Debt to assets (Debt/assets)
The share of everything the company owns that is funded by borrowing.
It is the leverage question asked without the distortion of a small equity base.
How it is computed here
Total debt / total assets
Combines more than one basis. See the note. The pipeline prefers the data vendor's published trailing-twelve-month ratio when one exists, and falls back to recomputing from the latest filed fiscal year when it does not. Those two are different measurements: the vendor figure puts twelve months of flow over the most recent quarterly balance sheet. The source trail on each figure names which path produced it. Filed under health. Lower is the stronger reading, other things equal.
No published threshold exists for this figure, so this page prints none. Read it against the company's own history and its peers instead.
When it misleads
- Assets are carried at historical cost, which understates the cushion for an old asset base and overstates it after an expensive acquisition.
- The fifth Piotroski test watches the direction of this figure, not its level.
Not meaningful for banks, insurers: the product prints n/m with the reason rather than a number for them.
Questions
How is debt to assets calculated?
Total debt / total assets. Combines more than one basis. See the note. The pipeline prefers the data vendor's published trailing-twelve-month ratio when one exists, and falls back to recomputing from the latest filed fiscal year when it does not. Those two are different measurements: the vendor figure puts twelve months of flow over the most recent quarterly balance sheet. The source trail on each figure names which path produced it.
What does debt to assets tell a value investor?
It is the leverage question asked without the distortion of a small equity base.
When does debt to assets mislead?
Assets are carried at historical cost, which understates the cushion for an old asset base and overstates it after an expensive acquisition. The fifth Piotroski test watches the direction of this figure, not its level.