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NMM, Navios Maritime Partners LP Common
A capital-intensive business, run on heavy physical assets that must be kept working and earn a return above what they cost to maintain.
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
- Whether the heavy assets earn more than they cost to keep. What decides it: the return on the capital sunk into them, how much of the capex is merely standing still versus growing, and what a downturn does to a fixed-cost base. Here the balance sheet is the defense and cyclicality the enemy. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on customer concentration, 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.
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 | TTMTTMDec 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | |||||||||||
| $191M | $212M | $231M | $219M | $227M | $713M | $1.2B | $1.3B | $1.3B | $1.3B | $1.3B | RevenueRevenue |
| 97% | 98% | 96% | 94% | 95% | 95% | 90% | 88% | 89% | 90% | 90% | Gross marginGross mgn |
| ($53M) | ($15M) | ($13M) | ($62M) | ($69M) | $511M | $579M | $434M | $367M | $285M | $285M | Net incomeNet inc. |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||||
| $62M | $53M | $68M | $70M | $94M | $277M | $506M | $560M | $483M | $505M | $505M | Operating cash flowOp. cash |
| $92M | $73M | $58M | $53M | $56M | $113M | $202M | $261M | $292M | $349M | $349M | DepreciationDeprec. |
| $22M | ($4M) | $23M | $79M | $107M | ($347M) | ($275M) | ($134M) | ($176M) | ($129M) | ($129M) | Working capital & otherWC & other |
| $15M | $158M | $116M | $21M | $72M | $217M | $434M | $183M | $747M | $224M | $183M | CapexCapex |
| 8.1% | 74.8% | 50.1% | 9.6% | 31.9% | 30.4% | 35.8% | 14.0% | 56.0% | 16.7% | 13.6% | Capex / revenueCapex/rev |
| $46M | ($19M) | $10M | $49M | $38M | $164M | $305M | $377M | $191M | $281M | $322M | Owner earningsOwner earn. |
| 24.4% | −9.1% | 4.3% | 22.4% | 16.8% | 23.0% | 25.2% | 28.9% | 14.3% | 20.9% | 24.0% | Owner earnings marginOE mgn |
| $46M | ($105M) | ($48M) | $49M | $22M | $60M | $73M | $377M | ($264M) | $281M | $322M | Free cash flowFCF |
| 24.4% | −49.5% | −20.6% | 22.4% | 9.6% | 8.4% | 6.0% | 28.9% | −19.8% | 20.9% | 24.0% | Free cash flow marginFCF mgn |
| $0 | $0 | $10M | $14M | $8M | $5M | $6M | $6M | $6M | $6M | $6M | Dividends paidDiv. paid |
| — | $0 | $0 | $4M | $0 | $0 | — | — | — | — | — | BuybacksBuybacks |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| $17M | $24M | $59M | $23M | $19M | $159M | $158M | $240M | $270M | $403M | $403M | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| $10M | $14M | $14M | $11M | $17M | $24M | $75M | $42M | $33M | $34M | $34M | ReceivablesReceiv. |
| $220K | $220K | $1M | $6M | $6M | $21M | $33M | $38M | $33M | $32M | $32M | InventoryInvent. |
| $3M | $4M | $5M | $8M | $6M | $21M | $27M | $25M | $18M | $18M | $18M | Accounts payablePayables |
| $7M | $11M | $11M | $9M | $17M | $24M | $81M | $54M | $48M | $48M | $48M | Operating working capitalOper. WC |
| $56M | $60M | $111M | $76M | $61M | $226M | $310M | $400M | $443M | $512M | $512M | Current assetsCur. assets |
| $99M | $54M | $52M | $80M | $253M | $396M | $618M | $460M | $410M | $455M | $455M | Current liabilitiesCur. liab. |
| 0.6× | 1.1× | 2.1× | 1.0× | 0.2× | 0.6× | 0.5× | 0.9× | 1.1× | 1.1× | 1.1× | Current ratioCurr. ratio |
| $1.3B | $1.3B | $1.3B | $1.3B | $1.2B | $3.6B | $4.9B | $5.1B | $5.7B | $5.9B | $5.9B | Total assetsAssets |
| $524M | $493M | $484M | $400M | $424M | $814M | $864M | $898M | $1.1B | $1.1B | $1.1B | Total debtDebt |
| $506M | $469M | $425M | $377M | $405M | $654M | $706M | $658M | $810M | $706M | $706M | Net debt / (cash)Net debt |
The record, charted
FY2016–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Owner earnings vs. net income
Owner earningsNet incomeThe accountant's number, and the cash an owner can take; the gap is the tell.
Where the cash went
ReinvestBuybacksDividendsAcquisitionsRetainedEach year's operating cash, by what management did with it: the mix, and how it drifts.
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 $285M of profit but $281M of owner earnings: $4M less than the profit line, taken out by capital spending and the timing of cash.
| FY2025 | FY2024 | FY2023 | FY2022 | FY2021 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reported net income | $285M | $367M | $434M | $579M | $511M |
| Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back | +$349M | +$292M | +$261M | +$202M | +$113M |
| Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items | −$129M | −$176M | −$134M | −$275M | −$347M |
| Cash from operations | $505M | $483M | $560M | $506M | $277M |
| Maintenance capital expenditurethe spending needed just to hold position and volume | −$224M | −$292M | −$183M | −$202M | −$113M |
| Owner earnings | $281M | $191M | $377M | $305M | $164M |
| Growth capital expenditurediscretionary; spent to get bigger, not to stand still | — | −$455M | — | −$232M | −$104M |
| Free cash flow | $281M | ($264M) | $377M | $73M | $60M |
| Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue | 21% | 14% | 29% | 25% | 23% |
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 .
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?
- Not enough dataLittle or no interest expense reported
What this means
Operating income wasn't found in the filing data.
- Net debtCash $403M − debt $1.1B
What this means
Netting $403M of cash and short-term investments against $1.1B of debt leaves $706M owed. 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 9 + DIO 91 − DPO 51 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?
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median 4%
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
- High through the cycle10-yr median margin, range -9%–29%; latest $322M = operating cash $505M − maintenance capex $183MIndustry peers: median 12%
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 24% of revenue this year, a 21% median across 10 years.
- Cash-backedCash from ops $505M ÷ net income $285M
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?
- Reinvests most of itDividends + buybacks $6M ÷ Owner Earnings $322M
What this means
Of $322M Owner Earnings, $6M (2%) went back to shareholders, $6M 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? 0.52×HarvestingCapex $183M ÷ depreciation $349M
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 · 0 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 NearRevenue ≥ $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 MissCurrent ratio ≥ 2× · 1.13×
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 MissDebt ≤ working capital · $1.1B vs $57M 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 MissA profit every year (10-yr record) · 5 loss years
What this means
Graham wanted earnings in each of the past ten years, the stability a defensive owner leans on.
- Dividend record MissUninterrupted dividends · 8 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 —Earnings +33% over the record · —
What this means
Earnings were negative early in the record, a growth rate isn't meaningful.
- 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 $2.20/share (latest year $1.73), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on. 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 5 of 10
What this means
Lost money in 5 year(s), look at what happened there before trusting the average.
- Owner earnings growth +37%/yr
What this means
Owner earnings grew about 37% a year over the record.
- Share count +0.0%/yr
What this means
Roughly flat share count, little dilution, little buyback.
- Dividend record paid
What this means
Paid a dividend in 8 of the years on record.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Low contestabilityThe moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.
The filing raises AI among its risks, but in other terms (security, regulation, energy or the like), not as a competitor to its product; it frames AI mainly as a capability.
AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat, and the company is using it that way.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Current Position
as of fiscal year-end, Dec 31, 2025Can 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$403M
- Receivables$34M
- Inventory$32M
- Other current assets$43M
- Debt due within a year$134M
- Accounts payable$18M
- Other current liabilities$303M
From the company's latest filing.
How the cash was used, 2016–2025
Over the record, the business generated $2.7B of operating cash; how management split it reads as a reinvestor, most operating cash is plowed back into the business.
- Reinvested$2.2B · 82%
- Dividends$61M · 2%
- Buybacks$4M · 0%
- Retained (debt / cash)$427M · 16%
- Returned to owners$65M
5% of the owner earnings the business produced over the span, $61M as dividends and $4M as buybacks.
- Source of fundingOperating cash
Operating cash covered reinvestment and returns; over the span debt rose $585M and cash and short-term investments rose $385M.
- Average price paid for buybacks—
Buybacks ran $4M over the span, but the filings don't tag the share count needed to deduce the average price paid.
- Net change in share count0.0%
The diluted count barely moved (165M to 165M): buybacks roughly offset the stock issued to staff.
- Dividend record$0.08/sh
Paid in 8 of the years on record. It was never cut over the span.
- Return on what it retained14%
Of the earnings it kept rather than paid out ($1.9B over the span), annual owner earnings (first three years vs last three) grew $271M, so each retained $1 added about 0.14 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.
Inverting the record
Invert: instead of why Navios Maritime Partners LP Common 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.
None of the 5 tests turned up a mark; each came back clean. A clean panel says only that these particular ways of being wrong are not written into the record.
- Is it less profitable than it was?
- Did the share count rise anyway?
- 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?≈$199M · 15% of revenue on the largest customer (TTM)
“For the years ended December 31, 2025 and 2024, only one customer accounted for 10.0% or more of our total revenues and represented approximately 14.8% and 11.3%, respectively, of our total revenues.”verify →
The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.
Peers, Marine Shipping
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KEXKirby | $3.4B | — | 7.7% | 4% | 10% |
| MATXMatson | $3.3B | 96% | 11.4% | 11% | 12% |
| TDWTidewater Inc. | $1.4B | — | -12.5% | -6% | 3% |
| NMMNavios Maritime Partners LP Common | $1.3B | 95% | — | — | 22% |
| INSWInternational Seaways Inc. Common Stock | $843M | — | 12.3% | 3% | 33% |
| PANLPangaea Logistics Solutions Ltd. | $632M | — | 7.7% | 10% | 10% |
| LPGDorian LPG Ltd. | $482M | — | 35.2% | 7% | 38% |
| GNKGenco Shipping & Trading Limited | $342M | — | -1.1% | -0% | 31% |
| Group median | — | — | — | — | 17% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFEnter the home-market price, not the US ADR quote. Navios Maritime Partners LP Common reports in USD, and every figure here (owner earnings, book value, the share count) is on that ordinary-share basis. Enter the price on the same basis: the local-exchange quote per ordinary share. A US ADR price in dollars bundles the ADR-to-ordinary ratio, so it will not reconcile with these figures and would throw the multiple off.
Type today's close and see the owner-earnings growth you'd have to believe to justify it, beside what Navios Maritime Partners LP Common has delivered.
Through the cycle, Navios Maritime Partners LP Common earns about $306M on its 22.7% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 24.0% margin runs in line with that. Normalize, below, values the price on that through-cycle figure rather than the latest year.
—
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.
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 $322M on 165M diluted shares; net debt $706M. 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: ← NIU its page in the Manual NMR →
Industry order: ← NCLH the Marine Shipping chapter NVGS →