One-glance verdict
Overvalued
$-3.22 our estimate vs market $7.24
Wall Street consensus: $11.95 (-470.8% lower than our fair-value estimate)
325% below our estimate, beyond the bull case
Fundamentals snapshot
Utz Brands, Inc.
UTZ · NYQ · Consumer Defensive · Packaged Foods
Current price
$7.24
52-week range
$6.78 - $14.67
Market cap
$641.01M
Balance sheet
Distressed
0.25x Concerning
Net debt $964.60M. Interest coverage shows how many times profit covers the interest bill.
What stands out
3 Rewards
1 Risk
3 rewards · 1 risks
- Reward Revenue grew 0.6% last year.
- Reward Free cash flow was positive in 8/10 years.
- Reward Dividend yield is 3.5% with 7-year payout history.
- Risk Return on equity was -1.2% last year — the company lost money on shareholders' equity.
What this company does
Utz Brands, Inc.
Utz is a snack food company that makes popular items like potato chips, pretzels, and tortilla chips under brands you might recognize, such as Utz, On The Border, and Zapp's. The company earns money by selling these snacks to grocery stores and other retailers through its large distribution network. This matters because snack foods are a common household staple, which can lead to more consistent and predictable sales for the company over time.
How the company got here
Utz started in 1921 when William and Salie Utz began making potato chips in their home kitchen in Hanover, Pennsylvania. For nearly a century, it grew as a family-owned business, expanding by acquiring other regional snack companies to broaden its reach and product variety. A major turning point came in 2020 when Utz merged with a special purpose acquisition company (a company formed to raise money to buy another company) called Collier Creek Holdings, which made Utz a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. This move provided significant funds to pay down debt and fuel further growth and acquisitions. The founding family still maintains a majority ownership stake in the company.
What it actually does
Utz is a company that makes and sells a wide variety of salty snacks across the United States. You would recognize their products in the snack aisle of grocery stores, convenience stores, and big-box retailers like Walmart. Their offerings include many types of potato chips, pretzels, tortilla chips, cheese snacks, pork rinds, and popcorn. Besides their flagship Utz brand, they also own other popular snack brands you might know, such as On The Border, Zapp's, Boulder Canyon, and Golden Flake.
Branded Salty Snacks
This is the company's main business, focusing on snacks sold under their well-known brand names. This part of the business is what the company is strategically focused on growing, as these products generally have higher growth and margins (the profit made on each sale). This segment includes their 'Power Four' brands: Utz, On The Border, Zapp's, and Boulder Canyon, which are the primary drivers of sales growth. This is the largest part of the company, and its performance is a key indicator of the company's health.
Non-Branded & Non-Salty Snacks
This smaller part of the business includes products that are not part of their main salty snack focus. This can include partner brands they distribute, private label products they make for other retailers (like a store's own brand of chips), and other co-manufacturing agreements. While this segment is not a focus for growth, it is managed to generate steady cash flow (the cash generated from normal business operations). The money from this segment helps fund investments in their main branded salty snacks business.
What management is betting on now
Management's current strategy is to grow faster than the overall salty snack market. They are focusing on expanding the distribution of their key 'Power Four' brands into new geographic areas, particularly in states like Florida and California where they see a large opportunity to gain market share. The company is also investing in innovation to create new, on-trend products and is working to make its supply chain (the entire process of making and selling their goods, from sourcing ingredients to delivering to stores) more efficient to save money. A key goal is to increase free cash flow (the cash a company has left after paying for its operating expenses and capital expenditures, which are investments in physical assets like new equipment) to reduce debt.
Price history
How the share price has moved
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Loading price history…
Earnings history
Last 8 quarters — what happened
Click any quarter to read the call summary and what the numbers say.
FY2024 Q2
$-15.26M
FY2024 Q3
$29.03M
FY2024 Q4
$16.45M
FY2025 Q1
$-59.01M
FY2025 Q2
$-10.59M
FY2025 Q3
$27.70M
FY2025 Q4
$51.30M
FY2026 Q1
$-26.00M
Revenue
$361.30M
Net income
$-1.70M
Diluted EPS
-0.02
Operating cash flow
$-12.20M
Free cash flow
$-26.00M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$342.22M
Net income
$-2.50M
Diluted EPS
-0.03
Operating cash flow
$64.90M
Free cash flow
$51.30M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$377.80M
Net income
$-14.70M
Diluted EPS
-0.17
Operating cash flow
$51.20M
Free cash flow
$27.70M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$366.70M
Net income
$10.50M
Diluted EPS
0.12
Operating cash flow
$16.32M
Free cash flow
$-10.59M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$352.08M
Net income
$7.50M
Diluted EPS
0.09
Operating cash flow
$-20.22M
Free cash flow
$-59.01M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$341.05M
Net income
$2.31M
Diluted EPS
0.04
Operating cash flow
$54.21M
Free cash flow
$16.45M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$365.52M
Net income
$-2.20M
Diluted EPS
-0.03
Operating cash flow
$52.12M
Free cash flow
$29.03M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$356.19M
Net income
$19.85M
Diluted EPS
0.23
Operating cash flow
$8.90M
Free cash flow
$-15.26M
Fetching…
Sources
Is it cheap or expensive?
Fair value $-3.22 vs current price $7.24
Wall Street consensus is the average analyst price target: $11.95 (-470.8% lower than our fair-value estimate).
Our most-likely fair value is $-3.22 a share — about 144.5% below today's price of $7.24, so the stock currently looks expensive (overvalued).
Is it drowning in debt?
Distressed
Net debt $964.6M. Interest coverage 0.2x.
Net debt
$964.60M
Interest coverage
0.25x
Utz Brands, Inc.'s profit covers its interest bill about 0.2 times over. which is weaker than most peers shown here.
Distressed
Worse cushion
Baseline
Better cushion
UTZ
BASELINE
Utz Brands, Inc.
Total debt $1.04B Interest coverage 0.25x This is the baseline the peer rows are being compared against.
Total debt $192.53M Interest coverage 67.00x +27,026% vs UTZ Carries about 271.3x more debt cushion than UTZ.
Total debt $1.47B Interest coverage 4.25x +1,622% vs UTZ Carries about 17.2x more debt cushion than UTZ.
Total debt $1.22B Interest coverage 5.23x +2,015% vs UTZ Carries about 21.2x more debt cushion than UTZ.
Total debt $449.85M Interest coverage 9.40x +3,707% vs UTZ Carries about 38.1x more debt cushion than UTZ.
Total debt $103.50M Interest coverage 23.33x +9,345% vs UTZ Carries about 94.4x more debt cushion than UTZ.
What you should know
The case for and against UTZ
3 Rewards
1 Risk
Rewards
-
Revenue grew 0.6% last year.
-
Free cash flow was positive in 8/10 years.
-
Dividend yield is 3.5% with 7-year payout history.
Risks
-
Return on equity was -1.2% last year — the company lost money on shareholders' equity.
The numbers
All the key metrics, grouped by purpose
Tap any ? icon to learn what it means.
Valuation
How expensive the stock looks
P/E (TTM)
—
Forward P/E
8.65x
P/B
0.90x
P/S
0.44x
EV/EBITDA
22.77x
PEG ratio
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Profitability
How much profit each dollar creates
Gross margin
25.4%
Operating margin
1.8%
Net margin
-0.6%
ROE
-1.2%
ROA
0.3%
Health
Liquidity and balance-sheet strength
Debt / equity
0.78x
Current ratio
1.14x
Quick ratio
0.59x
Total debt
$1.04B
Total cash
$73.70M
Growth
How the business has been compounding
Revenue TTM
$1.45B
Revenue 5Y CAGR
5.1%
EPS TTM
-0.10
EPS 5Y CAGR
—
Cash flow
How much cash the business throws off
Operating CF TTM
$120.22M
Free CF TTM
$9.40M
FCF margin
0.6%
Dividend
Shareholder payout
Yield
3.5%
Payout ratio
2,460.0%
Last ex-div date
2026-06-22