Altman Z″
Needs current assets and current liabilities.
GRASIM · Construction - Raw Materials · INE047A01021
Analyst mean 1.44 · 9 analysts · 56% bullishA plain-language read of the business, how it actually earns, where the edge is, and the economics of every reported segment — taken from the annual report and investor presentation, not a one-line industry label.
Numbered markers are corporate actions and, once the filings are read, capital and governance events. Prices are split-adjusted so the series is continuous.
The three to six things that actually matter about this company, each with the exact filing and note it came from — never a fact without the context that makes it meaningful.
What the numbers mean when read together — computed from the filings, not a score.
The business reported a profit, yet its operations drained cash rather than generating it. Profit that comes with negative operating cash is the single most important thing to understand here.
Why this reading: Flagged on a single year deliberately: negative operating cash alongside a reported profit is plain, material, and hard to explain benignly — exactly the kind of obvious signal that should never be smoothed over.
Operating cash flow ₹-17,810 cr against trailing net profit ₹10,300 cr. When operations consume cash while the P&L shows profit, ask whether receivables are ballooning, revenue is booked ahead of collection, or costs are being capitalised.
Return on equity looks strong at 28.1%, but it rests on an equity multiplier of 5.5x — the balance sheet is doing the work, not the margins (6.3%). Strip the leverage and the underlying return is ordinary.
Why this reading: Noted with caution — worth watching, but not yet conclusive on its own. Business has ups and downs; one soft reading is not a verdict.
ROE 28.1% = net margin 6.3% × asset turnover 0.81x × equity multiplier 5.5x. A high equity multiplier means most of the asset base is funded by liabilities rather than equity; the same leverage that lifts ROE in good years amplifies the downside when earnings turn.
Free cash flow is negative — the business consumes more than it generates once capex is paid. Fine if it is deliberate growth investment; a problem if it is structural.
Why this reading: Noted with caution — worth watching, but not yet conclusive on its own. Business has ups and downs; one soft reading is not a verdict.
Latest free cash flow ₹-33,130 cr, negative in 7 of 12 years. Check whether the burn funds expansion (dark stores, plants, ports) or merely sustains operations.
Borrowings rose 66% over two years while the company also carries ₹154,982 cr in investments. Why borrow at interest while parking money elsewhere is a fair question.
Why this reading: Noted with caution — worth watching, but not yet conclusive on its own. Business has ups and downs; one soft reading is not a verdict.
Borrowings moved to ₹227,853 cr from ₹137,155 cr. Simultaneous large investments can be legitimate treasury management, or a sign that reported cash is not freely available.
Both revenue and profit grew over the last year (19.5% and 33.1%) — growth is translating to the bottom line.
Why this reading: A positive signal in the numbers, shown for balance alongside the concerns.
Trailing revenue ₹184,029 cr, trailing profit ₹11,261 cr. Profit growing at least as fast as revenue indicates operating leverage or pricing power.
Every score below is calculated here from the reported numbers — none of it is asserted. Open the notebook at the foot of the section to see each formula with this company's figures in it.
Needs current assets and current liabilities.
Piotroski F-Score — fundamental momentum — Joseph Piotroski, University of Chicago, 2000, in a study of whether accounting signals could improve returns among cheap stocks.
Nine yes-or-no tests across profitability, leverage and operating efficiency. Each pass scores one. It asks a narrow question: is this business getting better or worse on its own terms, year over year?
How to read it7 or more suggests improving fundamentals; 3 or fewer suggests deterioration. It measures direction, not quality — a weak company improving can score higher than a strong one holding steady.
Where it failsA single year of comparison, so one unusual year distorts it. Says nothing about valuation, competitive position or management. Piotroski designed it to rank already-cheap stocks, not to judge a company in isolation.
Needs trade receivables, current assets, other expenses.
Accruals are 5.3% of assets. Free cash flow negative in 7 of 12 years.
DuPont decomposition — Devised inside the DuPont Corporation in the 1920s and still the standard way to read a return on equity.
Splits return on equity into its three sources, so the same headline number can be traced to very different businesses.
How to read itA 20% ROE built on margin and turnover is a different proposition from a 20% ROE built on 3× leverage. The first survives a downturn; the second amplifies it.
Where it failsA single year. Negative equity makes it meaningless. Leverage is structural for lenders, so the third term carries no signal there.
Capital and revenue are growing at broadly similar rates — the asset base is being used, not just added to.
cumulative operating cash flow ÷ cumulative net profit
₹-7,700 cr ÷ ₹80,608 cr, over 12 years
-0.10×
Below 1.0 and persistent means profit is being recognised before the cash arrives.(net profit − operating cash flow) ÷ average total assets
(₹10,300 − ₹-17,810) cr ÷ average assets
5.3%
The share of profit that is accounting entries rather than cash. Above ~10% is where accruals start to dominate.net margin × asset turnover × leverage
5.9% × 0.31 × 5.50
10.0%
Splits ROE into whether returns come from operations or from borrowing.EBIT ÷ finance cost
₹29,617 cr ÷ ₹15,144 cr
1.96×
How many times operating profit covers the interest bill.borrowings ÷ net worth
₹227,853 cr ÷ ₹103,470 cr
2.20×
Read against the sector — infrastructure carries more than software.growth in fixed assets + CWIP, against growth in revenue
capital +62% vs revenue +49%, FY2023 to FY2026
12pp gap
Money going in far faster than revenue coming out. For an incubator this is expected — the test is whether it eventually converts.Needs more balance-sheet detail (only 3 of 6 flags testable).
NOPAT over equity plus debt less cash, at a notional 25% tax. Incremental ROIC is the return on money put in since then — the number that decides whether growth creates value or consumes it.
Return on invested capital, and incremental ROIC — Standard in corporate finance; the incremental form was popularised by Michael Mauboussin as the test of whether growth creates value.
ROIC measures what the business earns on all the capital it employs — equity plus debt, less cash. Incremental ROIC asks a sharper question: what has it earned on the money put in since a chosen year?
How to read itROIC comfortably above the cost of capital — call it 11–13% in India — means growth compounds. Below it, growth consumes. Incremental below headline means recent investment is earning less than the legacy business.
Where it failsDistorted in the year of a large acquisition. Understated for companies mid-build, where capital is deployed but capacity has not yet been commissioned — an incubator will look poor until it does not.
Read downward. Cash can cover EBITDA and still not survive capex — the third rung is where a capital-hungry business shows itself.
The earnings quality ladder — Not a named model — the standard sequence an analyst walks when testing whether reported profit is real.
Three ratios read in order, each stricter than the last.
How to read itRead downward. Each rung failing where the one above passed tells you exactly where the cash is going.
Where it failsA single year of heavy capex depresses the third rung legitimately. Judge it across a cycle.
Against a policy rate near 6%, most sound Indian corporates borrow between 7% and 10%.
Cost of debt — Interest expense over average borrowings — the effective rate the company actually pays.
What the lenders charge, which is a market verdict on credit quality that no rating agency delay affects.
How to read itAgainst a policy rate near 6%, most sound Indian corporates borrow between 7% and 10%. Read the direction over years as much as the level.
Where it failsUnderstated where a large share of interest is capitalised into projects under construction. Not meaningful for lenders, where interest is cost of goods.
The same measure computed on different bases gives different answers. Rather than pick one silently, here is the gap and why it exists.
A full-year figure and a trailing figure will differ whenever the most recent quarters ran hotter or colder than the year. Neither is wrong; the page uses the filed-year figure because every other number here is on that basis.
Each framework below is a set of stated, mechanical criteria from published work, run against this company's own filed numbers. Passing or failing a screen is not a verdict — different frameworks disagree by design, and that disagreement is itself informative.
Benjamin Graham's stated criteria for a defensive stock, applied to the filed numbers. A company failing several is not disqualified — Graham designed these to be deliberately strict.
Two ratios only: what the business earns on its capital, and what you pay for those earnings. Designed to be ranked across a universe rather than read in isolation.
The fundamental half of William O'Neil's framework. The market and leadership components are judgement calls and are not scored here.
The characteristics long-term holders commonly look for: cash-backed earnings, high returns on capital, and debt that never forces a decision.
Bars are revenue; the line is net margin. Revenue rising while the line falls is the shape worth noticing.
Operating cash first, then what the business spent and raised.
One year is a snapshot. These are the two lines that matter across a cycle.
Rising debtor or inventory days against flat sales is the earliest visible sign of stress.
Set your own assumptions and watch the numbers move. A scenario calculator — the outputs are the arithmetic of your inputs.
One canonical set of figures — the same numbers used everywhere else on this page and on the screener.
How the register has moved over recent quarters — the direction matters more than the level.
Promoter rose from 43.11% to 43.74% across these quarters.
FII rose from 14.37% to 14.63% across these quarters.
MF trimmed from 6.65% to 6.38% across these quarters.
Other trimmed from 35.87% to 35.25% across these quarters.
Where cash gets stuck. A rising inventory or debtor line against flat sales is the earliest sign of trouble in the numbers.
| Measure | FY2019 | FY2020 | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | FY2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Debtor days
How long customers take to pay | 32 | 31 | 21 | 21 | 18 | 19 | 23 | 23 |
| Inventory days
How long stock sits before it sells | 154 | 179 | 179 | 200 | 180 | 194 | 179 | 130 |
| Payable days
How long the company takes to pay suppliers | 133 | 172 | 229 | 239 | 216 | 221 | 177 | 152 |
| Cash conversion cycle
Debtor + inventory − payable days | 53 | 38 | -29 | -18 | -17 | -7 | 25 | 1 |
| Working capital days | -47 | -84 | -103 | -88 | -75 | -91 | -105 | -81 |
| ROCE %
Return on capital employed | 8.0% | 8.0% | 9.0% | 9.0% | 10.0% | 9.0% | 8.0% | 8.0% |
The shape of the business over time (annual) — read the direction, not the single print.
| Line | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | FY2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue from operations | 76,404 | 95,701 | 117,627 | 130,978 | 148,478 | 175,431 |
| Other income | 1,130 | 1,648 | 3,733 | 783 | 1,517 | 1,047 |
| Depreciation | 4,033 | 4,161 | 4,552 | 5,001 | 6,454 | 7,726 |
| Finance cost | 5,723 | 4,776 | 6,044 | 9,277 | 12,500 | 15,144 |
| Profit before tax | 10,009 | 13,143 | 14,727 | 13,700 | 10,825 | 14,473 |
| Net profit (owners) | 6,987 | 11,206 | 11,078 | 9,926 | 7,756 | 10,300 |
| EPS (₹) | 63.30 | 110.96 | 100.33 | 85.42 | 54.46 | 72.98 |
Exceptional items, total income and EBITDA are read from the filed statements.
| Metric | Sep 2024 | Dec 2024 | Mar 2025 | Jun 2025 | Sep 2025 | Dec 2025 | Mar 2026 | Jun 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 34,223 | 35,378 | 44,267 | 40,118 | 39,900 | 44,312 | 51,101 | 48,716 |
| Expenses | 28,197 | 28,575 | 35,517 | 31,296 | 32,228 | 35,442 | 40,227 | 37,565 |
| Other Income | 403 | 382 | 485 | 376 | 406 | 65 | 143 | 318 |
| Depreciation | 1,572 | 1,608 | 1,831 | 1,810 | 1,899 | 1,975 | 2,042 | 1,988 |
| Profit before tax | 1,830 | 2,308 | 3,996 | 3,837 | 2,510 | 3,051 | 4,960 | 5,183 |
| Net Profit | 983 | 1,734 | 2,973 | 2,771 | 1,498 | 2,233 | 3,684 | 3,846 |
| EPS | 4.78 | 12.45 | 21.98 | 20.87 | 8.13 | 15.23 | 27.86 | 31.53 |
| Item | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | FY2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equity Capital | 132 | 132 | 132 | 133 | 136 | 136 |
| Reserves | 65,362 | 75,567 | 78,610 | 88,520 | 97,373 | 103,334 |
| Borrowings | 79,078 | 74,744 | 103,039 | 137,155 | 186,326 | 227,853 |
| Fixed Assets | 85,023 | 88,996 | 94,896 | 100,494 | 141,148 | 149,452 |
| CWIP | 5,769 | 6,615 | 7,778 | 18,358 | 14,765 | 16,465 |
| Investments | 88,017 | 96,766 | 105,355 | 129,306 | 140,496 | 154,982 |
| Total Assets | 267,349 | 289,149 | 336,823 | 412,116 | 500,040 | 569,134 |
| Line | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | FY2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash from operations | 15,075 | 7,038 | -12,685 | -10,719 | -17,170 | -17,810 |
| Cash from investing | -7,146 | -1,053 | -13,712 | -23,114 | -23,313 | -17,798 |
| Cash from financing | -8,003 | -6,733 | 26,469 | 33,908 | 42,978 | 33,523 |
| Free cash flow | 11,525 | -1,467 | -24,610 | -30,042 | -33,688 | -33,130 |
| Net change in cash | -75 | -748 | 72 | 75 | 2,495 | -2,085 |
Cash from operations is the number profit has to answer to. Free cash flow is what remains after the business pays for its own growth.
The part no one reads: the auditor's opinion, the contingent liabilities buried in the notes, the covenants, and the claims in the deck placed beside the figures that test them.
Where analysts pressed management on the earnings call, and exactly how management answered — the questions that were hardest to answer are usually the ones that matter.
Each score is built from disclosed evidence against a fixed rubric. Open a card to see exactly which tests passed and which did not — a score you cannot audit is worth nothing.