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DBX, Dropbox

Software asset-light Cyclical

Our market opportunity grew as we've expanded from keeping files in sync to keeping teams in sync.

We've largely accomplished that mission by building tools to help people work from anywhere—and along the way we recognized that for most of our users, sharing and collaborating on the Dropbox, Inc. platform ("Dropbox") was even more valuable than storing files.

Dropbox breaks down silos by centralizing the flow of information between the products and services our users prefer, even if they're not our own.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K

DBX · Dropbox

The business

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

Revenue · FY2025

$2.5B

−1.1% YoY · 6% 5-yr CAGR

Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average

Revenue $2.5B 5-yr avg $2.4B

Gross margin 80% 5-yr avg 81%

Operating margin 26.6% 5-yr avg 17.7%

Owner-earnings margin 38% 5-yr avg 33%

Free cash flow margin 38% 5-yr avg 33%

Next report By 11/8 · the 10-Q for the quarter ended late September · due within 40 days of period end · has filed ~39 days after · the wire records it on arrival

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 79% and operating margin about 1.5% 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 −35% and 27% 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. The cash cycle has run negative through the cycle (a median of −20 days): the operation is paid before it pays, so working capital releases cash as the business grows rather than tying it up. Read this kind of business on retention and the cost of growth. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on supplier & input 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 −1%, above 15% in 3 of 6 years). The steadier read is owner earnings: roughly 29% of revenue reaches owners as cash, consistently, and customers and suppliers fund the business through negative working capital. 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.

Where the money comes from

read the 10-K →

44% of revenue comes from outside the United States.

Revenue by geography, FY2025

United States56%$1.4B
International44%$1.1B

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	TTMTTMJun 2026
											Income statement
$845M	$1.1B	$1.4B	$1.7B	$1.9B	$2.2B	$2.3B	$2.5B	$2.5B	$2.5B	$2.5B	RevenueRevenue
$454M	$738M	$997M	$1.3B	$1.5B	$1.7B	$1.9B	$2.0B	$2.1B	$2.0B	$2.0B	Gross profitGross prof.
54%	67%	72%	75%	78%	79%	81%	81%	83%	80%	80%	Gross marginGross mgn
42%	43%	52%	40%	34%	30%	27%	28%	28%	24%	24%	SG&A / revenueSG&A/rev
34%	34%	55%	40%	38%	35%	38%	37%	36%	29%	29%	R&D / revenueR&D/rev
($194M)	($114M)	($494M)	($81M)	($277M)	$274M	$181M	$539M	$486M	$689M	$675M	Operating incomeOp. inc.
−22.9%	−10.3%	−35.5%	−4.8%	−14.5%	12.7%	7.8%	21.5%	19.1%	27.3%	26.6%	Operating marginOp. mgn
($205M)	($112M)	($480M)	($52M)	($250M)	$299M	$193M	$554M	$510M	$618M	—	Pretax incomePretax
($210M)	($112M)	($485M)	($53M)	($256M)	$336M	$553M	$454M	$452M	$508M	$443M	Net incomeNet inc.
—	—	—	—	—	—	—	18%	11%	18%	21%	Effective tax rateTax rate
											Cash flow & returns
$253M	$330M	$425M	$529M	$571M	$730M	$797M	$784M	$894M	$952M	$981M	Operating cash flowOp. cash
$174M	$171M	$159M	$160M	$145M	$136M	$141M	$140M	$109M	$132M	$132M	DepreciationDeprec.
$141M	$107M	$102M	$160M	$421M	($29M)	($228M)	($148M)	($14M)	$11M	$102M	Working capital & otherWC & other
$115M	$25M	$63M	$136M	$80M	$22M	$34M	$24M	$23M	$21M	$23M	CapexCapex
13.6%	2.3%	4.5%	8.2%	4.2%	1.0%	1.5%	1.0%	0.9%	0.8%	0.9%	Capex / revenueCapex/rev
$137M	$305M	$362M	$392M	$491M	$708M	$764M	$759M	$872M	$931M	$957M	Owner earningsOwner earn.
16.3%	27.6%	26.0%	23.6%	25.6%	32.8%	32.8%	30.4%	34.2%	36.9%	37.8%	Owner earnings marginOE mgn
$137M	$305M	$362M	$392M	$491M	$708M	$764M	$759M	$872M	$931M	$957M	Free cash flowFCF
16.3%	27.6%	26.0%	23.6%	25.6%	32.8%	32.8%	30.4%	34.2%	36.9%	37.8%	Free cash flow marginFCF mgn
—	$0	$0	$174M	$0	$140M	$75M	$0	$58M	$13M	$5M	AcquisitionsAcquis.
—	—	$0	$0	$398M	$1.1B	$795M	$540M	$1.2B	$1.7B	—	BuybacksBuybacks
($118M)	($24M)	($634M)	($320M)	($234M)	($525M)	($49M)	$395M	$444M	$112M	—	Investing cash flowInv. cash
($135M)	($232M)	$301M	($177M)	($578M)	$16M	($1.0B)	($799M)	($587M)	($1.5B)	—	Financing cash flowFin. cash
($4M)	$3M	($3M)	$200K	$4M	($3M)	($7M)	$2M	($6M)	$12M	—	Exchange-rate effectFX
($4M)	$77M	$89M	$32M	($236M)	$218M	($300M)	$382M	$746M	($455M)	—	Change in cashΔ cash
—	—	-248%	-25%	-1158%	50%	22%	74%	—	—	—	ROICROIC
-171%	-109%	-72%	-7%	-77%	—	—	—	—	—	—	Return on equityROE
−171%	−109%	−72%	−7%	−77%	—	—	—	—	—	—	Retained to equityRetained/eq
											Balance sheet
$353M	$430M	$519M	$551M	$315M	$533M	$233M	$615M	$1.3B	$891M	$1.1B	Cash & investmentsCash+inv
—	$29M	$29M	$37M	$43M	$50M	$54M	$69M	$70M	$79M	$76M	ReceivablesReceiv.
—	$32M	$33M	$41M	$19M	$26M	$39M	$39M	$37M	$24M	$36M	Accounts payablePayables
—	($3M)	($5M)	($4M)	$25M	$24M	$15M	$30M	$34M	$55M	$41M	Operating working capitalOper. WC
—	$518M	$1.2B	$1.2B	$1.2B	$1.8B	$1.5B	$1.5B	$1.7B	$1.2B	$1.3B	Current assetsCur. assets
—	$738M	$838M	$1.0B	$1.1B	$1.2B	$1.2B	$1.2B	$1.2B	$1.9B	$1.2B	Current liabilitiesCur. liab.
—	0.7×	1.4×	1.2×	1.1×	1.6×	1.2×	1.3×	1.4×	0.6×	1.1×	Current ratioCurr. ratio
—	$342M	$311M	$445M	$339M	$322M	$308M	$309M	$359M	$378M	—	Net PP&ENet PP&E
$96M	$99M	$97M	$235M	$237M	$357M	$403M	$402M	$443M	$455M	$457M	GoodwillGoodwill
—	$1.0B	$1.7B	$2.7B	$2.4B	$3.1B	$3.1B	$3.0B	$3.3B	$2.8B	$2.8B	Total assetsAssets
—	—	—	—	$0	$1.4B	$1.4B	$1.4B	$1.4B	$1.4B	$2.6B	Total debtDebt
—	—	—	—	($315M)	$837M	$1.1B	$763M	$53M	$542M	$1.5B	Net debt / (cash)Net debt
—	$917M	$1.0B	$1.9B	$2.1B	$3.4B	$3.4B	$3.1B	$4.1B	$4.6B	—	Total liabilitiesTotal liab.
$123M	$103M	$677M	$808M	$334M	($294M)	($309M)	($166M)	($752M)	($1.8B)	($2.2B)	Shareholders’ equityEquity
17.5%	14.9%	46.7%	15.7%	13.7%	13.3%	14.2%	13.5%	13.6%	11.9%	12.0%	Stock comp / revenueSBC/rev
											Per share
189M	196M	359M	412M	414M	396M	363M	346M	323M	273M	232M	Shares out (diluted)Shares
$4.47	$5.65	$3.88	$4.04	$4.62	$5.45	$6.40	$7.24	$7.88	$9.24	$10.92	Revenue / shareRev/sh
$-1.11	$-0.57	$-1.35	$-0.13	$-0.62	$0.85	$1.52	$1.31	$1.40	$1.86	$1.91	EPS (diluted)EPS
$0.73	$1.56	$1.01	$0.95	$1.18	$1.79	$2.10	$2.20	$2.70	$3.41	$4.13	Owner earnings / shareOE/sh
$0.73	$1.56	$1.01	$0.95	$1.18	$1.79	$2.10	$2.20	$2.70	$3.41	$4.13	Free cash flow / shareFCF/sh
$0.61	$0.13	$0.18	$0.33	$0.19	$0.06	$0.09	$0.07	$0.07	$0.08	$0.10	Cap. spending / shareCapex/sh
$0.65	$0.53	$1.89	$1.96	$0.81	$-0.74	$-0.85	$-0.48	$-2.33	$-6.59	$-9.44	Book value / shareBVPS

The diluted share count moved ×1.83 into 2018 — shares issued, not a split the totals corroborate — and the per-share figures carry the counts as filed.

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

	9-yr	5-yr
Revenue / share	+8.4%/yr	+14.9%/yr
Owner earnings / share	+18.8%/yr	+23.6%/yr
Capital spending / share	−20.5%/yr	−16.8%/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-1.1%
“Revenue decreased $27.2 million or 1.1% during the year ended December 31, 2025, as compared to the year ended December 31, 2024, primarily due to our strategic decision to significantly reduce our investment in FormSwift and a challenging Teams environment, offset by growth in our Individuals plans.”
✓ figure matches the filed record

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 $508M of profit into $931M 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$508M

Owner earnings$931M · 37% of revenue

	FY2025	FY2024	FY2023	FY2022	FY2021
Reported net income	$508M	$452M	$454M	$553M	$336M
Depreciationnon-cash charge added back	+$132M	+$109M	+$140M	+$141M	+$136M
Amortization of intangible assetsnon-cash charge added back; the purchase price of past acquisitions, expensed over time	+$26M	+$28M	+$30M	+$16M	+$16M
Stock-based compensationreal costnon-cash, but a real cost	+$301M	+$347M	+$338M	+$331M	+$287M
Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items	−$15M	−$42M	−$178M	−$244M	−$44M
Cash from operations	$952M	$894M	$784M	$797M	$730M
Capital expenditurecash put back in to keep running and to grow	−$21M	−$23M	−$24M	−$34M	−$22M
Owner earnings	$931M	$872M	$759M	$764M	$708M
Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue	37%	34%	30%	33%	33%

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 $301M), owner earnings is nearer $630M.

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? $542M · 0.8× operating profit

Modest net debt

Cash $891M − debt $1.4B

What this means
Netting $891M of cash and short-term investments against $1.4B of debt leaves $542M owed, about 0.8× a year's operating profit (2.1× 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? -6d

Negative, funded by others

DSO 11 + DIO 0 − DPO 18 days

What this means
Days cash is tied up between paying suppliers and collecting from customers. A negative cycle is a quiet moat: suppliers and customers fund the operation (Buffett's “float”), the company grows on other people's money. (Little or no inventory, a services / asset-light model, so the inventory leg is ~0.)

Is it a good business?

Return on invested capital —

Not meaningful here

Invested capital ($1.3B) = debt $1.4B + equity ($1.8B) − cash

Industry peers: median 10%

What this means
Invested capital is near zero or negative, usually years of buybacks pulling equity down. ROIC explodes or flips sign and stops meaning anything. Judge this one on Owner Earnings instead.
Owner-earnings margin 29%

High through the cycle

10-yr median margin, range 16%–37%; latest $931M = operating cash $952M − maintenance capex $21M

Industry peers: median 19%

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 37% of revenue this year, a 29% median across 10 years. Treating stock comp as the real expense it is (less $301M of SBC) leaves $630M.
Are earnings backed by cash? 1.87×

Cash-backed

Cash from ops $952M ÷ net income $508M

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? 184%

Returned more than it generated

Dividends + buybacks $1.7B ÷ Owner Earnings $931M — this fiscal year

What this means
The company returned more than it generated: against $931M of Owner Earnings, $1.7B (184%) went back to shareholders, $0 dividends, $1.7B buybacks — the excess came from the balance sheet or borrowing, not the year's operations. Net of $301M stock comp, the real buyback was about $1.4B. Sustained, that pattern draws down cash or adds debt; the net-debt line above shows where it stands. This year's proportion is 184%; across the record (2016–2025) it is 100%, the capital-allocation section below.
Investing or harvesting? 0.16×

Harvesting

Capex $21M ÷ property depreciation $132M

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.

The promise and the pay packet

What does winning a customer cost? 15%

Sells itself

Selling and marketing $370M ÷ revenue $2.5B

What this means
Sales and marketing as a share of revenue, kept apart from administrative overhead because it answers a different question: how much a business must spend to win the next customer. A company whose product pulls customers in spends little here and keeps the difference; one that must buy its growth is running to stand still, and the spending has to keep rising for revenue to keep rising. Read it beside the growth rate, not alone.
Is the buyback buying ownership, or mopping up? 11.9%

The count is genuinely shrinking

Stock compensation $301M (fiscal 2025), 11.9% of revenue · repurchases $1.7B · diluted shares -24.9% since 2022

What this means
Stock handed to employees is a real cost paid in the owner's own currency: it is charged against profit, but the shares it creates are permanent. Many companies repurchase stock at the same time, which looks like a return of capital and often is not — if the count barely moves, the cash merely cancelled the pay packet and bought the owner nothing. The three states worth telling apart are a count genuinely shrinking, a count standing still despite large repurchases, and a count rising because the issuance was never offset at all.

Graham’s defensive tests · 1 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 · $2.5B

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 Miss

Current ratio ≥ 2× · 0.63×

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 Miss

Debt ≤ working capital · $1.4B vs ($703M) 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 Miss

A profit every year (10-yr record) · 5 loss years

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

Uninterrupted dividends · no dividend line tagged in the data

What this means
An unbroken dividend was Graham's mark of durability. This record carries no dividends-paid line in any year — common for partnerships, whose distributions file under tags the chain doesn't read — so the criterion is withheld rather than judged on silence.
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 $2.05/share (latest year $2.21), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $-7.81/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 5 of 10

What this means
Lost money in 5 year(s), look at what happened there before trusting the average.
Return on capital ≥ 15% 3 of 4 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 −23% → 23% (3-yr avg ends)

What this means
Through the cycle the operating margin widened — about −23% early to 23% lately, median −5% — pricing power intact or improving.
Reinvestment, incremental ROIC —

What this means
The reinvested base moved too little against the change in profit to read a reliable return on it here — the figure would be a small-denominator artifact, not a moat. Judge this one on the owner-earnings record and the cash it returns instead.
Owner earnings growth +17%/yr

What this means
Owner earnings grew about 17% a year over the record.
Worst year 2018 · −35.5% op. margin

What this means
Operations went underwater in 2018, understand why before trusting the good years.
Share count +4.2%/yr

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

All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.

Current Position

as of the latest quarter, Jun 30, 2026

Can 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.

Current assets$1.3B

Cash & short-term investments$1.1B
Receivables$76M
Other current assets$134M

Current liabilities$1.2B

Accounts payable$36M
Other current liabilities$1.1B

Current ratio1.07×all current assets ÷ what's due · Graham looked for 2×

Quick ratio1.07×stricter: inventory excluded

Cash ratio0.90×strictest: cash alone against what's due

Working capital$87Mthe cushion left after near-term bills

Revenue, latest quarter vs. a year ago+0.9%the freshest read on whether the business is still growing

Current ratio, recent quarters0.9× → 1.1×

Deeper floors

Tangible book value($2.7B)equity stripped of goodwill & intangibles

Net current asset value($3.7B)Graham's net-net: current assets less all liabilities

Debt incl. operating leases$389M$389M of it operating leases; with finance leases, “total fixed claims” below reaches $2.2B (annual-report basis)

Deferred revenue$749Mcustomer cash collected before delivery; operating float

From the company's latest filing.

Lease obligations

the lease note, SEC EDGAR →

Debt by another name. What the business owes on the property, aircraft, stores and equipment it rents rather than owns is a fixed claim due on a schedule; added back to the debt, it is the true leverage. That ladder, operating and finance leases together, and what it adds to the debt on the page above.

Operating leasesFinance leases

'26$232M

'27$187M

'28$144M

'29$96M

'30$68M

later$129M

Lease payments by year, scaled to the largest; “later” is everything beyond year five, shown apart. These are the contractual cash payments, before the interest the filing imputes back out to the balance-sheet liability.

Due in the next 12 months$232Ma fixed cash payment, owed whether or not the business has a good year

Total lease payments$856Mevery year plus the tail, undiscounted: the full cash the leases will take

On the balance sheet$753Mthe present value of those payments, the recognised lease liability

True leverage: debt plus leases

On-balance-sheet debt$1.4B

Lease obligations (present value)$753M

Total fixed claims on the business$2.2B

Counting the leases the way Buffett does, the fixed claims on this business come to $2.2B, of which the leases are 34%. The lease wall above and the debt schedule together are the calendar of what must be paid, and when.

Lease ladder read from the ASC 842 tags in the company’s Dec 31, 2025 annual report and reconciled: the yearly buckets sum to the undiscounted total, which less the imputed interest equals the balance-sheet liability; a ladder that doesn’t tie out is withheld.

How the cash was used, 2016–2025

Over the record, the business generated $6.3B of operating cash; how management split it reads as a cash returner, paying most of what it earns straight back to owners.

Reinvested$543M · 9%
Buybacks$5.7B · 92%

Returned to owners$5.7B
100% of the owner earnings the business produced over the span, $0 as dividends and $5.7B as buybacks.
Average price paid for buybacks$23.75
Across the years where the filing reports a share count, 61M shares were bought for $1.5B, about $23.75 each.
Net change in share count22.6%
The diluted count rose from 189M to 232M: issuance (stock pay, deals) outran any buybacks, so owners were diluted on net.
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 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$489M17% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired

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

Cash spent acquiring$460Mover 9 years since fiscal 2017 buying other businesses, against $543M of capital spent building over the 10-year record

None written down over the record; the goodwill is still carried at full cost. That is the deals holding their value on the books so far; whether they keep doing so is the test an owner watches, since the write-down, when it comes, is the admission the price was too high.

Beside that spending sits $178M of cumulative amortization of acquired intangibles charged against earnings since fiscal 2016 — the purchase price of past deals, expensed over time.

Goodwill, acquired intangibles and equity from the latest balance sheet; acquisition spend and amortization summed across the company's full tagged history, write-downs 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	Chief executive	Pay, as filed	“Actually paid”	Owner earnings
2021	Mr. Houston	$1.5M	$25.2M	$708M
2022	Mr. Houston	$1.1M	−$22.8M	$764M
2023	Mr. Houston	$1.5M	$19.5M	$759M
2024	Mr. Houston	$1.7M	−$16.2M	$872M
2025	Mr. Houston	$2.2M	−$42.4M	$931M

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$301M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares in fiscal 2025, 11.9% of revenue, equal to 43.7% 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.

Peers, Software

The same industry, side by side on owner economics and what the growth costs. Each column names the period it is read over, and a median resting on fewer than three years carries that count beside it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each figure against.

Company	Revenuelatest FY, USD	Gross marginmedian over the record	Op. marginmedian over the record	ROICmedian over the record	Owner earn. marginmedian over the record	Sales & marketinglatest FY	Stock paylatest FY
OKTAOkta Inc.	$2.9B	72%	-30.8%	-8%	7%	34.9%	18.6%
PTCPTC Inc.	$2.7B	79%	21.1%	10%	19%	20.7%	7.9%
CHKPCheck Point Software Technologies Ltd.	$2.7B	88%	42.8%	25%	54%	—	—
ANSSAnsys Inc.	$2.5B	87%	31.7%	13%	30%	—	10.6%
NTNXNutanix	$2.5B	79%	-26.6%	-190%3y	-1%	41.6%	13.9%
DBXDropbox	$2.5B	79%	1.5%	-1%	29%	14.7%	11.9%
MDBMongoDB Inc.	$2.5B	73%	-34.1%	-19%	-5%	38.3%	22.3%
TYLTyler Technologies	$2.3B	47%	14.9%	10%	21%	6.4%	6.5%
Group median	—	79%	8.2%	4%	20%	27.8%	11.9%

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 Dropbox has delivered.

Dropbox’s latest year runs above its own through-cycle margin — the reported figure may flatter a peak. So the tool opens on the through-cycle base, Graham’s averaging cutting both ways; clear the toggle below to read the latest year exactly as reported.

Today’s price $

Through the cycle, Dropbox earns about $730M on its 29.0% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 36.9% margin runs above that; the reported figure may flatter a peak you'd be paying on. Normalize, below, values the price on that through-cycle figure rather than the latest year. It comes pre-checked here for that reason, the same rule that already normalizes a trough; clear it to price the year as filed.

Base Normalize · through-cycle ($730M) Net of stock comp (−$304M TTM) Steady-state · maintenance capex ($960M)

—

The assumptions Required return 9% Years of high growth 10 Terminal growth 2.5%

9.0% = the 4.71% 10-year Treasury (Aug 18, 2026) + 4.29 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+5%/yr

Owner-earnings growth · ’16→’25+17%/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 (4.71%, as of Aug 18, 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 $957M on 230M shares outstanding (a weighted basic average, the only count this filer tags); net debt $1.5B. The base opens on the through-cycle figure (the latest year sits above the record’s own median, and Graham’s averaging cuts both ways); clear Normalize to use the year as filed. Net of stock comp treats option pay as the expense it is. Capex ($23M) runs well above depreciation ($132M), so this is a build-out; Steady-state swaps total capex for maintenance (≈ depreciation), lifting the base to about $960M, 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 DBX against another business →

The owners of DBX: the meeting and the votes →

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Dropbox (DBX), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/DBX, data as of 2026-08-17.

Manual order: ← DBVT its page in the Manual DCBG →

Industry order: ← CXM the Software chapter DCBO →