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What this page is: Delvantic's full research page for Casey's General Stores, Inc. (CASY) — AI-driven forensic equity research: mechanical valuation models (DCF, EPV, anchored-PE, scenario) plus three independent AI lenses (Quality / Value / Sentiment). Everything below is rendered server-side; you are not missing content that requires JavaScript. All scores are predictions and research opinions, not financial advice.
Our current read (analysis of 2026-10-08): Designation Low · Gem Score -22 (−100…+100 Quality+Value blend) · Quality 63 · Value -79 · Sentiment 7 (timing only, not weighted) · Composite fair value $352.79 vs $807.12 at analysis
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Casey's General Stores, Inc.
CASY NASDAQCasey's General Stores, Inc. is a convenience store and fuel retailer that operates a broad network of stores across the United States, with a strong presence in the Midwest and other underserved communities. Casey's General Stores focuses on everyday consumer needs through convenience merchandise, self-service gasoline, and a well-known prepared food offering that includes pizza, sandwiches, breakfast items, and beverages. The company also provides grocery staples, snacks, and household products, making its stores a regular stop for local shoppers and travelers. In addition to its retail locations, Casey's General Stores supports loyalty programs and food-service initiatives that help drive repeat visits and reinforce its role as a neighborhood-focused convenience chain. Headquartered in Ankeny, Iowa, Casey's General Stores plays an important role in the convenience retail market by combining fuel, food, and essentials in a single-format store model.
Price Overview
Price History (1 Year)
Revenue & Net Income Trend
| Period | Revenue | Net Income | Net Margin | YoY/QoQ |
|---|
Key Metrics
EPS (Diluted): 19.16
Total Equity: $3.95B
Shares: 37,281,653
Total Debt: $2.43B
Cash: $522.99M
EBITDA: $1.93B
Total Debt: $2.43B
Cash: $522.99M
Revenue: $17.56B
Revenue: $17.56B
Revenue: $17.56B
Total Equity: $3.95B
Tax Rate: 23.8%
Equity: $3.95B
Total Debt: $2.43B
Cash: $522.99M
Current Liabilities: $1.35B
Long-Term Debt: $2.33B
Total Debt: $2.43B
Total Equity: $3.95B
Shares: 37,281,653
Shares: 37,281,653
CapEx: -$655.92M
Shares: 37,281,653
Stock Price: $824.92
Net Income: $714.45M
Industry Benchmarks
Income Statement (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 27, 2026 1:59am (42d ago)| Metric | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $13.0B | $15.1B | $14.9B | $15.9B | $17.6B |
| Cost of Revenue | $10.2B | $12.0B | $11.5B | $12.2B | $13.2B |
| Gross Profit | $2.8B | $3.1B | $3.3B | $3.8B | $4.3B |
| Operating Expenses | $2.0B | $2.1B | $2.3B | $2.6B | $2.8B |
| Operating Income | $801.2M | $952.5M | $1.1B | $1.2B | $1.5B |
| Net Income | $339.8M | $446.7M | $502.0M | $546.5M | $714.4M |
| EBITDA | $1.1B | $1.3B | $1.4B | $1.6B | $1.9B |
| EPS | $9.14 | $11.99 | $13.51 | $14.72 | $19.28 |
| EPS (Diluted) | $9.10 | $11.91 | $13.43 | $14.64 | $19.16 |
Balance Sheet (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 27, 2026 1:30am (42d ago)| Metric | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash & Equivalents | $158.9M | $378.9M | $206.5M | $326.7M | $523.0M |
| Total Current Assets | $725.0M | $921.0M | $829.9M | $1.0B | $1.4B |
| Total Assets | $5.5B | $5.9B | $6.3B | $8.2B | $8.9B |
| Current Liabilities | $904.7M | $927.1M | $953.5M | $1.1B | $1.4B |
| Long-Term Debt | $1.7B | $1.6B | $1.6B | $2.4B | $2.3B |
| Total Liabilities | $3.3B | $3.3B | $3.3B | $4.7B | $5.0B |
| Total Equity | $2.2B | $2.7B | $3.0B | $3.5B | $4.0B |
| Retained Earnings | $2.2B | $2.6B | $3.0B | $3.5B | $4.0B |
Cash Flow (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 27, 2026 1:59am (42d ago)| Metric | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operating Cash Flow | $788.7M | $882.0M | $893.0M | $1.1B | $1.4B |
| Capital Expenditure | -$326.5M | -$476.6M | -$522.0M | -$506.2M | -$655.9M |
| Free Cash Flow | $462.3M | $405.4M | $370.9M | $584.6M | $721.6M |
| Acquisitions (net) | -$901.6M | -$85.6M | -$330.0M | -$1.2B | -$141.6M |
| Net Debt Issued / (Repaid) | $261.5M | -$41.0M | -$53.7M | $860.5M | -$94.9M |
| Dividends Paid | -$51.2M | -$55.6M | -$62.9M | -$72.3M | -$83.1M |
| Stock Buybacks | $0 | $0 | -$104.9M | $-734,000 | -$200.5M |
| Net Change in Cash | -$177.7M | $220.0M | -$172.4M | $120.2M | $196.3M |
Growth Trends (YoY %)
Last updated: Aug 27, 2026 1:59am (42d ago)| Metric | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue Growth | +16.5% | -1.5% | +7.3% | +10.2% |
| Gross Profit Growth | +11.2% | +9.0% | +12.1% | +15.2% |
| Operating Income Growth | +18.9% | +11.2% | +13.3% | +23.6% |
| Net Income Growth | +31.5% | +12.4% | +8.9% | +30.7% |
| EBITDA Growth | +14.6% | +11.3% | +13.8% | +20.6% |
Dividend History (Last 20)
Last updated: Aug 26, 2026 8:17am (42d ago)| Date | Dividend | Declaration | Record | Payment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | $0.65 | — | — | — |
| 2026-05-01 | $0.57 | — | — | — |
| 2026-01-30 | $0.57 | — | — | — |
| 2025-10-31 | $0.57 | — | — | — |
| 2025-08-01 | $0.57 | — | — | — |
| 2025-05-01 | $0.50 | — | — | — |
| 2025-02-03 | $0.50 | — | — | — |
| 2024-11-01 | $0.50 | — | — | — |
| 2024-08-01 | $0.50 | — | — | — |
| 2024-04-30 | $0.43 | — | — | — |
| 2024-01-31 | $0.43 | — | — | — |
| 2023-10-31 | $0.43 | — | — | — |
| 2023-07-31 | $0.43 | — | — | — |
| 2023-04-28 | $0.38 | — | — | — |
| 2023-01-31 | $0.38 | — | — | — |
| 2022-10-31 | $0.38 | — | — | — |
| 2022-07-29 | $0.38 | — | — | — |
| 2022-04-29 | $0.35 | — | — | — |
| 2022-01-31 | $0.35 | — | — | — |
| 2021-10-29 | $0.35 | — | — | — |
Deep Analysis
Risk : Reward — upside vs downside from this company's own quarters
Computed 2026-10-05 02:01A +1σ run of quarters pays -34%; a −1σ run costs 67%. Ratio -0.5:1 (μ 11.9%, σ 9.6% , 16 pairs).
Older method (repeat-worst-quarter): 1.9 : 1
| Case | Growth | Margin | Fair value | vs price ($807.12) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bull — recovery | +19% | 17.3% | $1,815.85 | +125% |
| Base — stabilizes | +13% | 15.0% | $1,291.08 | +60% |
| Bear — keeps slipping | +6% | 12.8% | $891.22 | +10% |
| Stress — last quarter repeats | +0% | 4.6% | $274.10 | -66% |
| Upside — a +1σ run of quarters (v2) | +22% | 4.6% | $536.74 | -34% |
| Stress — a −1σ run of quarters (v2) | +2% | 4.0% | $262.51 | -67% |
Narrative Economics
market-narrative step).
Growth Outlook
Analyzed 2026-08-27 02:12The question every valuation on this page silently assumes: is this company likely to grow? Judged forward — the business, its category, the world — against what's already printed.
Claude Reading
Looking at the raw numbers first: Casey's did $17.56B revenue FY26 with $714M net income (4.1% net margin), growing revenue 10.2% YoY and earnings ~31%. The quarterly cadence is seasonally driven — Q1 (May-Jul) and Q2 (Aug-Oct) print ~$200M NI while Q3-Q4 winter quarters print $87-163M. So the "decelerating quarterly trend" signal is partly noise from seasonality; comparing Q4'26 ($162.7M) to Q4'25 ($98.3M) is +66% YoY, and Q3'26 vs Q3'25 is +49%. That's not deceleration, that's the strongest YoY comps in the file. The synthesis model's DCF composite at $446 and thesis-eval's "37.9% FCF CAGR embedded" both need to grapple with the fact that trailing earnings growth is 30%+ and FCF CAGR is genuinely 39.5% over the measured window — the market isn't extrapolating from nothing.
That said, the bear case has real teeth. FCF of $722M against a $30.5B market cap is a 2.4% FCF yield; you're paying 42x GAAP earnings for a 4% net margin fuel-and-pizza retailer with $2.43B of debt and only $523M cash. ROIC of 19% is genuinely good, but the incremental growth is coming from M&A (Fikes/CEFCO acquisition explains a lot of the FY26 revenue jump and the FCF composition), not pure same-store leverage. Capex ran $656M — as store count grows, maintenance capex compounds, and lease renewals at rural locations that Casey's owns cheaply today reprice at market eventually. The market-forces model's "hidden lease renewal margin compression" is a legitimate long-duration concern the bulls hand-wave. Insider activity is unambiguous: ten sales in early July 2026, zero buys shown — the "Net Insider Buying" secondary signal appears to contradict the transaction list and should be disregarded as a data error.
Where I disagree with the prior stack: the synthesis $446 fair value is too punitive — it treats a business compounding earnings 19% over five years and FCF near 40% as if it should trade at a retail-average 15-18x multiple, ignoring that Casey's has demonstrably outexecuted the c-store peer group (Murphy USA trades at ~19x, but has less prepared-food mix and lower ROIC). A defensible fair-value band using 25-28x normalized $750-800M earnings is $500-600, not $446 and not $825. The thesis-eval's "-17" and the market-forces "melting ice cube" framing both underweight that Casey's prepared food is now ~$1.5B+ revenue at ~58%+ gross margins — that segment alone is not a fuel-declining business, it's a rural QSR with captive traffic. But at $825 you're paying for that story to keep compounding through 2030 with no fuel-EV drag, no acquisition integration hiccup, and no consumer trade-down — a stacked ask.
Net: I partially agree with the "overvalued" synthesis verdict but reject its magnitude. Fair value is roughly $550-620 (25-28x normalized ~$800M NI, or ~20x EV/EBITDA on run-rate ~$1.5B); current $825 embeds ~35-50% narrative premium, not 90%. This is not a short — the business quality, ROIC, and rural moat are real and the momentum is intact — but it's a "wait for a 20-25% drawdown" name, not a buy here. Insider selling clusters at these levels are consistent with management sharing my read. The Q4/Q1 fiscal print (August-ish 2026) is the key catalyst; a same-store traffic miss or prepared-food margin dip would compress the multiple fast given how much growth is priced in. Contrarian counter: if Casey's announces another accretive acquisition at these multiples or prepared food comps accelerate past 8%, the multiple holds and I'm wrong on timing — but the asymmetry from $825 still favors patience.
GPT Reading
At $825, the market is paying an elite multiple for a business that is excellent operationally but still structurally a low-margin convenience retailer. The raw numbers show why investors like it: revenue rose from $12.95B in FY2022 to $17.56B in FY2026, operating income from $801M to $1.48B, and net income from $340M to $714M. That is not financial engineering; margins genuinely improved, with gross margin up from 21.3% to 24.6% and operating margin from 6.2% to 8.5%. Return metrics are strong too, with ROIC at 19.3% and ROE at 18.1%. Free cash flow of $722M against $655.9M of capex says the growth is being funded from a real earnings base. This is a high-quality operator, and the recent quarterly cadence is also healthy: the latest quarter posted $4.57B of revenue and $162.7M of net income, up from $3.99B and $98.3M in the year-ago quarter. That is 14% revenue growth and roughly 66% earnings growth in a business category where most peers struggle to separate from commodity fuel economics.
But the stock price assumes this improvement phase can continue at something close to its recent pace, and that is where I part ways with the market. Even after all the progress, Casey’s still earned just $714M on $17.56B of sales, a 4.1% net margin. The latest four quarters annualize to about $714M as well, so there is no hidden acceleration beyond what the annuals already show. Against a $30.5B market cap, that is 43x earnings and roughly 42x free cash flow. EV/EBITDA at 16.8x is rich for almost any brick-and-mortar retail format, let alone one with a current ratio barely above 1.0 and a business model tied partly to fuel volumes and consumer traffic. To justify this, I think you need years of double-digit EPS growth plus further margin expansion from already-improved levels. That is a demanding setup for a company whose quarterly net margins still swing from 2.2%-2.5% in weaker quarters to 4.6%-4.7% in stronger ones. The business is good enough to deserve a premium; it is not good enough to deserve a software-like certainty premium.
The key story in the numbers is that Casey’s has become more productive, not that it has become transformed. Revenue grew 10% in FY2026, but operating income grew 23% because the company extracted better mix and efficiency. That is exactly the kind of improvement that drives a re-rating — once. The problem is that margin expansion gets harder as you move from 6.4% operating margin in FY2025 to 8.5% in FY2026. If FY2026 is closer to a new plateau than the midpoint of a long runway, the multiple is plainly too high. Debt is manageable at $2.43B versus $523M cash and $1.38B operating cash flow, so balance-sheet risk is not the issue. The issue is paying 7.8x book and 1.75x sales for a company whose long-run economics, however admirable, are still tethered to convenience retail realities. On my read, fair value needs a materially lower entry point, likely in the $550-$650 range, where you are paying for quality and unit growth without assuming near-perfect continuation of the margin story.
The strongest case against my view is straightforward: Casey’s may be one of the few convenience chains actually earning a widening moat. If prepared food and beverage continue to lift mix, then gross margin can keep climbing even if fuel remains volatile, and the earnings power could scale faster than revenue for several more years. The quarter-to-quarter data support that argument more than bears admit: FY2026 net income of $714M was up 31% from FY2025’s $547M on only 10% revenue growth, and the latest quarter’s $162.7M versus $98.3M a year earlier suggests the operating model still has room. If that persists, today’s 43x trailing P/E may compress quickly on forward numbers. A smart bull would also point out that ROIC near 19% is not normal retail mediocrity; businesses that can reinvest at those returns often look expensive before they grow into the valuation. I weigh that evidence less heavily because the stock already discounts a long duration of exceptional execution, and retail concepts rarely get the luxury of one bad year when starting from this valuation.
What would change my mind is not another good quarter; it would be evidence that FY2026 was not a peak-margin year but the start of a sustainably higher earnings regime. Specifically, if Casey’s can put up another year of 9%-10% revenue growth while keeping operating margin near or above 8.5%, pushing net income toward $850M-$900M and free cash flow toward $900M without leverage stepping up meaningfully, then the premium deserves more respect. Conversely, if quarterly margins slip back toward the FY2025 range — especially if revenue keeps growing but net income stalls around the current $700M run-rate — the stock’s valuation support should erode quickly.
Grok Reading
The raw numbers on Casey's describe a genuinely well-run mature retailer that has earned a quality premium and then some. Fiscal 2026 revenue hit $17.56B with net income of $714.4M, up from $15.94B and $546.5M the prior year, producing a 30.7% earnings jump on 10.2% top-line growth and lifting net margin to 4.1% from 3.4%. Operating income climbed to $1.48B from $1.20B as gross profit expanded to $4.32B, confirming the prepared-food mix is doing real work rather than mere narrative. Free cash flow of $721.6M after $656M of capex is clean, ROIC sits at 19.3%, and the balance sheet is unremarkable leverage at 0.62 debt-to-equity with $2.43B of debt against $523M cash. Quarterly cadence shows the usual seasonal fuel swing—Q1 and Q2 FY26 delivered $215M and $206M of NI at 4.6–4.7% margins before winter compressed to 3.3–3.6%—but the year-over-year step-up from the soft FY25 winter quarters is unmistakable. The story the data tell is steady mid-single-digit unit and same-store compounding plus margin accretion, not a growth platform; revenue CAGR over five years is 8.7%, not 20%.
That reality collides with a 43x trailing P/E, 7.8x book, 16.8x EV/EBITDA and a sub-2.4% FCF yield on a $30.5B enterprise. At $825 the market is paying roughly twice a normalized mid-teens multiple for a specialty retailer whose own history never sustained the 30–40% FCF growth the current multiple embeds for half a decade. Insider prints in early July 2026 are uniformly sales—more than 15k shares across ten tickets—which directly contradicts the secondary “net buying” flag and undercuts the quiet-quality narrative at the margin. The valuation synthesis fair value near $426–447 is directionally correct even if the precise DCF inputs are debatable; an 89% premium to that anchor requires perpetual pricing power in rural c-stores and flawless prepared-food scaling that no peer at this absolute scale has delivered.
The strongest opposing case is that Casey’s is simply the best operator left in a consolidating industry, the small-town density moat is widening, and the food mix (pizza especially) is a structural profit inflection still early innings. Bulls will correctly note earnings CAGR of 19.3%, FCF CAGR of 39.5% off a lower base, ROE of 18%, and operating margin expansion from roughly 6% five years ago to 8.5% today. They will argue EV/EBITDA of 16.8x is not outrageous for a compounder with visible white-space stores and sticky traffic, and that the 43x P/E compresses quickly if NI keeps compounding at mid-teens. I weigh that evidence as real but already fully discounted: the multiple assumes the inflection continues at the recent accelerated rate rather than mean-reverting toward the 8–9% revenue trajectory the store base can actually support, and it leaves no room for fuel-margin volatility, wage pressure, or competitive encroachment from dollar stores and delivery.
I would flip to neutral or constructive only on two concrete developments: either trailing NTM P/E compressing below 25x via a material price drawdown while FCF holds above $700M, or two consecutive quarters of same-store inside-sales growth above 6% with food-margin expansion that lifts full-year operating margin sustainably through 9.5% without a collapse in fuel contribution. Absent that, the stock remains a high-quality operator priced for perfection that history does not support.
Big-3 Panel — where each AI stands
Advanced Analysis Forensic deep-dive · separate lenses
Revenue has climbed from $12.95B (2022) to $17.56B (2026), a roughly 8% CAGR, while gross margin expanded from 21.3% to 24.6% and operating margin from 6.2% to 8.4% — a genuine operating-leverage story, not a cost-cut mirage. Net income grew from $339.8M to $714.4M (roughly doubling in four years), and FCF stepped up to $721.6M with OCF/NI around 2x and accruals at -7.1% of assets, which points to real, cash-backed earnings. Altman Z of 6.81 puts the balance sheet in the safe zone despite $1.91B net debt. Dilution is a non-issue: diluted shares actually shrank slightly (37.4M to 37.3M), SBC is just 0.4% of revenue, and buybacks exceed SBC by 129%. The business self-funds capex and still generates surplus cash. The main soft spot is the balance sheet: liquid cash is only $523M against $1.91B net debt, so leverage (likely tied to the Fikes/store acquisitions that drove the revenue step-up) is a real constraint rather than a cushion, though FCF easily services it. Insider tape is mixed-to-negative in signal terms — 27 sells versus 1 small buy, with CEO Rebelez unloading a large cluster on 2026-07-07. That is typical post-run executive monetization at a mature retailer, not a distress tell, but it is not the confirming buy pattern the summary blurb suggests.
Verify before trusting this (5)
- Composition and maturity schedule of the $1.91B net debt (Fikes acquisition financing?)
- Same-store sales trends vs acquisition-driven growth in the 2025-2026 revenue jump
- Whether inside-store margin gains reflect mix shift (prepared foods) or fuel-margin windfall
- 10b5-1 plan disclosures behind the July 2026 CEO sale cluster
- Capex intensity and unit economics of new/acquired stores
The composite fair value of $446.80 and signal-adjusted $425.93 sit roughly 47% below the $807.12 price. Even the most generous input, an anchored P/E of $856.74, only barely justifies today's quote, while the DCF ($330.84) and EPV floor ($268.77) suggest the market is capitalizing prepared-food momentum well into perpetuity. Earnings quality is high so no haircut is warranted, but that only firms up the deserved number, not the price.
Verify before trusting this (5)
- Inside-store gross margin trajectory and prepared-food mix trend in next 10-Q
- Same-store sales guidance and fuel margin normalization commentary
- M&A cadence and acquisition multiples paid for tuck-in stores
- Capex intensity and returns on new-store openings
- Any share-repurchase acceleration or leverage change
Casey's sits in a benign spot on the tape. The regime is mildly risk-on (+30) but the name's 0.62 beta means it neither catches much of the updraft nor gets hurt when the S&P wobbles 1.6% off highs. The active narrative is quiet-quality with moderate intensity and durability, low cult - exactly the kind of story that neither de-rates violently nor gets bid into a mania. Momentum is strong-positive with an 8.7% CAGR and steady cash generation, which is quietly reinforcing the compounder framing. News flow is a mixed bag but tilts constructive: index inclusion in the Bloomberg 500 is a mechanical positive, and the college-football / Texas Football brand tie-ups feed the 'sticky rural moat plus prepared-food loyalty' story the bulls want to tell. Cutting the other way, two separate valuation pieces (a 16% overvalued DCF flag and a 'valuation questions in play' headline) are circulating in the sentiment layer - not a narrative break, but a persistent whisper that the multiple is stretched. Macro headwinds from 4.64% 10y and a 25.7 market PE press harder on premium-multiple names like this than the low beta suggests. Net: a calm, moderately supportive backdrop with a nagging valuation murmur. No decisive force in either direction.
Verify before trusting this (4)
- Next same-store sales / prepared-food margin print - the one datapoint that could either validate the compounder story or hand the bears a lever
- Whether the 'overvalued on DCF' framing gets picked up by sell-side or stays as retail-blog chatter
- Sept 10 Bloomberg 500 add - watch for passive-flow bid into the reconstitution
- Any rotation from defensive quality into higher-beta risk-on names that would drain the low-beta bid
Two forces dominate. First, consolidation: the US convenience channel is still overwhelmingly small operators who cannot fund food programs, loyalty tech or fuel-supply scale, and rising cost/regulatory burden keeps pushing them to sell — a multi-year acquisition runway for the few scaled buyers. Second, fuel's changing role: gallons are flat-to-slowly-declining while cents-per-gallon has structurally reset higher, so the pump is becoming a traffic driver rather than a profit center, and profit migrates inside the store to food. Macro is a headwind at the margin — a 4.64% 10-year raises the cost of debt-funded M&A, and rural consumers are stretched — but convenience demand is habitual and defensive, so volume risk is modest. Net: the world is shrinking the number of operators while growing the profit pool per surviving store, which favors Casey's.
When we made this prediction on Aug 27, 2026, CASY was $776.51. We expect it to be $712.00 by Feb 2027, and we consider it great value under $520.00. This is an early model (v0.6.0) — the direction is more reliable than the exact price. Made Aug 27, 2026.
Blue is our prediction, starting the day we made it. Grey is a slower route to the same place — the same destination, taking longer. Black is the actual price, so you can see how we are doing.