Williams-Sonoma reported 'record' diluted EPS of $8.84 while net income declined 3.3% and operating margins contracted 50 basis points. The 10-K reveals this paradox: a $49M multi-year freight correction inflated FY2024 margins by 70bp, making FY2025's 'decline' an accounting phantom. Normalize for the freight ghost and a calendar artifact, and operating margins actually improved 40bp — the opposite of consensus. Meanwhile, $854M in buybacks manufactured the EPS record from a shrinking denominator, and Q4 tariff costs accelerated 4.25x, setting up a H1 FY2026 margin valley the market may be mispricing.
Home Depot reported $164.7 billion in revenue for fiscal 2025 — a 3.2% increase that masks organic contraction. The 10-K reveals a 1,105 basis point operating margin gap between HD's core retail business and its newly acquired distribution arm, a 560 basis point ROIC collapse, and a 15-year base-case deleveraging timeline. All headline revenue growth was acquisition-driven; the core retail segment actually shrank 0.75%.
Dell Technologies reported record $113.5 billion in revenue and 36% EPS growth for fiscal 2026. But buried in the segment footnote of the annual report, ISG gross margin collapsed 550 basis points in a single year — even as the segment's operating income grew 30%. The company's $26 billion services layer and disciplined SG&A efficiency are masking a fundamental shift in earnings quality that the earnings release doesn't show.
Gold hit $5,000 and both mining companies and royalty companies are printing record cash. But the SEC filings reveal that the conventional wisdom about miners' 2x leverage is wrong — it's only 1.18x. We analyzed four companies' filings to build a framework that shows exactly when each model wins, anchored to a single number: $2,750.
Centrus Energy (LEU) returned 264% in 2025 on the HALEU monopoly thesis. But SEC filings reveal a 69% collapse in core SWU pricing and negative gross profit. Meanwhile, Cameco (CCJ) delivered +88% gross profit growth with 530bps margin expansion.
Walmart's net margin is actually higher than Costco's (3.96% vs 2.97%). But Costco's ROIC is 2x higher (41.2% vs 20.9%). The difference isn't profit margin—it's asset turnover. Here's the DuPont decomposition of retail capital efficiency.