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VRRM, Verra Mobility Corporation
We are a leading provider of smart mobility technology solutions, principally operating throughout the United States, Australia, Europe, and Canada.
We make transportation safer, smarter, and more connected through our integrated, data-driven solutions, including toll and violations management, title and registration services, automated safety and traffic enforcement, and commercial parking management.
We bring together vehicles, hardware, software, data, and people to solve transportation challenges for customers around the world, including commercial fleet owners such as RACs, Direct Fleets, and FMCs, as well as governments, universities, parking operators, healthcare facilities, transportation hubs, and violation-issuing authorities.
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.
- Situation
- Capital build-out. Capital spending has surged to 12% of sales, today's earnings are charged less depreciation than tomorrow's will be. 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
- Operating margin has run about 20% through the cycle, a solid margin the cost base and competition set as much as the price does. The margin is cyclical, swinging between 4.3% and 24% 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. Read this kind of business on volume, density and yield. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on concentrated dependence, 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 6%, above 15% in 0 of 7 years). By owner earnings: roughly 18% 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, 2018–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2018’18 | 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | TTMTTMMar 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | |||||||||
| $370M | $449M | $394M | $551M | $742M | $817M | $879M | $979M | $979M | RevenueRevenue |
| 36% | 19% | 23% | 22% | 22% | 24% | 22% | 22% | 21% | SG&A / revenueSG&A/rev |
| $16M | $96M | $38M | $112M | $165M | $189M | $136M | $238M | $233M | Operating incomeOp. inc. |
| 4.3% | 21.5% | 9.6% | 20.3% | 22.2% | 23.1% | 15.5% | 24.4% | 23.8% | Operating marginOp. mgn |
| ($51M) | $17M | ($5M) | $41M | $92M | $57M | $31M | $137M | $131M | Net incomeNet inc. |
| — | 44% | — | 39% | 27% | 34% | — | 30% | 31% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||
| $49M | $134M | $47M | $193M | $218M | $206M | $224M | $256M | $234M | Operating cash flowOp. cash |
| $103M | $116M | $117M | $117M | $139M | $113M | $109M | $114M | $116M | DepreciationDeprec. |
| ($5M) | ($9M) | ($78M) | $21M | ($29M) | $19M | $61M | ($20M) | ($39M) | Working capital & otherWC & other |
| $27M | $30M | $24M | $25M | $48M | $57M | $71M | $119M | $129M | CapexCapex |
| 7.2% | 6.6% | 6.2% | 4.5% | 6.5% | 7.0% | 8.1% | 12.2% | 13.2% | Capex / revenueCapex/rev |
| $23M | $104M | $23M | $168M | $170M | $149M | $153M | $137M | $105M | Owner earningsOwner earn. |
| 6.1% | 23.2% | 5.8% | 30.5% | 22.9% | 18.2% | 17.4% | 14.0% | 10.7% | Owner earnings marginOE mgn |
| $23M | $104M | $23M | $168M | $170M | $149M | $153M | $137M | $105M | Free cash flowFCF |
| 6.1% | 23.2% | 5.8% | 30.5% | 22.9% | 18.2% | 17.4% | 14.0% | 10.7% | Free cash flow marginFCF mgn |
| $537M | $26M | — | $451M | $0 | $0 | — | — | $0 | AcquisitionsAcquis. |
| — | — | — | $100M | $125M | $100M | $200M | $133M | — | BuybacksBuybacks |
| — | 5% | 2% | 5% | 9% | 9% | 6% | 13% | 12% | ROICROIC |
| -18% | 6% | -1% | 16% | 40% | 14% | 12% | 47% | 48% | Return on equityROE |
| −18% | 6% | −1% | 16% | 40% | 14% | 12% | 47% | 48% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||
| $65M | $132M | $120M | $101M | $105M | $136M | $78M | $65M | $53M | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| $88M | $94M | $169M | $161M | $164M | $198M | $207M | $234M | $222M | ReceivablesReceiv. |
| — | — | $113K | $12M | $19M | $18M | $16M | $21M | $28M | InventoryInvent. |
| $45M | $51M | $35M | $68M | $80M | $79M | $91M | $102M | $114M | Accounts payablePayables |
| $42M | $43M | $134M | $106M | $103M | $137M | $131M | $153M | $135M | Operating working capitalOper. WC |
| $185M | $272M | $328M | $348M | $363M | $440M | $394M | $441M | $439M | Current assetsCur. assets |
| $69M | $105M | $64M | $175M | $187M | $215M | $200M | $210M | $232M | Current liabilitiesCur. liab. |
| 2.7× | 2.6× | 5.1× | 2.0× | 1.9× | 2.0× | 2.0× | 2.1× | 1.9× | Current ratioCurr. ratio |
| $565M | $584M | $586M | $839M | $833M | $836M | $736M | $742M | $741M | GoodwillGoodwill |
| $1.3B | $1.4B | $1.4B | $1.8B | $1.8B | $1.8B | $1.6B | $1.6B | $1.7B | Total assetsAssets |
| $869M | $866M | $842M | $1.2B | $1.2B | $1.0B | $1.0B | $1.0B | $1.1B | Total debtDebt |
| $804M | $735M | $722M | $1.1B | $1.1B | $902M | $957M | $963M | $1.0B | Net debt / (cash)Net debt |
| 0.2× | 1.6× | 0.9× | 2.5× | 2.4× | 2.2× | 1.8× | 3.7× | 3.7× | Interest coverageInt. cov. |
| $289M | $310M | $316M | $260M | $231M | $421M | $265M | $293M | $272M | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| 0.6% | 2.2% | 3.2% | 2.5% | 2.2% | 2.1% | 2.6% | 2.6% | 2.6% | Stock comp / revenueSBC/rev |
| Per share | |||||||||
| 175M | 160M | 162M | 164M | 159M | 160M | 168M | 161M | 154M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $2.12 | $2.80 | $2.44 | $3.36 | $4.66 | $5.11 | $5.24 | $6.07 | $6.37 | Revenue / shareRev/sh |
| $-0.29 | $0.11 | $-0.03 | $0.25 | $0.58 | $0.36 | $0.19 | $0.85 | $0.85 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $0.13 | $0.65 | $0.14 | $1.03 | $1.07 | $0.93 | $0.91 | $0.85 | $0.68 | Owner earnings / shareOE/sh |
| $0.13 | $0.65 | $0.14 | $1.03 | $1.07 | $0.93 | $0.91 | $0.85 | $0.68 | Free cash flow / shareFCF/sh |
| $0.15 | $0.19 | $0.15 | $0.15 | $0.30 | $0.36 | $0.42 | $0.74 | $0.84 | Cap. spending / shareCapex/sh |
| $1.65 | $1.93 | $1.95 | $1.59 | $1.45 | $2.63 | $1.58 | $1.82 | $1.77 | Book value / shareBVPS |
Share counts before 2019 are restated ×2 for a stock split, so per-share figures sit on one basis.
| 7-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +16.2%/yr | +20.0%/yr |
| Owner earnings / share | +30.7%/yr | +43.3%/yr |
| Capital spending / share | +25.3%/yr | +37.5%/yr |
| Book value / share | +1.4%/yr | −1.4%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2018–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked. Share counts on the current split basis.
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
ReinvestBuybacksDividendsAcquisitionsRetainedBeyond op. cashEach 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.
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 $137M of profit into $137M 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 | FY2021 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reported net income | $137M | $31M | $57M | $92M | $41M |
| Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back | +$114M | +$109M | +$113M | +$139M | +$117M |
| Stock-based compensationreal costnon-cash, but a real cost | +$25M | +$23M | +$17M | +$17M | +$14M |
| Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items | −$20M | +$61M | +$19M | −$29M | +$21M |
| Cash from operations | $256M | $224M | $206M | $218M | $193M |
| Capital expenditurecash put back in to keep running and to grow | −$119M | −$71M | −$57M | −$48M | −$25M |
| Owner earnings | $137M | $153M | $149M | $170M | $168M |
| Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue | 14% | 17% | 18% | 23% | 31% |
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 $25M), owner earnings is nearer $112M.
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?
- AdequateOperating income $238M ÷ interest expense $65M
What this means
Comfortable in a normal year, but below the margin of safety Graham looked for. Worth checking how stable the coverage has been across a full cycle.
- How heavy is the debt, net of cash? $963M · 4.0× operating profitHeavy net debtCash $65M − debt $1.0B
What this means
Netting $65M of cash and short-term investments against $1.0B of debt leaves $963M owed, about 4.0× a year's operating profit (4.3× 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.
- Not enough data
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
Is it a good business?
- Below average through the cycle7-yr median, range 2%–13%; 13% latest = NOPAT $167M ÷ invested capital $1.3BIndustry peers: median 5%
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 7 years (it ran 13% 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.
- High through the cycle8-yr median margin, range 6%–31%; latest $137M = operating cash $256M − maintenance capex $119MIndustry peers: median 5%
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 14% of revenue this year, a 17% median across 8 years. Treating stock comp as the real expense it is (less $25M of SBC) leaves $112M.
- Cash-backedCash from ops $256M ÷ net income $137M
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?
- Returns most of itDividends + buybacks $133M ÷ Owner Earnings $137M
What this means
Of $137M Owner Earnings, $133M (98%) went back to shareholders, $0 dividends, $133M buybacks. Net of $25M stock comp, the real buyback was about $108M. 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? 1.04×MaintainingCapex $119M ÷ depreciation $114M
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 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 MissRevenue ≥ $2B · $979M
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 PassCurrent ratio ≥ 2× · 2.09×
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 · $1.0B vs $230M 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 (8-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 MissUninterrupted dividends · none paid
What this means
An unbroken dividend was Graham's mark of durability. He wanted twenty years; the filings show about ten, and a single suspension breaks the streak. Non-payers, many fine modern compounders, fall outside his defensive net by design.
- 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 $0.49/share (latest year $0.90), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $1.93/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, 2018–2025
Whether the record’s returns held, and what the capital reinvested earned.
- Profitable years 6 of 8
What this means
Lost money in 2 year(s), look at what happened there before trusting the average.
- Return on capital ≥ 15% 0 of 8 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 12% → 21% (3-yr avg ends)
In the filing’s words The margin widened even though the filing names price competition — the gain came from volume or cost, not pricing power. Read where.
What this means
Through the cycle the operating margin widened — about 12% early to 21% lately, median 20% — 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 +13%/yr
What this means
Owner earnings grew about 13% a year over the record.
- Worst year 2018 · 4.3% op. margin
What this means
Stayed profitable even in its hardest year, the resilience that survives recessions.
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.
AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Current Position
as of the latest quarter, Mar 31, 2026Can 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$53M
- Receivables$222M
- Inventory$28M
- Other current assets$136M
- Debt due within a year$34M
- Accounts payable$114M
- Other current liabilities$84M
From the company's latest filing.
How the cash was used, 2018–2025
Over the record, the business generated $1.3B of operating cash; how management split it reads as a balanced allocator, splitting cash between the business, owners, and the balance sheet.
- Reinvested$401M · 30%
- Buybacks$658M · 50%
- Retained (debt / cash)$268M · 20%
- Returned to owners$658M
71% of the owner earnings the business produced over the span, $0 as dividends and $658M as buybacks.
- Average price paid for buybacks—
Buybacks ran $658M over the span, but the filings don't tag the share count needed to deduce the average price paid.
- Net change in share count−12.0%
The diluted count fell from 175M to 154M, so the buybacks outran the stock issued to staff.
- 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.
Acquisitions & goodwill
from the balance sheet & the 8-year cash-flow recordGoodwill 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.
$97M written down across 1 year (2024): 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 8-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 | Chief executive | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Owner earnings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | David M. Roberts | $3.5M | $5.2M | $168M |
| 2022 | David M. Roberts | $4.3M | $4.0M | $170M |
| 2023 | David M. Roberts | $9.2M | $17.2M | $149M |
| 2024 | David M. Roberts | $5.6M | $4.4M | $153M |
| 2025 | David M. Roberts | $6.0M | $1.5M | $137M |
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 ownership1.3%
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$25M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 3% of revenue, equal to 11% of operating profit. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.
Inverting the record
Invert: instead of why Verra Mobility Corporation 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 2018–2025.
None of the 6 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?
- 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.
What an owner would ask, FY2025
read the 10-K →- Does management own its misses?2 plain admissions in this year's filing
“We evaluated the refinancing transactions on a lender-by-lender basis and accounted accordingly for debt extinguishment and debt modification costs (for the portion of the transactions that did not meet the accounting criteria for debt extinguishment).”verify →
- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Revenue recognition, Income taxes, Credit & receivables 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, Hotels & Resorts
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| XPOXPO Inc. | $8.2B | 47% | 4.6% | 7% | 2% |
| GATXGatx Corp | $1.7B | — | 31.6% | 4% | 11% |
| VRRMVerra Mobility Corporation | $979M | — | 20.9% | 6% | 18% |
| LINDLindblad Expeditions Holdings Inc. | $771M | 45% | 3.7% | 6% | 7% |
| SPCEVirgin Galactic Holdings Inc. | $2M | 47% | -7907.9% | -59% | -7151% |
| Group median | — | — | 4.6% | 6% | 7% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFType today's close and see the owner-earnings growth you'd have to believe to justify it, beside what Verra Mobility Corporation has delivered.
Through the cycle, Verra Mobility Corporation earns about $174M on its 17.8% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 14.0% 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.
—
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.
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.
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 $105M on 152M shares outstanding, per the 10-Q cover, as of 2026-05-31; net debt $1.0B. 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: ← VRNS its page in the Manual VRSK →
Industry order: ← TOUR the Hotels & Resorts chapter WH →