22.5M	22.4M	22.6M	22.6M	22.7M	22.8M	22.8M	23.1M	23.3M	23.2M	Shares out (diluted)Shares
$31.35	$34.23	$37.88	$40.06	$45.92	$46.48	$47.76	$49.95	$53.79	$57.23	$57.58	Revenue / shareRev/sh
$0.51	$0.31	$0.56	$0.42	$0.89	$0.91	$0.94	$1.02	$1.47	$2.00	$2.07	EPS (diluted)EPS
$0.15	$0.50	$0.86	$0.33	$1.76	$1.21	$0.51	$1.56	$1.57	$1.04	$1.30	Owner earnings / shareOE/sh
$-1.11	$-0.01	$0.86	$0.33	$1.76	$1.21	$0.51	$1.23	$1.57	$1.04	$0.74	Free cash flow / shareFCF/sh
—	—	$0.00	$0.00	$0.28	$2.27	$0.40	$0.40	$1.38	$0.47	$0.53	Dividends / shareDiv/sh
$2.39	$1.83	$1.06	$1.33	$1.18	$1.16	$1.23	$1.60	$1.63	$1.34	$1.94	Cap. spending / shareCapex/sh
$5.63	$5.96	$6.55	$6.96	$7.67	$6.28	$6.83	$7.48	$7.55	$9.13	$9.94	Book value / shareBVPS

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

	9-yr	5-yr
Revenue / share	+6.9%/yr	+4.5%/yr
Owner earnings / share	+24.3%/yr	−10.1%/yr
EPS	+16.4%/yr	+17.6%/yr
Dividends / share	—	+11.1%/yr
Capital spending / share	−6.2%/yr	+2.5%/yr
Book value / share	+5.5%/yr	+3.6%/yr

The record, charted

FY2016–2025

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

Share count

23Mpeak FY2025

ROIC

25%low 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.

$24Mowner earningsvs.$46Mnet incomelow FY2016

Where the cash went

ReinvestBuybacksDividendsAcquisitionsRetained

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

FY2016FY2025

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 reported $46M of profit but $24M of owner earnings: $22M less than the profit line, taken out by capital spending and the timing of cash.

Reported net income$46M

Owner earnings$24M · 2% of revenue

	FY2025	FY2024	FY2023	FY2022	FY2021
Reported net income	$46M	$34M	$23M	$21M	$21M
Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back	+$32M	+$31M	+$29M	+$28M	+$30M
Stock-based compensationreal costnon-cash, but a real cost	+$4M	+$3M	+$1M	+$1M	+$877K
Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items	−$27M	+$6M	+$11M	−$11M	+$3M
Cash from operations	$55M	$74M	$65M	$40M	$54M
Maintenance capital expenditurethe spending needed just to hold position and volume	−$31M	−$38M	−$29M	−$28M	−$26M
Owner earnings	$24M	$36M	$36M	$12M	$28M
Growth capital expenditurediscretionary; spent to get bigger, not to stand still	—	—	−$8M	—	—
Free cash flow	$24M	$36M	$28M	$12M	$28M
Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue	2%	3%	3%	1%	3%

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 $4M), owner earnings is nearer $20M.

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? 20.2×

Comfortable

Operating income $62M ÷ interest expense $3M

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? +$18M

Net cash, debt-free

Cash $17M + ST investments $1M − debt $0

What this means
Cash and short-term investments exceed every dollar of debt by $18M, on net the company owes nothing, and can act from strength when others can't. It also holds $974K in longer-dated marketable securities; counting those, it sits at net cash of $19M. 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 15%

Solid through the cycle

10-yr median, range 6%–25%; 25% latest = NOPAT $49M ÷ invested capital $195M

Industry peers: median 9%

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 10 years (it ran 25% 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 2%

Thin through the cycle

10-yr median margin, range 0%–4%; latest $24M = operating cash $55M − maintenance capex $31M

Industry peers: median 2%

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 2% of revenue this year, a 2% median across 10 years. Treating stock comp as the real expense it is (less $4M of SBC) leaves $20M.
Are earnings backed by cash? 1.19×

Cash-backed

Cash from ops $55M ÷ net income $46M

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?

Where do the earnings go? 46%

Returns about half

Dividends + buybacks $11M ÷ Owner Earnings $24M

What this means
Of $24M Owner Earnings, $11M (46%) went back to shareholders, $11M dividends, $0 buybacks. 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? 0.98×

Maintaining

Capex $31M ÷ depreciation $32M

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 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 Near

Revenue ≥ $2B · $1.3B

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× · 1.06×

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 · $0 vs $9M 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 (10-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 · 6 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 · +234%

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 $1.50/share (latest year $2.02), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $9.22/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 10 of 10

What this means
Never lost money over the record, the earnings stability Graham insisted on.
Return on capital ≥ 15% 3 of 9 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 2% → 4% (3-yr avg ends)

What this means
Through the cycle the operating margin widened — about 2% early to 4% lately, median 3% — 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 +17%/yr

What this means
Owner earnings grew about 17% a year over the record.
Worst year 2018 · 1.8% op. margin

What this means
Stayed profitable even in its hardest year, the resilience that survives recessions.
Share count +0.4%/yr

What this means
Roughly flat share count, little dilution, little buyback.
Dividend record rising

What this means
Paid and raised the dividend across the record, the continuity Graham prized.
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?

Moderate contestability

AI 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.

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, 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$171M

Cash & short-term investments$21M
Receivables$13M
Other current assets$137M

Current liabilities$162M

Accounts payable$90M
Other current liabilities$73M

Current ratio1.05×all current assets ÷ what's due · Graham looked for 2×

Quick ratio—inventory untagged this quarter, so withheld rather than shown equal to the current ratio

Cash ratio0.13×strictest: cash alone against what's due

Working capital$8Mthe cushion left after near-term bills

Revenue, latest quarter vs. a year ago+0.5%the freshest read on whether the business is still growing

Current ratio, recent quarters1.0× → 1.0×

Deeper floors

Tangible book value$220Mequity stripped of goodwill & intangibles

Net current asset value($283M)Graham's net-net: current assets less all liabilities

Debt incl. operating leases$278M$276M of it operating leases; with finance leases, “total fixed claims” below reaches $332M (annual-report basis)

From the company's latest filing.

Lease obligations

the lease note, SEC EDGAR →

Debt by another name. What the business owes on the property, aircraft, stores and equipment it rents rather than owns is a fixed claim due on a schedule; added back to the debt, it is the true leverage. That ladder, operating and finance leases together, and what it adds to the debt on the page above.

Operating leasesFinance leases

'26$54M

'27$53M

'28$49M

'29$44M

'30$39M

later$178M

Lease payments by year, scaled to the largest; “later” is everything beyond year five, shown apart. These are the contractual cash payments, before the interest the filing imputes back out to the balance-sheet liability.

Due in the next 12 months$54Ma fixed cash payment, owed whether or not the business has a good year

Total lease payments$416Mevery year plus the tail, undiscounted: the full cash the leases will take

On the balance sheet$332Mthe present value of those payments, the recognised lease liability

True leverage: debt plus leases

On-balance-sheet debt$0

Lease obligations (present value)$332M

Total fixed claims on the business$332M

Counting the leases the way Buffett does, the fixed claims on this business come to $332M, of which the leases are 100%, more than the debt itself. The lease wall above and the debt schedule together are the calendar of what must be paid, and when.

Lease ladder read from the ASC 842 tags in the company’s Sep 30, 2025 annual report and reconciled: the yearly buckets sum to the undiscounted total, which less the imputed interest equals the balance-sheet liability; a ladder that doesn’t tie out is withheld.

How the cash was used, 2016–2025

Over the record, the business generated $504M of operating cash; how management split it reads as a reinvestor, most operating cash is plowed back into the business.

Reinvested$335M · 67%
Dividends$119M · 24%
Buybacks$2M · 0%
Retained (debt / cash)$48M · 10%

Returned to owners$121M
56% of the owner earnings the business produced over the span, $119M as dividends and $2M as buybacks.
Average price paid for buybacks$8.51
Across the years where the filing reports a share count, 0M shares were bought for $2M, about $8.51 each. Year to year the price paid ranged from $5.72 (2018) to $12.20 (2016), and 2016, near the top of that range, was also its heaviest buyback year ($829K).
Net change in share count3.2%
The diluted count rose from 23M to 23M: issuance (stock pay, deals) outran any buybacks, so owners were diluted on net.
Dividend record$0.47/sh
Paid in 6 of the years on record. It was cut at least once along the way.
Return on what it retained24%
Of the earnings it kept rather than paid out ($85M over the span), annual owner earnings (first three years vs last three) grew $21M, so each retained $1 added about 0.24 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	Pay, as filed	“Actually paid”	Owner earnings
2023	$625k	$625k	$36M
2023	$581k	$581k	$36M
2024	$638k	$638k	$36M
2024	$593k	$593k	$36M
2025	$624k	$624k	$24M
2025	$588k	$588k	$24M

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 ownership58.3%
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$4M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 0% of revenue, equal to 6% 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 Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage 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.

3 of the 6 tests turned up something to look into; the other 3 came back clean.

Look hereDid the share count rise anyway?3.2%
Diluted shares grew 3.2% over 2016–2025, even as the company spent $2M on buybacks. The repurchases were a treadmill: stock issued to staff outran them, so owners' slice still shrank. Read the buyback line beside this one, not on its own.
Look hereDid receivables and inventory outpace sales?1% → 1% of sales
Receivables and inventory grew from $4M to $13M while revenue grew 90%: working capital is climbing faster than sales (1% of revenue then, 1% now). That can mean customers paying slower, stock building up, or revenue pulled forward. The filing's cash-flow and receivables notes say which.
Look hereAre "one-time" charges a yearly habit?8 of 10 years
Management took an impairment or write-down in 8 of the last 10 years, $9M in all. A charge taken almost every year is not one-time; it is the business — past deals coming due, and an admission the assets were worth less than what was paid. Munger's rule: when the "one-time" keeps happening, it is the business. Read it beside the goodwill the company still carries.

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 Income taxes 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
SFMSprouts Farmers	$8.8B	36%	5.3%	30%	5%
ARKOARKO Corp.	$7.6B	—	1.3%	10%	1%
IMKTAIngles Markets Incorporated	$5.3B	24%	3.6%	9%	2%
WMKWeis Markets Inc.	$5.0B	—	2.7%	8%	2%
GOGrocery Outlet	$4.7B	30%	2.9%	5%	3%
VLGEAVillage Super Market Inc.	$2.3B	28%	2.1%	10%	2%
DNUTKrispy Kreme Inc.	$1.5B	—	0.6%	0%	-4%
NGVCNatural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage Inc.	$1.3B	—	2.7%	15%	2%
Group median	—	—	2.7%	9%	2%

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 Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage Inc. has delivered.

Today’s price $

Through the cycle, Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage Inc. earns about $27M on its 2.0% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 1.8% margin runs in line with that. Normalize, below, values the price on that through-cycle figure rather than the latest year.

Base Normalize · through-cycle ($27M) Net of stock comp (−$4M) Steady-state · maintenance capex ($31M)

—

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+11%/yr

Owner-earnings growth · since FY2018+3%/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 $17M on 23M shares outstanding, per the 10-Q cover, as of 2026-05-04; net cash $5M. 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. Capex ($45M) runs well above depreciation ($32M), so this is a build-out; Steady-state swaps total capex for maintenance (≈ depreciation), lifting the base to about $31M, 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 NGVC against another business →

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage Inc. (NGVC), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/NGVC, data as of 2026-07-09.

Manual order: ← NGS its page in the Manual NGVT →

Industry order: ← KR the Food & Drug Retailing chapter SFM →