CARSCars.com Inc.
Is it safe?
Nothing alarming, nothing pristine: comfortable debt (A) and big price swings.
Investment-grade balance sheet. A rule of thumb on leverage, not a credit rating.
Large price swings, high volatility. Worst drawdown -89% · now 28% below its 52-week high.
Where this answer is blind. Altman sits structurally low for utilities and pipelines; Beneish runs high for fast growers, since sales growth alone lifts it; banks and REITs are excluded.
Can CARS take a bad year?
Cars.com Inc. carries $414M of net debt at 2.63× EBITDA: a load its earnings can carry.
Net debt · as at Q2 2026 · between two and four years of EBITDA, normal for a stable business
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 2.63×
Net debt / EBITDA · 2.73× a year ago · the load is coming down
- Debt / equity
- 1.01×
Debt / equity
- Annualised volatility
- 47%
Annualised volatility · roughly twice as jumpy as the market
Details›
- Total debtQ2 2026
- $447M
- Cash and short-term investments
- $33M
- Net debt
- $414M
- EBITDA, trailing twelve months
- $157M
- Operating profit, trailing twelve months
- $83M
- Debt / equity
- 1.01×
- Total debt / EBITDA
- 2.85×
- Annualised volatilitytwo years of daily moves
- 47%
- Worst drawdown on file
- −89%
- Below its 52-week high
- 28%
Balance sheet from SEC filings; drawdown and volatility from end-of-day closes; Altman Z from the filed statements.
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Ranks #9 of 31 by RyuScore