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 39% and operating margin about 20% through the cycle, a solid spread between what it charges and what the product costs to make. The operating margin has swung widely — from 8.6% to 23% — on a steadier 39% gross margin, so what moves it sits below the gross line, in operating spend and one-off charges more than in the cost of the product itself. 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 high across the record (median 42%, above 15% in 8 of 10 years), though buybacks and expensed R&D and brands shrink the capital base, so the figure overstates the underlying economics. The steadier read is owner earnings: roughly 15% of revenue reaches owners as cash, consistently. Whether these returns reflect real pricing power or an accounting artifact is the judgment the 10-K is for.

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 →

Revenue spreads across 5 regions, the largest North America at 37%.

Revenue by geography, FY2025

North America37%$1.4B
Europe and CIS29%$1.1B
Latin America And Caribbean15%$571M
Middle East Africa And South Asia14%$544M
Asia Pacific5%$196M

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
$5.4B	$5.5B	$5.4B	$5.0B	$4.6B	$4.9B	$4.3B	$4.2B	$4.0B	$3.9B	$3.9B	RevenueRevenue
40%	39%	39%	39%	39%	40%	38%	36%	35%	34%	34%	Gross marginGross mgn
31%	22%	22%	25%	23%	22%	23%	21%	21%	19%	20%	SG&A / revenueSG&A/rev
$487M	$476M	$1.1B	$934M	$967M	$1.1B	$885M	$818M	$726M	$757M	$703M	Operating incomeOp. inc.
9.0%	8.6%	20.8%	18.6%	20.9%	23.1%	20.8%	19.7%	18.0%	19.5%	18.1%	Operating marginOp. mgn
$253M	($557M)	$852M	$1.1B	$744M	$806M	$911M	$626M	$934M	$500M	$441M	Net incomeNet inc.
26%	—	14%	20%	13%	14%	10%	16%	—	20%	22%	Effective tax rateTax rate
											Cash flow & returns
$1.0B	$742M	$821M	$915M	$878M	$1.0B	$582M	$783M	$406M	$544M	$505M	Operating cash flowOp. cash
$263M	$263M	$265M	$258M	$226M	$50M	$43M	$39M	$37M	$35M	$34M	DepreciationDeprec.
$526M	$1.0B	($295M)	($401M)	($92M)	$190M	($372M)	$118M	($565M)	$9M	($11M)	Working capital & otherWC & other
$69M	$69M	$137M	$48M	$37M	$38M	$32M	$23M	$37M	$39M	$42M	CapexCapex
1.3%	1.3%	2.5%	1.0%	0.8%	0.8%	0.7%	0.6%	0.9%	1.0%	1.1%	Capex / revenueCapex/rev
$973M	$673M	$685M	$867M	$841M	$1.0B	$550M	$760M	$369M	$505M	$463M	Owner earningsOwner earn.
17.9%	12.2%	12.7%	17.2%	18.2%	20.7%	12.9%	18.3%	9.2%	13.0%	11.9%	Owner earnings marginOE mgn
$973M	$673M	$685M	$867M	$841M	$1.0B	$550M	$760M	$369M	$505M	$463M	Free cash flowFCF
17.9%	12.2%	12.7%	17.2%	18.2%	20.7%	12.9%	18.3%	9.2%	13.0%	11.9%	Free cash flow marginFCF mgn
$0	$25M	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	$25M	AcquisitionsAcquis.
$312M	$326M	$342M	$341M	$370M	$382M	$364M	$349M	$322M	$309M	$306M	Dividends paidDiv. paid
$502M	$503M	$412M	$553M	$240M	$410M	$370M	$308M	$186M	$235M	—	BuybacksBuybacks
13%	14%	45%	43%	46%	45%	44%	40%	30%	23%	18%	ROICROIC
28%	—	—	—	399%	227%	191%	131%	96%	52%	48%	Return on equityROE
−7%	—	—	—	200%	119%	114%	58%	63%	20%	15%	Retained to equityRetained/eq
											Balance sheet
$878M	$838M	$973M	$1.5B	$1.4B	$1.2B	$1.3B	$1.3B	$1.5B	$1.2B	$909M	Cash & investmentsCash+inv
—	—	—	—	—	$1.2B	$1.5B	$1.7B	$1.4B	$1.6B	$1.5B	ReceivablesReceiv.
—	—	—	—	—	$1.2B	$1.5B	$1.7B	$1.4B	$1.6B	$1.5B	Operating working capitalOper. WC
$3.2B	$2.7B	$2.7B	$2.6B	$2.6B	$2.0B	$2.0B	$2.0B	$2.1B	$2.1B	$2.1B	GoodwillGoodwill
$9.4B	$9.2B	$9.0B	$8.8B	$9.5B	$8.8B	$8.5B	$8.2B	$8.4B	$8.3B	$8.1B	Total assetsAssets
$2.8B	$3.0B	$3.4B	$3.2B	$3.1B	$3.0B	$2.6B	$2.5B	$3.0B	$2.9B	$3.1B	Total debtDebt
$1.9B	$2.2B	$2.5B	$1.8B	$1.6B	$1.8B	$1.3B	$1.2B	$1.5B	$1.7B	$2.1B	Net debt / (cash)Net debt
$902M	($491M)	($310M)	($40M)	$187M	$356M	$478M	$479M	$969M	$958M	$911M	Shareholders’ equityEquity
											Per share
494M	468M	454M	431M	415M	409M	388M	372M	341M	328M	317M	Shares out (diluted)Shares
$10.99	$11.81	$11.85	$11.68	$11.14	$11.90	$10.95	$11.18	$11.81	$11.84	$12.28	Revenue / shareRev/sh
$0.51	$-1.19	$1.87	$2.46	$1.79	$1.97	$2.34	$1.68	$2.74	$1.53	$1.39	EPS (diluted)EPS
$1.97	$1.44	$1.51	$2.01	$2.03	$2.46	$1.42	$2.04	$1.08	$1.54	$1.46	Owner earnings / shareOE/sh
$1.97	$1.44	$1.51	$2.01	$2.03	$2.46	$1.42	$2.04	$1.08	$1.54	$1.46	Free cash flow / shareFCF/sh
$0.63	$0.70	$0.75	$0.79	$0.89	$0.93	$0.94	$0.94	$0.94	$0.94	$0.97	Dividends / shareDiv/sh
$0.14	$0.15	$0.30	$0.11	$0.09	$0.09	$0.08	$0.06	$0.11	$0.12	$0.13	Cap. spending / shareCapex/sh
$1.83	$-1.05	$-0.68	$-0.09	$0.45	$0.87	$1.23	$1.29	$2.84	$2.92	$2.87	Book value / shareBVPS

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

	9-yr	5-yr
Revenue / share	+0.8%/yr	+1.2%/yr
Owner earnings / share	−2.7%/yr	−5.3%/yr
EPS	+12.9%/yr	−3.2%/yr
Dividends / share	+4.5%/yr	+1.1%/yr
Capital spending / share	−1.9%/yr	+6.0%/yr
Book value / share	+5.4%/yr	+45.4%/yr

The record, charted

FY2016–2025

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

Share count

328Mpeak FY2016

ROIC

23%low FY2016

Gross margin

34%low FY2025

Net debt ÷ owner earnings

3.3×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.

$505Mowner earningsvs.$500Mnet incomelow FY2024

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 turned $500M of profit into $505M of owner earnings: more cash than the profit line showed, after the non-cash charges and the capital it put back in.

Reported net income$500M

Owner earnings$505M · 13% of revenue

	FY2025	FY2024	FY2023	FY2022	FY2021
Reported net income	$500M	$934M	$626M	$911M	$806M
Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back	+$35M	+$37M	+$39M	+$43M	+$50M
Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items	+$9M	−$565M	+$118M	−$372M	+$190M
Cash from operations	$544M	$406M	$783M	$582M	$1.0B
Capital expenditurecash put back in to keep running and to grow	−$39M	−$37M	−$23M	−$32M	−$38M
Owner earnings	$505M	$369M	$760M	$550M	$1.0B
Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue	13%	9%	18%	13%	21%

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.

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? $2.4B · 3.1× operating profit

Meaningful net debt

Cash $1.2B − debt $3.6B

What this means
Netting $1.2B of cash and short-term investments against $3.6B of debt leaves $2.4B owed, about 3.1× a year's operating profit (4.7× 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 40%

Very high (≥25%) through the cycle

10-yr median, range 13%–46%; 18% latest = NOPAT $605M ÷ invested capital $3.3B

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 18% 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 13%

Solid through the cycle

10-yr median margin, range 9%–21%; latest $505M = operating cash $544M − maintenance capex $39M

Industry peers: median 9%

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 13% of revenue this year, a 13% median across 10 years. Treating stock comp as the real expense it is (less $40M of SBC) leaves $466M.
Are earnings backed by cash? 1.09×

Cash-backed

Cash from ops $544M ÷ net income $500M

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? 108%

Returned more than it generated

Dividends + buybacks $544M ÷ Owner Earnings $505M

What this means
The company returned more than it generated: against $505M of Owner Earnings, $544M (108%) went back to shareholders, $309M dividends, $235M buybacks — the excess came from the balance sheet or borrowing, not the year's operations. Net of $40M stock comp, the real buyback was about $195M. Sustained, that pattern draws down cash or adds debt; the net-debt line above shows where it stands.
Investing or harvesting? 1.09×

Maintaining

Capex $39M ÷ depreciation $35M

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 4 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 · $3.9B

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 Near

A profit every year (10-yr record) · 1 loss year

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

Uninterrupted dividends · paid every year (10)

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 · +276%

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 $2.20/share (latest year $1.60), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $3.07/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 9 of 10

What this means
Lost money in 1 year(s), look at what happened there before trusting the average.
Return on capital ≥ 15% 8 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 13% → 19% (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 13% early to 19% 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 −7%/yr

What this means
Owner earnings shrank about 7% a year over the record.
Worst year 2017 · 8.6% op. margin

What this means
Stayed profitable even in its hardest year, the resilience that survives recessions.
Share count −4.5%/yr

What this means
The share count is shrinking, buybacks are quietly growing your slice of the business.
Dividend record paid

What this means
Paid a dividend in 10 of the years on record.

Does AI threaten the moat?

Elevated contestability

The product is software or information, the very thing capable AI now produces more cheaply, so the moat is more contestable than the record alone implies.

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.

“Additionally, our competitors may successfully advance their AI technology to enhance their operational efficiency, potentially placing us at a competitive disadvantage.”

The moat the record shows, a high return on capital held across years, was earned before AI collapsed the cost of building a capable substitute for the very thing this business sells. When a credible alternative can be assembled for a fraction of the incumbent's price, it is pricing power that erodes first, not revenue tomorrow. The live question is whether the moat survives that, not whether it held in the past. Whether that question is answerable at all is yours to decide, against your own circle of competence.

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 $7.8B of operating cash; how management split it reads as a cash returner, paying most of what it earns straight back to owners.

Reinvested$528M · 7%
Dividends$3.4B · 44%
Buybacks$3.7B · 48%
Retained (debt / cash)$96M · 1%

Returned to owners$7.1B
99% of the owner earnings the business produced over the span, $3.4B as dividends and $3.7B as buybacks.
Average price paid for buybacks—
Buybacks ran $3.7B over the span, but the filings don't tag the share count needed to deduce the average price paid.
Net change in share count−35.8%
The diluted count fell from 494M to 317M, so the buybacks outran the stock issued to staff.
Dividend record$0.94/sh
Paid in 10 of the years on record, the per-share dividend growing about 5% a year. It was never cut over the span.

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$2.5B30% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired

Against book equityexceeds itgoodwill alone is larger than the company’s entire book equity; stripped of the acquisition premium, there is no net book worth

Cash spent acquiring$25Mover 10 years buying other businesses, against $528M of capital spent building

$464M written down across 1 year (2017): 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	$14.1M	$9.9M	$1.0B
2021	$10.8M	$639k	$1.0B
2022	$7.2M	$782k	$550M
2023	$10.0M	$7.6M	$760M
2024	$13.3M	$11.6M	$369M
2025	$10.7M	$14.7M	$505M

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.

Stock-based compensation$40M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 1% of revenue, equal to 5% 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 Western Union 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.

Each test came back clean

Is it less profitable than it was?
Did the share count rise anyway?
Did debt outgrow the business?
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.

What an owner would ask, FY2025

read the 10-K →

Which reported numbers are a judgment call?
Management names Income taxes, Acquisitions 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, Commercial Services & Supplies

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
BRBroadridge Financial Solutions Inc.	$6.9B	28%	14.4%	18%	13%
MMSMaximus	$5.4B	23%	9.7%	16%	8%
TNETTriNet Group Inc.	$5.0B	—	7.1%	38%	7%
RBARB Global Inc.	$4.6B	—	16.4%	8%	17%
WUWestern Union	$3.9B	39%	19.6%	42%	15%
ADVAdvantage Solutions Inc.	$3.5B	—	-1.2%	-8%	3%
CBZCBIZ	$2.8B	14%	8.5%	5%	9%
ALITAlight Inc.	$2.3B	—	-3.6%	-1%	9%
Group median	—	26%	9.1%	12%	9%

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 Western Union has delivered.

Today’s price $

Through the cycle, Western Union earns about $587M on its 15.1% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 13.0% 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 ($587M) Net of stock comp (−$41M)

—

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→’25−13%/yr

Owner-earnings growth · ’16→’25−7%/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.

Owner earnings $463M on 312M shares outstanding, per the 10-Q cover, as of 2026-04-16; net debt $2.1B. 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.

Weigh WU against another business →

The owners of WU: the meeting and the votes →

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Western Union (WU), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/WU, data as of 2026-07-09.

Manual order: ← WTW its page in the Manual WULF →

Industry order: ← WSE the Commercial Services & Supplies chapter XMTR →