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OPTX, Syntec Optics Holdings Inc.

Electronic Components & Instruments capital-intensive Unprofitable

Syntec Optics goal is to deliver impactful solutions for optics and photonics enabled solutions globally.

Ultimately, our vertically integrated advanced manufacturing platform of various, different but complimentary technologies offers our clients, across several end-markets, competitively priced and disruptive light-enabled technologies and sub-systems.

Syntec Optics was formed more than two decades ago from the aggregation of three advanced manufacturing companies (Wordingham Machine Co., Inc., Rochester Tool and Mold, Inc. and Syntec Technologies, Inc.) that were started in the 1980s.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K

OPTX · Syntec Optics Holdings Inc.

The business

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

Revenue · FY2025

$28M

−1.3% YoY · 0% 3-yr CAGR

Vital signs · TTM, with 4-yr average

Revenue $28M 4-yr avg $28M

Gross margin 19% 4-yr avg 23%

Operating margin −6.6% 4-yr avg −1.9%

ROIC −13% 4-yr avg −3%

Owner-earnings margin 0% 4-yr avg −1%

Free cash flow margin 0% 4-yr avg −1%

The business in brief

read the 10-K →

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

Situation: Unprofitable. No meaningful revenue yet; the record is the cash on hand against the burn.
What moves the needle: Operating margin has run around −1.9% through the cycle on a 22% gross margin, the operating line deeply negative — so the lever is the path to a margin at all: revenue growth against the cost curve and the cash runway, not the level of a margin that isn't there yet. 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 the installed base and the upgrade 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 rarely cleared the cost of capital (median −3%, above 15% in 0 of 4 years). Owner earnings, the cash-based check, have been thin too. This is price-taker territory, where the balance sheet and the cycle matter more than any multiple; the rest is in the 10-K.

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, 2022–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left

2022’22	2023’23	2024’24	2025’25	TTMTTMMar 2026
					Income statement
$28M	$29M	$28M	$28M	$28M	RevenueRevenue
22%	27%	20%	23%	19%	Gross marginGross mgn
24%	22%	29%	25%	25%	SG&A / revenueSG&A/rev
—	—	4%	2%	2%	R&D / revenueR&D/rev
($528K)	$2M	($3M)	($518K)	($2M)	Operating incomeOp. inc.
−1.9%	5.2%	−9.1%	−1.8%	−6.6%	Operating marginOp. mgn
($435K)	$2M	($2M)	($2M)	($3M)	Net incomeNet inc.
					Cash flow & returns
$2M	$3M	($943K)	$673K	$843K	Operating cash flowOp. cash
$3M	$3M	$3M	$3M	$2M	DepreciationDeprec.
($777K)	($2M)	($2M)	($447K)	$1M	Working capital & otherWC & other
$1M	$2M	$1M	$644K	$724K	CapexCapex
4.5%	6.5%	4.4%	2.3%	2.6%	Capex / revenueCapex/rev
$687K	$871K	($2M)	$28K	$119K	Owner earningsOwner earn.
2.5%	3.0%	−7.7%	0.1%	0.4%	Owner earnings marginOE mgn
$687K	$871K	($2M)	$28K	$119K	Free cash flowFCF
2.5%	3.0%	−7.7%	0.1%	0.4%	Free cash flow marginFCF mgn
-3%	10%	-14%	-3%	-13%	ROICROIC
-5%	15%	-22%	-19%	-35%	Return on equityROE
−5%	15%	−22%	−19%	−35%	Retained to equityRetained/eq
					Balance sheet
$14M	—	—	—	$15M	Cash & investmentsCash+inv
$4M	$5M	$3M	$4M	$5M	ReceivablesReceiv.
$4M	$6M	$7M	$8M	$8M	InventoryInvent.
$412K	$3M	$3M	$3M	$2M	Accounts payablePayables
$7M	$7M	$7M	$9M	$11M	Operating working capitalOper. WC
$11M	$15M	$14M	$15M	$14M	Current assetsCur. assets
$9M	$11M	$11M	$11M	$11M	Current liabilitiesCur. liab.
1.1×	1.3×	1.3×	1.3×	1.3×	Current ratioCurr. ratio
$22M	$27M	$26M	$24M	$24M	Total assetsAssets
$4M	$2M	$3M	$3M	$3M	Total debtDebt
($11M)	$2M	$3M	$3M	($12M)	Net debt / (cash)Net debt
$9M	$13M	$11M	$10M	$9M	Shareholders’ equityEquity
—	—	1.6%	1.1%	1.1%	Stock comp / revenueSBC/rev
					Per share
31.6M	32.4M	36.7M	36.9M	37.0M	Shares out (diluted)Shares
$0.88	$0.91	$0.78	$0.76	$0.74	Revenue / shareRev/sh
$-0.01	$0.06	$-0.07	$-0.05	$-0.08	EPS (diluted)EPS
$0.02	$0.03	$-0.06	$0.00	$0.00	Owner earnings / shareOE/sh
$0.02	$0.03	$-0.06	$0.00	$0.00	Free cash flow / shareFCF/sh
$0.04	$0.06	$0.03	$0.02	$0.02	Cap. spending / shareCapex/sh
$0.30	$0.40	$0.30	$0.26	$0.24	Book value / shareBVPS

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

	3-yr	5-yr
Revenue / share	−4.8%/yr	−4.8%/yr (3-yr)
Owner earnings / share	−67.2%/yr	−67.2%/yr (3-yr)
Capital spending / share	−23.7%/yr	−23.7%/yr (3-yr)
Book value / share	−4.8%/yr	−4.8%/yr (3-yr)

The record, charted

FY2022–2025

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

Share count

37Mpeak FY2025

ROIC

−3%low FY2024

Gross margin

23%low FY2024

Owner earnings vs. net income

Owner earningsNet income

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

$28Kowner earningsvs.($2M)net incomelow FY2024

Where the cash went

ReinvestBuybacksDividendsAcquisitionsRetained

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

FY2022FY2025

Owner-earnings bridge

FY2022–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 turned a $2M loss into $28K of owner earnings: more cash than the profit line showed, after the non-cash charges and the capital it put back in.

	FY2025	FY2024	FY2023	FY2022
Reported net income	($2M)	($2M)	$2M	($435K)
Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back	+$3M	+$3M	+$3M	+$3M
Stock-based compensationreal costnon-cash, but a real cost	+$300K	+$450K	—	—
Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items	−$447K	−$2M	−$2M	−$777K
Cash from operations	$673K	($943K)	$3M	$2M
Capital expenditurecash put back in to keep running and to grow	−$644K	−$1M	−$2M	−$1M
Owner earnings	$28K	($2M)	$871K	$687K
Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue	0%	-8%	3%	2%

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 $300K), owner earnings is nearer ($272K).

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? —

Interest expense not tagged in the data

What this means
No usable interest-expense line was tagged in the filing data, but the balance sheet carries real net debt — so the interest burden here is unknown, not absent. Read the debt on the net-debt check below.
How heavy is the debt, net of cash? $3M

Net debt against an operating loss

Cash $118K − debt $3M

What this means
Netting $118K of cash and short-term investments against $3M of debt leaves $3M owed, with no operating profit this year to measure it against — understand that combination before anything else about the company. It also holds $14M in longer-dated marketable securities; counting those, it sits at net cash of $11M. 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? 136d

Long (60+ days)

DSO 48 + DIO 134 − DPO 46 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?

Return on invested capital -3%

Below average through the cycle

4-yr median, range -14%–10%; -3% latest = NOPAT ($409K) ÷ invested capital $12M

Industry peers: median -16%

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 4 years (it ran -3% 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 0%

Thin through the cycle

4-yr median margin, range -8%–3%; latest $28K = operating cash $673K − maintenance capex $644K

Industry peers: median -43%

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 0% of revenue this year, a 0% median across 4 years. Treating stock comp as the real expense it is (less $300K of SBC) leaves ($272K).
Are earnings backed by cash? $673K

Loss, but cash-generative

Net income ($2M) · cash from operations $673K

What this means
The company reported a net loss, so a conversion ratio isn't meaningful. What matters then is whether operations still threw off cash, here, they did.

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? 0.25×

Harvesting

Capex $644K ÷ depreciation $3M

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 Miss

Revenue ≥ $2B · $28M

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× · 1.35×

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 · $3M vs $4M 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 $-0.02/share (latest year $-0.04), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $0.24/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, 2022–2025

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

Profitable years 1 of 4

What this means
Lost money in 3 year(s), look at what happened there before trusting the average.
Return on capital ≥ 15% 0 of 4 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% → −5% (2-yr avg ends)

What this means
Through the cycle the operating margin slipped — about 2% early to −5% lately, median −2% — competition or costs are biting in.
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.
Worst year 2024 · −9.1% op. margin

What this means
Operations went underwater in 2024, understand why before trusting the good years.
Share count +5.3%/yr

What this means
The share count is rising, dilution works against you on a per-share basis.
How management talks about it Promotional

What this means
The returns have faded, yet the filing reaches for a promoter’s vocabulary — world-class, best-in-class, disruptive — more than an owner’s. When the words sell harder than the results deliver, the gap is the thing to weigh.

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; 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 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$14M

Cash & short-term investments$325K
Receivables$5M
Inventory$8M
Other current assets$801K

Current liabilities$11M

Debt due within a year$558K
Accounts payable$2M
Other current liabilities$8M

Current ratio1.28×all current assets ÷ what's due · Graham looked for 2×

Quick ratio0.59×stricter: inventory excluded

Cash ratio0.03×strictest: cash alone against what's due

Working capital$3Mthe cushion left after near-term bills

Debt due this year vs. cash$558K due · $325K cash cash alone won't cover the maturities; it leans on refinancing or operating cash · both figures from the Mar 31, 2026 balance sheet

Revenue, latest quarter vs. a year ago−7.9%the freshest read on whether the business is still growing

Current ratio, recent quarters1.3× → 1.3×

Deeper floors

Tangible book value$8Mequity stripped of goodwill & intangibles

Net current asset value($419K)Graham's net-net: current assets less all liabilities

Debt incl. operating leases$3M$63K of it operating leases

Deferred revenue$375Kcustomer cash collected before delivery; operating float

From the company's latest filing.

How the cash was used, 2022–2025

Over the record, the business generated $4M of operating cash; how management split it reads as a reinvestor, most operating cash is plowed back into the business.

Reinvested$5M · 113%

Source of funding−$596K
Reinvestment and shareholder returns ran $596K beyond the operating cash the business generated, so the gap was financed off the balance sheet.
Net change in share count16.9%
The diluted count rose from 32M to 37M: 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.

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

From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid.

Stock-based compensation$300K
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 1% of revenue. 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 Syntec Optics Holdings 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 2022–2025.

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

Look hereIs it less profitable than it was?−3.8% vs 2.7%
The owner-earnings margin averaged 2.7% early in the record and −3.8% across the last three years, and the latest year has not recovered. Ask the filing whether that is a structural drift or a cyclical trough — price, mix, cost, or a competitor — and whether it is permanent.
Look hereDid the share count rise anyway?16.9%
Diluted shares grew 16.9% over 2022–2025. 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.
Look hereDid receivables and inventory outpace sales?27% → 48% of sales
Receivables and inventory grew from $8M to $13M while revenue grew −1%: working capital is climbing faster than sales (27% of revenue then, 48% 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

Did debt outgrow the business?

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, Credit & receivables, 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
LABStandard BioTools Inc.	$85M	50%	-63.7%	-28%	-43%
FEIMFrequency Electronics Inc.	$63M	26%	-8.6%	-6%	2%
APTAlpha Pro Tech Ltd.	$59M	38%	6.7%	9%	6%
AEHRAehr Test Systems	$59M	39%	-11.0%	-13%	-13%
SIShoulder Innovations Inc.	$47M	77%	-55.6%	-16%	-67%
SSIISS Innovations International Inc.	$42M	27%	-149.0%	-86%	-156%
EYPTEyePoint Inc.	$31M	—	-243.5%	-161%	-276%
OPTXSyntec Optics Holdings Inc.	$28M	23%	-1.9%	-3%	1%
Group median	—	38%	-33.3%	-15%	-28%

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 Syntec Optics Holdings Inc. has delivered.

Today’s price $

Through the cycle, Syntec Optics Holdings Inc. earns about $361K on its 1.3% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 0.1% margin runs below that; the reported figure may understate a lean year. Normalize, below, values the price on that through-cycle figure rather than the latest year.

Base Normalize · through-cycle ($361K) Net of stock comp (−$300K) Steady-state · maintenance capex ($199K)

—

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, delivered—

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 $119K on 40M shares outstanding, per the 10-Q cover, as of 2026-05-12; net cash $12M. 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 ($724K) runs well above depreciation ($2M), so this is a build-out; Steady-state swaps total capex for maintenance (≈ depreciation), lifting the base to about $199K, 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 OPTX against another business →

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

Manual order: ← OPTU its page in the Manual OPY →

Industry order: ← OLED the Electronic Components & Instruments chapter PI →