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UPBD, Upbound Group Inc.

Trading Companies & Distributors diversified Cyclical

We are a technology and data-driven leader in accessible and inclusive financial solutions that address the evolving needs and aspirations of underserved consumers.

Through our Acima and Rent-A-Center segments, we are a leading lease-to-own provider with operations in the United States, Puerto Rico and Mexico.

We provide a critical service for underserved consumers by providing them with access to, and the opportunity to obtain ownership of, high-quality, name brand durable products under a flexible lease-purchase agreement with no long-term debt obligation.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K

UPBD · Upbound Group Inc.

The business

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

Revenue · FY2025

$4.7B

+8.7% YoY · 11% 5-yr CAGR

Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average

Revenue $4.7B 5-yr avg $4.4B

Gross margin 49% 5-yr avg 49%

Operating margin 5.0% 5-yr avg 5.0%

ROIC 10% 5-yr avg 9%

Owner-earnings margin 6% 5-yr avg 5%

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

The business in brief

read the 10-K →

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

Situation: Cyclical. Margins collapse and recover repeatedly across the record; a single year, good or bad, misstates the through-cycle earning power.
What moves the needle: Gross margin has run about 51% and operating margin about 4.1% through the cycle, a wide spread between price and the cost of what it sells — whether that advantage is durable pricing power or a margin that can erode is the question the record is for. The margin is cyclical, swinging between −2.3% and 10% over the years, so the through-cycle figure carries more than any single year — and the balance sheet at the trough more than the peak. 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 sat near the cost of capital (median 7%). By owner earnings: roughly 7% of revenue reaches owners as cash, consistently. The cycle and the balance sheet decide this one; the worst year tells more than the median, and 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, 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
$3.0B	$2.7B	$2.7B	$2.7B	$2.8B	$4.6B	$4.2B	$4.0B	$4.3B	$4.7B	$4.7B	RevenueRevenue
65%	64%	63%	62%	59%	49%	49%	51%	48%	48%	49%	Gross marginGross mgn
6%	6%	6%	5%	5%	4%	4%	5%	5%	5%	5%	SG&A / revenueSG&A/rev
($67M)	($63M)	$56M	$254M	$237M	$281M	$149M	$163M	$292M	$223M	$238M	Operating incomeOp. inc.
−2.2%	−2.3%	2.1%	9.5%	8.4%	6.1%	3.5%	4.1%	6.7%	4.8%	5.0%	Operating marginOp. mgn
($105M)	$7M	$8M	$174M	$208M	$135M	$12M	($5M)	$123M	$73M	$84M	Net incomeNet inc.
—	—	39%	22%	7%	31%	—	—	30%	32%	32%	Effective tax rateTax rate
											Cash flow & returns
$354M	$111M	$228M	$215M	$237M	$392M	$468M	$200M	$105M	$306M	$328M	Operating cash flowOp. cash
$77M	$74M	$68M	$61M	$56M	$67M	$53M	$51M	$51M	$52M	$55M	DepreciationDeprec.
$373M	$26M	$145M	($26M)	($39M)	$43M	$244M	($8M)	($106M)	$135M	$146M	Working capital & otherWC & other
$61M	$65M	$28M	$21M	$35M	$62M	$61M	$53M	$56M	$67M	$72M	CapexCapex
2.1%	2.4%	1.1%	0.8%	1.2%	1.4%	1.4%	1.3%	1.3%	1.4%	1.5%	Capex / revenueCapex/rev
$293M	$45M	$200M	$194M	$202M	$330M	$407M	$147M	$48M	$254M	$274M	Owner earningsOwner earn.
9.9%	1.7%	7.5%	7.3%	7.2%	7.2%	9.6%	3.7%	1.1%	5.4%	5.8%	Owner earnings marginOE mgn
$293M	$45M	$200M	$194M	$202M	$330M	$407M	$147M	$48M	$239M	$256M	Free cash flowFCF
9.9%	1.7%	7.5%	7.3%	7.2%	7.2%	9.6%	3.7%	1.1%	5.1%	5.4%	Free cash flow marginFCF mgn
$3M	$3M	$2M	$29M	$700K	$1.3B	$995K	$39K	$1M	$279M	$4M	AcquisitionsAcquis.
$26M	$13M	$0	$14M	$63M	$72M	$79M	$83M	$82M	$88M	$90M	Dividends paidDiv. paid
—	$0	$0	$1M	$27M	$390M	$75M	$50M	$0	$0	—	BuybacksBuybacks
-7%	-7%	5%	31%	35%	12%	6%	6%	14%	9%	10%	ROICROIC
-40%	2%	3%	38%	35%	26%	2%	-1%	20%	11%	12%	Return on equityROE
−49%	−2%	3%	35%	24%	12%	−13%	−16%	7%	−2%	−1%	Retained to equityRetained/eq
											Balance sheet
$95M	$73M	$155M	$70M	$159M	$108M	$144M	$94M	$61M	$121M	$98M	Cash & investmentsCash+inv
$70M	$70M	$70M	$84M	$90M	$126M	$112M	$111M	$156M	$203M	$195M	ReceivablesReceiv.
$70M	$70M	$70M	$84M	$90M	$126M	$112M	$111M	$156M	$203M	$195M	Operating working capitalOper. WC
$55M	$57M	$57M	$70M	$70M	$290M	$290M	$290M	$290M	$488M	$488M	GoodwillGoodwill
$1.6B	$1.4B	$1.4B	$1.6B	$1.8B	$3.0B	$2.8B	$2.7B	$2.6B	$3.3B	$3.1B	Total assetsAssets
$543M	$543M	$543M	$240M	$198M	$1.2B	$950M	$881M	$877M	$1.1B	$1.0B	Total debtDebt
$447M	$470M	$387M	$169M	$38M	$1.1B	$806M	$787M	$816M	$1.0B	$907M	Net debt / (cash)Net debt
-1.4×	-1.4×	1.3×	8.2×	15.5×	4.0×	1.7×	1.4×	2.6×	2.0×	2.1×	Interest coverageInt. cov.
$265M	$272M	$287M	$459M	$592M	$513M	$525M	$560M	$629M	$696M	$716M	Shareholders’ equityEquity
0.3%	0.1%	0.2%	0.3%	0.4%	3.2%	3.8%	4.1%	0.8%	1.0%	0.9%	Stock comp / revenueSBC/rev
											Per share
53.1M	53.8M	54.5M	56.0M	55.8M	66.8M	59.0M	55.0M	55.9M	58.6M	58.8M	Shares out (diluted)Shares
$55.78	$50.19	$48.78	$47.71	$50.48	$68.57	$72.00	$72.62	$77.25	$80.10	$80.52	Revenue / shareRev/sh
$-1.98	$0.12	$0.16	$3.10	$3.73	$2.02	$0.21	$-0.09	$2.21	$1.25	$1.43	EPS (diluted)EPS
$5.51	$0.84	$3.66	$3.47	$3.62	$4.93	$6.90	$2.67	$0.87	$4.33	$4.65	Owner earnings / shareOE/sh
$5.51	$0.84	$3.66	$3.47	$3.62	$4.93	$6.90	$2.67	$0.87	$4.07	$4.35	Free cash flow / shareFCF/sh
$0.48	$0.24	$0.00	$0.24	$1.13	$1.07	$1.34	$1.51	$1.47	$1.50	$1.52	Dividends / shareDiv/sh
$1.15	$1.22	$0.51	$0.38	$0.62	$0.93	$1.04	$0.97	$1.01	$1.14	$1.23	Cap. spending / shareCapex/sh
$4.99	$5.06	$5.25	$8.20	$10.62	$7.68	$8.91	$10.19	$11.25	$11.87	$12.16	Book value / shareBVPS

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

	9-yr	5-yr
Revenue / share	+4.1%/yr	+9.7%/yr
Owner earnings / share	−2.7%/yr	+3.6%/yr
EPS	—	−19.7%/yr
Dividends / share	+13.5%/yr	+5.8%/yr
Capital spending / share	−0.1%/yr	+13.0%/yr
Book value / share	+10.1%/yr	+2.3%/yr

The year, in the company's words

the filing →

Verbatim from the 10-K's management discussion. Each sentence is shown only because its subject, direction, and stated figures check out against the filed numbers on this page. The words are the company's; the arithmetic is the record's.

Revenue+8.7%
“Total revenue increased by $374.5 million, or 8.7%, to $4,695.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2025, from $4,320.6 million for 2024, primarily due to an increase of approximately $251.0 million in the Acima segment and the addition of the Brigit segment with $206.0 million in revenue, partially offset by a decrease of approximately $83.2 million in the Rent-A-Center segment, as discussed further in the “Segment Performance” section below.”
✓ figure matches the filed record
Operating income-23.4%
“Operating profit decreased by approximately $68.3 million, primarily due to increases in non-labor operating expenses, other gains and charges and general and administrative expenses of $138.3 million, $107.6 million and $19.5 million, respectively, partially offset by the increase in gross profit noted above and a decrease in operating labor expenses of $6.9 million.”
✓ figure matches the filed record

The record, charted

FY2016–2025

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

Share count

59Mpeak FY2021

ROIC

9%low FY2016

Gross margin

48%low FY2024

Net debt ÷ owner earnings

4.0×peak 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.

$254Mowner earningsvs.$73Mnet incomelow FY2017

Where the cash went

ReinvestBuybacksDividendsAcquisitionsRetainedBeyond op. cash

Each year's outlays against its operating cash: the mix, and how it drifts. The hatched cap is spending beyond that year's operating cash — financed from the balance sheet or borrowing, not operations.

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 earned $254M of owner earnings, the operating cash left after the $52M it takes just to hold its position. It put $15M more into growth; free cash flow, after that spending, was $239M.

Reported net income$73M

Owner earnings$254M · 5% of revenue

	FY2025	FY2024	FY2023	FY2022	FY2021
Reported net income	$73M	$123M	($5M)	$12M	$135M
Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back	+$52M	+$51M	+$51M	+$53M	+$67M
Stock-based compensationreal costnon-cash, but a real cost	+$45M	+$36M	+$162M	+$159M	+$148M
Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items	+$135M	−$106M	−$8M	+$244M	+$43M
Cash from operations	$306M	$105M	$200M	$468M	$392M
Maintenance capital expenditurethe spending needed just to hold position and volume	−$52M	−$56M	−$53M	−$61M	−$62M
Owner earnings	$254M	$48M	$147M	$407M	$330M
Growth capital expenditurediscretionary; spent to get bigger, not to stand still	−$15M	—	—	—	—
Free cash flow	$239M	$48M	$147M	$407M	$330M
Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue	5%	1%	4%	10%	7%

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 $52M, roughly its depreciation, the rate its assets wear out). The other $15M 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 $45M), owner earnings is nearer $208M.

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? 2.0×

Thin

Operating income $223M ÷ interest expense $113M

What this means
Operating profit covers interest, but with little room. A bad year, a refinancing at higher rates, or a revenue wobble closes the gap fast.
How heavy is the debt, net of cash? $1.0B · 4.6× operating profit

Heavy net debt

Cash $121M − debt $1.1B

What this means
Netting $121M of cash and short-term investments against $1.1B of debt leaves $1.0B owed, about 4.6× a year's operating profit (5.1× on the gross debt, before the cash). 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 6%

Below average through the cycle

10-yr median, range -7%–35%; 9% latest = NOPAT $151M ÷ invested capital $1.7B

Industry peers: median 8%

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 9% 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 7%

Solid through the cycle

10-yr median margin, range 1%–10%; latest $254M = operating cash $306M − maintenance capex $52M

Industry peers: median 13%

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 5% of revenue this year, a 7% median across 10 years. Treating stock comp as the real expense it is (less $45M of SBC) leaves $208M.
Are earnings backed by cash? 4.17×

Cash-backed

Cash from ops $306M ÷ net income $73M

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? 35%

Reinvests most of it

Dividends + buybacks $88M ÷ Owner Earnings $254M

What this means
Of $254M Owner Earnings, $88M (35%) went back to shareholders, $88M 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? 1.29×

Expanding

Capex $67M ÷ depreciation $52M

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 Pass

Revenue ≥ $2B · $4.7B

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 —

Current ratio ≥ 2× · —

What this means
Current assets / liabilities not in the data yet.
Earnings stability Miss

A profit every year (10-yr record) · 2 loss years

What this means
Graham wanted earnings in each of the past ten years, the stability a defensive owner leans on.
Dividend record Near

Uninterrupted dividends · 9 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 $1.10/share (latest year $1.26), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $11.94/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 8 of 10

What this means
Lost money in 2 year(s), look at what happened there before trusting the average.
Return on capital ≥ 15% 2 of 10 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 −1% → 5% (3-yr avg ends)

What this means
Through the cycle the operating margin widened — about −1% early to 5% lately, median 4% — pricing power intact or improving.
Reinvestment, incremental ROIC 21%

What this means
Every extra dollar the business reinvested came back at a high incremental return — the lens GBM read for a moat that reinvests rather than merely harvests. The record and the 10-K are where you check whether the rate holds.
Owner earnings growth −1%/yr

What this means
Owner earnings shrank about 1% a year over the record.
Worst year 2017 · −2.3% op. margin

What this means
Operations went underwater in 2017, understand why before trusting the good years.
Share count +1.1%/yr

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

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

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.

In its own filing A competitive risk, new this year

Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat, in language that was not in the prior year's filing.

“The rapid development and adoption of AI and AI-adjacent technology, and of AI's competitive use cases, may make it more difficult for us to compete in our industry.”

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.

How the cash was used, 2016–2025

Over the record, the business generated $2.6B of operating cash; how management split it reads as a balanced allocator, splitting cash between the business, owners, and the balance sheet.

Reinvested$511M · 20%
Dividends$519M · 20%
Buybacks$543M · 21%
Retained (debt / cash)$1.0B · 40%

Returned to owners$1.1B
50% of the owner earnings the business produced over the span, $519M as dividends and $543M as buybacks.
Source of fundingOperating cash
Operating cash covered reinvestment and returns; over the span debt rose $463M and cash and short-term investments rose $3M.
Average price paid for buybacks$18.31
Across the years where the filing reports a share count, 2M shares were bought for $28M, about $18.31 each.
Net change in share count10.8%
The diluted count rose from 53M to 59M: issuance (stock pay, deals) outran any buybacks, so owners were diluted on net.
Dividend record$1.50/sh
Paid in 9 of the years on record, the per-share dividend growing about 13% a year. It was cut at least once along the way.

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.

Acquisitions & goodwill

from the balance sheet & the 10-year cash-flow record

Goodwill grows only when a company acquires and falls only when it concedes it overpaid. The size of that bet, the cash put into buying rather than building, and how much has already been written off.

Goodwill & intangibles$838M26% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired

Against book equity70%goodwill is this share of book equity; the rest is the company’s own retained and paid-in capital

Cash spent acquiring$1.6Bover 10 years buying other businesses, against $511M of capital spent building

$151M written down across 1 year (2016): goodwill the company has already conceded it overpaid for, charged against earnings. A write-down costs no cash (the cash went out when the deal was signed), but it is management marking its own past judgment to market.

Goodwill, acquired intangibles and equity from the latest balance sheet; acquisition spend and write-downs summed across the 10-year record, from the company's own filings.

Management, ownership & pay

read the proxy →

From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.

Fiscal year	Pay, as filed	“Actually paid”	Owner earnings
2021	$12.3M	$25.6M	$330M
2022	$6.3M	−$3.8M	$407M
2023	$9.8M	$15.6M	$147M
2024	$9.5M	$3.4M	$48M
2025	$7.0M	−$5.1M	$254M
2025	$7.4M	$1.1M	$254M

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 ownership1.2%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
CEO pay ratio202:1
What the chief earns for every dollar the median employee makes, per the 2026 proxy. A high ratio alone settles nothing; some businesses are genuinely top-heavy in scarce skill. A runaway figure is where Buffett starts asking whether the board is doing its job.
Stock-based compensation$45M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 1% of revenue, equal to 20% 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 Upbound Group 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.

4 of the 6 tests turned up something to look into; the other 2 came back clean.

Look hereIs it less profitable than it was?3.4% vs 6.4%
The owner-earnings margin averaged 6.4% early in the record and 3.4% 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?10.8%
Diluted shares grew 10.8% over 2016–2025, even as the company spent $543M 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 debt outgrow the business?$543M → $1.0B
Debt rose from $543M to $1.0B while owner earnings went from about $179M to $150M — about 3.0 years of owner earnings in debt then, about 6.7 now: measured against what the business earns, the balance sheet carries more debt than it did. Debt raised for buybacks or deals rather than growth is the kind that bites in a downturn.
Look hereDid receivables and inventory outpace sales?2% → 4% of sales
Receivables and inventory grew from $70M to $195M while revenue grew 60%: working capital is climbing faster than sales (2% of revenue then, 4% 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 reported profit become cash?
Are "one-time" charges a yearly habit?

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.

Peers, Trading Companies & Distributors

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
SUNBSunbelt Rentals Holdings Inc.	$11.2B	40%	23.1%	12%	—
TNETTriNet Group Inc.	$5.0B	—	7.1%	38%	7%
UPBDUpbound Group Inc.	$4.7B	55%	4.4%	7%	7%
RBARB Global Inc.	$4.6B	—	16.4%	8%	17%
KELYAKelly Services Inc.	$4.3B	19%	0.7%	2%	1%
ALAir Lease	$3.0B	—	55.1%	5%	54%
PRGPROG Holdings Inc.	$2.4B	—	8.3%	15%	10%
WSCWillScot	$2.3B	—	11.0%	4%	23%
Group median	—	40%	9.7%	8%	10%

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 Upbound Group Inc. has delivered.

Today’s price $

Through the cycle, Upbound Group Inc. earns about $337M on its 7.2% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 5.4% 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 ($337M) Net of stock comp (−$44M) Steady-state · maintenance capex ($276M)

—

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→’25−20%/yr

Owner-earnings growth · ’16→’25−2%/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 $256M on 58M shares outstanding, per the 10-Q cover, as of 2026-04-23; net debt $907M. 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 ($72M) runs well above depreciation ($55M), so this is a build-out; Steady-state swaps total capex for maintenance (≈ depreciation), lifting the base to about $276M, 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 UPBD against another business →

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Upbound Group Inc. (UPBD), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/UPBD, data as of 2026-07-09.

Manual order: ← UPB its page in the Manual UPS →

Industry order: ← TSCO the Trading Companies & Distributors chapter URI →