Altman Z″
Needs current assets and current liabilities.
HINDUNILVR · Fast Moving Consumer Goods · INE030A01027
Analyst mean 2.16 · 38 analysts · 45% bullishConcall notes and the half-year checks appear once the filing read is in.
A 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.
Operating cash is 73% of trailing profit — a modest gap worth keeping an eye on.
Why this reading: Noted with caution: a mild gap that is commonly benign (working-capital timing) but worth tracking across years.
Operating cash ₹10,999 cr vs trailing profit ₹15,059 cr. Gaps in the 0.5–0.9 range are usually timing, occasionally a early tell.
Net margin has narrowed from 40.2% to 22.7% year-on-year — profitability per rupee of sales is shrinking.
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.
Quarter net margin 22.7% vs 40.2% four quarters earlier. Sustained compression signals pricing pressure, cost inflation, or mix deterioration.
Both revenue and profit grew over the last year (5.8% and 38.3%) — growth is translating to the bottom line.
Why this reading: A positive signal in the numbers, shown for balance alongside the concerns.
Trailing revenue ₹66,052 cr, trailing profit ₹14,971 cr. Profit growing at least as fast as revenue indicates operating leverage or pricing power.
Free cash flow is positive and consistent — the business funds itself after capex.
Why this reading: A positive signal in the numbers, shown for balance alongside the concerns.
Latest free cash flow ₹9,667 cr. Negative in only 0 of 12 years. A self-funding business needs less external capital and dilutes less.
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 5.1% of assets. Free cash flow negative in 0 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
₹98,686 cr ÷ ₹94,106 cr, over 12 years
1.05×
Above 1.0 means cash exceeds reported profit — the healthier reading.(net profit − operating cash flow) ÷ average total assets
(₹15,059 − ₹10,999) cr ÷ average assets
5.1%
The share of profit that is accounting entries rather than cash. Above ~10% is where accruals start to dominate.net margin × asset turnover × leverage
23.4% × 0.81 × 1.64
30.9%
Splits ROE into whether returns come from operations or from borrowing.EBIT ÷ finance cost
₹18,629 cr ÷ ₹410 cr
45.44×
How many times operating profit covers the interest bill.borrowings ÷ net worth
₹1,478 cr ÷ ₹48,739 cr
0.03×
Read against the sector — infrastructure carries more than software.growth in fixed assets + CWIP, against growth in revenue
capital +8% vs revenue +6%, FY2023 to FY2026
2pp 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.
The growth rate that makes today's market value equal the discounted cash flows, at a 11.5% discount rate and 4.0% terminal growth. Not a forecast — the arithmetic of what is already in the price. Compare it with what the business has actually delivered.
Reverse DCF — the growth already in the price — A standard inversion of discounted cash flow, used to avoid the forecasting problem entirely.
Instead of forecasting cash flows and deriving a value, it takes today's market value as given and solves for the growth rate that would justify it. The output is not a view — it is the arithmetic of what the market is currently assuming.
How to read itCompare it with what the business has actually delivered. A price implying 30% a year against a decade of 15% is a demanding assumption; the reverse is a modest one.
Where it failsUseless when free cash flow is negative or unusually depressed, which is common mid-capex. Highly sensitive to the discount rate — a point either way moves the answer materially.
Some figures appear twice on this page with different values. That is not an error — they sit on different bases. The live feed reports a rolling twelve months; everything computed here comes from the last audited statements. Both are shown so you can see which is which.
Where the two disagree, every model, screen and ratio computed on this page uses the filed figure, because the rest of the page is on that basis.
Models that need these lines are withheld rather than estimated: net worth, current assets, current liabilities, trade receivables, inventory, net block. Nothing on this page is back-solved from a figure the company did not publish.
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.
Median of the companies we hold in the same sector (Fast Moving Consumer Goods). Every figure on both sides is the live feed's trailing twelve months, so the two are measured the same way whatever depth of extraction this company has had. A number only means something next to something else — expensive against the market and cheap against peers are different facts.
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 held steady from 61.90% to 61.90% across these quarters.
FII trimmed from 10.79% to 9.50% across these quarters.
MF rose from 6.39% to 7.15% across these quarters.
Other rose from 20.92% to 21.45% 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 | 17 | 11 | 14 | 16 | 19 | 18 | 23 | 19 |
| Inventory days
How long stock sits before it sells | 59 | 65 | 66 | 65 | 55 | 55 | 61 | 61 |
| Payable days
How long the company takes to pay suppliers | 166 | 176 | 163 | 145 | 123 | 143 | 156 | 169 |
| Cash conversion cycle
Debtor + inventory − payable days | -90 | -101 | -83 | -64 | -50 | -70 | -72 | -89 |
| Working capital days | -30 | -31 | -32 | -22 | -15 | -22 | -34 | -23 |
| ROCE %
Return on capital employed | 116.0% | 117.0% | 39.0% | 25.0% | 27.0% | 27.0% | 28.0% | 28.0% |
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 | 47,028 | 52,446 | 60,580 | 61,896 | 61,328 | 64,468 |
| Other income | 170 | 219 | 448 | 817 | 1,355 | 4,923 |
| Depreciation | 1,074 | 1,091 | 1,137 | 1,216 | 1,253 | 1,333 |
| Finance cost | 117 | 106 | 114 | 334 | 381 | 410 |
| Profit before tax | 10,605 | 11,879 | 13,344 | 13,926 | 14,419 | 18,219 |
| Net profit (owners) | 7,999 | 8,892 | 10,143 | 10,282 | 10,671 | 15,059 |
| EPS (₹) | 34.03 | 37.79 | 43.07 | 43.74 | 45.32 | 64.01 |
Exceptional items, total income and EBITDA are read from the filed statements.
| Metric | Sep 2023 | Dec 2023 | Mar 2024 | Jun 2024 | Sep 2024 | Dec 2024 | Mar 2025 | Jun 2025 | Sep 2025 | Dec 2025 | Mar 2026 | Jun 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 15,623 | 15,567 | 15,210 | 15,707 | 15,926 | 15,556 | 15,190 | 15,757 | 15,919 | 16,441 | 16,351 | 17,341 |
| Other Income | 178 | 184 | 309 | 209 | 203 | 733 | 149 | 103 | 269 | 4,048 | 503 | 113 |
| Expenses | 11,828 | 11,902 | 11,675 | 11,965 | 12,139 | 11,867 | 11,572 | 12,118 | 12,137 | 12,660 | 12,514 | 13,394 |
| Depreciation | 297 | 313 | 320 | 329 | 338 | 318 | 318 | 326 | 322 | 337 | 348 | 353 |
| Finance cost | 88 | 91 | 105 | 93 | 110 | 109 | 77 | 122 | 124 | 88 | 76 | 75 |
| Profit before tax | 3,588 | 3,445 | 3,419 | 3,529 | 3,542 | 3,995 | 3,372 | 3,294 | 3,605 | 7,404 | 3,916 | 3,632 |
| Net Profit | 2,657 | 2,508 | 2,561 | 2,612 | 2,595 | 2,989 | 2,475 | 2,768 | 2,694 | 6,603 | 2,994 | 2,680 |
| EPS | 11.30 | 10.68 | 10.89 | 11.11 | 11.03 | 12.70 | 10.49 | 11.73 | 11.43 | 28.12 | 12.73 | 11.38 |
| Item | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | FY2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equity Capital | 235 | 235 | 235 | 235 | 235 | 235 |
| Reserves | 47,439 | 48,826 | 50,069 | 50,983 | 49,167 | 48,504 |
| Borrowings | 0 | 1,043 | 1,219 | 1,484 | 1,648 | 1,478 |
| Net block | 51,443 | 51,473 | 52,678 | 53,744 | 54,335 | 57,428 |
| CWIP | 745 | 1,313 | 1,132 | 1,025 | 1,009 | 880 |
| Investments | 2,709 | 3,521 | 2,882 | 4,625 | 3,810 | 4,359 |
| Total Assets | 68,740 | 70,506 | 73,077 | 78,489 | 79,863 | 79,738 |
| Line | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | FY2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash from operations | 9,163 | 9,048 | 9,991 | 15,469 | 11,886 | 10,999 |
| Cash from investing | -1,228 | -1,728 | -1,484 | -5,324 | 6,473 | -3,676 |
| Cash from financing | -9,309 | -8,015 | -8,953 | -10,034 | -13,101 | -10,810 |
| Free cash flow | 5,097 | 7,995 | 8,980 | 14,012 | 10,624 | 9,667 |
| Net change in cash | -1,374 | -695 | -446 | 111 | 5,258 | -3,487 |
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.
These are coverage counts, not ratings. Each one asks a fixed set of questions of the filings and reports how many the company answered. A company that discloses nothing counts nothing here — that is a statement about the disclosure, not about the business.
The same read, applied to the companies this one competes with.
Hindustan Unilever Ltd. reported revenue of ₹18,226 cr for July to September 2026, +14.5% on the year and +5.1% on the quarter. That is faster than this quarter has grown in recent years (+0.9% on average), so the year-on-year number is not just the season. It is the highest quarterly revenue in the last 12 quarters on record. Over the last four quarters revenue comes to ₹68,359 cr, +9.5% on the four before.
Operating profit (EBITDA) was ₹4,089 cr, a margin of 22.4%, −132 bps on the year and −33 bps on the quarter. It is the narrowest margin of the last 8 quarters (range 22.4% to 23.8%). Operating costs grew +16.5%, faster than revenue at +14.5%, so operating profit grew less than sales.
Net profit was ₹2,796 cr, +3.8% on the year and +4.3% on the quarter, with earnings per share of ₹11.87. Profit before other income, one-offs and tax grew faster, at +9.5%; other income, one-offs or tax held the headline back. The tax rate was 27% against an average of 23% over the previous 8 quarters, which weighed on profit this quarter. Profit over the last four quarters totals ₹15,073 cr, +38.0% on the four before.
Of the 6 companies in Fast Moving Consumer Goods that have reported Q2 FY27 so far, Hindustan Unilever Ltd. ranks 5th on revenue growth; the sector median is +16.8%. Its margin moved −132 bps on the year against a sector median of −52 bps.
Hindustan Unilever Ltd. is a Nifty 50 company. Of the 13 Nifty 50 companies reported so far, the median profit growth is +16.5%; Hindustan Unilever Ltd.'s +3.8% puts it below that.
On earnings per share of ₹64.10 over the last four quarters, the stock at ₹1,878.10 trades at 29.3 times trailing earnings.
Written from the quarterly statements. The filing read adds the balance sheet and cash flow filed with this quarter, the auditor's review, segment results, one-off items line by line and what management said on the call.
No check fired. That is a statement about the checks below, not a verdict on the company.
Could not run on this quarter: Exceptional items that recur, Cash behind the profit, Receivables against sales, Inventory against sales, Borrowing while holding cash, Auditor's review or audit report, IPO money used as stated, Related-party transactions, Exits, postponements, restatements, Promoter pledges and allotments, Earlier promises against delivery. Most need the filing read (balance sheet, cash flow, auditor, disclosures).
Net profit a year ago, each driver's change, and net profit now. Blue added profit, red took it away.
This quarter's filing carries a balance sheet and a cash flow statement. The cash, receivables and borrowing checks run once the filing read is in.
| Q3 FY24 | Q4 FY24 | Q1 FY25 | Q2 FY25 | Q3 FY25 | Q4 FY25 | Q1 FY26 | Q2 FY26 | Q3 FY26 | Q4 FY26 | Q1 FY27 | Q2 FY27 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | ₹15,567 cr | ₹15,210 cr | ₹15,707 cr | ₹15,926 cr | ₹15,556 cr | ₹15,190 cr | ₹15,757 cr | ₹15,919 cr | ₹16,441 cr | ₹16,351 cr | ₹17,341 cr | ₹18,226 cr |
| YoY | — | — | +1% | +2% | −0% | −0% | +0% | −0% | +6% | +8% | +10% | +14% |
| EBITDA margin | 23.5% | 23.2% | 23.8% | 23.8% | 23.7% | 23.8% | 23.1% | 23.8% | 23.0% | 23.5% | 22.8% | 22.4% |
| Other income, % of PBT | 5% | 9% | 6% | 6% | 18% | 4% | 3% | 7% | 55% | 13% | 3% | 4% |
| Exceptional items | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Tax rate | 27% | 25% | 26% | 27% | 25% | 27% | 16% | 25% | 11% | 24% | 26% | 27% |
| Net profit | ₹2,508 cr | ₹2,561 cr | ₹2,612 cr | ₹2,595 cr | ₹2,989 cr | ₹2,475 cr | ₹2,768 cr | ₹2,694 cr | ₹6,603 cr | ₹2,994 cr | ₹2,680 cr | ₹2,796 cr |
| YoY | — | — | +2% | −2% | +19% | −3% | +6% | +4% | +121% | +21% | −3% | +4% |
| Core profit YoY | — | — | −0% | −2% | +0% | +4% | −4% | −0% | +3% | +6% | +10% | +9% |
| EPS | ₹10.68 | ₹10.89 | ₹11.11 | ₹11.03 | ₹12.70 | ₹10.49 | ₹11.73 | ₹11.43 | ₹28.12 | ₹12.73 | ₹11.38 | ₹11.87 |
| Flags | · | · | ✓ | ✓ | 1 | ✓ | 1 | ✓ | 3 | 1 | ✓ | ✓ |
Each quarter is read with the same rules. Balance-sheet and cash checks run on half-year and annual quarters; filing-read checks run where a read exists.