CENTACentral Garden & Pet Company
Is it safe?
Nothing alarming, nothing pristine: comfortable debt (A) and typical volatility.
Investment-grade balance sheet. A rule of thumb on leverage, not a credit rating.
Moderate price swings, typical volatility. Worst drawdown -50% · now 14% 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 CENTA take a bad year?
Central Garden & Pet Company carries $196M of net debt at 0.59× EBITDA: a load its earnings can carry.
Net debt · as at Q3 2026 · under two and a half years of EBITDA, comfortable
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 0.59×
Net debt / EBITDA · 1.54× a year ago · the load is coming down
- Debt / equity
- 0.68×
Debt / equity
- Annualised volatility
- 30%
Annualised volatility · about as steady as the market itself
Details›
- Total debtQ3 2026
- $1.19B
- Cash and short-term investments
- $997M
- Net debt
- $196M
- EBITDA, trailing twelve months
- $332M
- Operating profit, trailing twelve months
- $250M
- Debt / equity
- 0.68×
- Total debt / EBITDA
- 3.60×
- Annualised volatilitytwo years of daily moves
- 30%
- Worst drawdown on file
- −50%
- Below its 52-week high
- 14%
Balance sheet from SEC filings; drawdown and volatility from end-of-day closes; Altman Z from the filed statements.