One-glance verdict
Overvalued
$-5.63 our estimate vs market $14.28
Wall Street consensus: $14.31 (-354.1% lower than our fair-value estimate)
353% below our estimate, beyond the bull case
Fundamentals snapshot
Utz Brands, Inc.
UTZ · NYQ · Consumer Defensive · Packaged Foods
Current price
$14.28
52-week range
$6.78 - $14.28
Market cap
$2.06B
Balance sheet
Distressed
0.25x Concerning
Net debt $973.80M. 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 1.0% last year.
- Reward Free cash flow was positive in 8/10 years.
- Reward Dividend yield is 1.8% with 7-year payout history.
- Risk Return on equity was -3.1% last year — the company lost money on shareholders' equity.
What this company does
Utz Brands, Inc.
Utz Brands is a snack company that sells treats like potato chips and pretzels under brands including Utz, On The Border, and Zapp's. The company's success depends on its extensive supply chain (the entire process of making and delivering a product), which ensures its many different snacks are available in a wide variety of stores for people to buy.
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, with a $300 investment. For nearly a century, it grew as a family-owned business, expanding by purchasing other regional snack companies to grow its reach and product variety. A major turning point came in August 2020, when Utz became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange after merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), a company created specifically to buy another business and take it public. This move gave Utz access to more money for growth while allowing the founding family to maintain a majority ownership stake at the time.
What it actually does
Utz makes and sells a wide variety of salty snacks that you would find in the chip aisle of a grocery store. Their products include many kinds of potato chips, pretzels, tortilla chips, cheese snacks, pork rinds, and party mixes. The company sells its snacks under many different brand names, including its main Utz brand as well as others like On The Border, Zapp's, and Boulder Canyon. You can find their snacks in grocery stores, big-box stores like Walmart and Target, convenience stores, and drug stores across the United States.
Branded Salty Snacks
This is the company's main business, focusing on snacks sold under its well-known brand names. This part of the company is what Utz is famous for and includes their 'Power Four' brands: Utz, On The Border, Zapp's, and Boulder Canyon, which are its biggest sellers. This segment also includes a variety of other brands they own, like Golden Flake, Hawaiian, and TGI Fridays snacks. The company sees this area as having the best potential for growth and higher margins (the profit made on each dollar of sales).
Non-Branded & Non-Salty Snacks
This smaller part of the business includes products that don't carry the main Utz brand names. This can include private label products, where Utz makes snacks that are then sold under a grocery store's own brand (like Great Value at Walmart). It also includes co-manufacturing, where Utz produces snacks for other food companies. This part of the business is not the primary focus for growth compared to their branded snacks.
What management is betting on now
The company's main strategy is to grow faster than the overall salty snack market. They plan to do this by expanding the distribution (the process of getting products to stores) of their key brands into more stores and new parts of the country, especially in the western U.S. like California. Utz is also focused on creating new and interesting products and flavors to attract more customers. At the same time, they are working to make their supply chain (the entire process of making and delivering snacks) more efficient to improve profitability and generate more free cash flow (the cash left over after paying for business operations and investments).
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 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
FY2026 Q2
$-1.90M
Revenue
$371.80M
Net income
$-10.10M
Diluted EPS
-0.11
Operating cash flow
$11.70M
Free cash flow
$-1.90M
Fetching…
Sources
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
Is it cheap or expensive?
Fair value $-5.63 vs current price $14.28
Wall Street consensus is the average analyst price target: $14.31 (-354.1% lower than our fair-value estimate).
Our most-likely fair value is $-5.63 a share — about 139.4% below today's price of $14.28, so the stock currently looks expensive (overvalued).
Is it drowning in debt?
Distressed
Net debt $973.8M. Interest coverage 0.2x.
Net debt
$973.80M
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 $1.03B Interest coverage 0.25x This is the baseline the peer rows are being compared against.
Total debt $191.91M 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 $1.17B Interest coverage 5.23x +2,015% vs UTZ Carries about 21.2x more debt cushion than UTZ.
Total debt $448.46M Interest coverage 9.40x +3,707% vs UTZ Carries about 38.1x more debt cushion than UTZ.
Total debt $109.35M Interest coverage 35.80x +14,394% vs UTZ Carries about 144.9x more debt cushion than UTZ.
What you should know
The case for and against UTZ
3 Rewards
1 Risk
Rewards
-
Revenue grew 1.0% last year.
-
Free cash flow was positive in 8/10 years.
-
Dividend yield is 1.8% with 7-year payout history.
Risks
-
Return on equity was -3.1% 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
17.11x
P/B
1.82x
P/S
1.41x
EV/EBITDA
31.50x
PEG ratio
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Profitability
How much profit each dollar creates
Gross margin
25.6%
Operating margin
2.2%
Net margin
-2.0%
ROE
-3.1%
ROA
0.1%
Health
Liquidity and balance-sheet strength
Debt / equity
0.79x
Current ratio
1.06x
Quick ratio
0.54x
Total debt
$1.03B
Total cash
$58.60M
Growth
How the business has been compounding
Revenue TTM
$1.45B
Revenue 5Y CAGR
5.1%
EPS TTM
-0.33
EPS 5Y CAGR
—
Cash flow
How much cash the business throws off
Operating CF TTM
$115.60M
Free CF TTM
$9.40M
FCF margin
0.6%
Dividend
Shareholder payout
Yield
1.8%
Payout ratio
2,460.0%
Last ex-div date
2026-09-21