FSTRL.B. Foster Company
Is it safe?
Nothing alarming, nothing pristine: comfortable debt (AA) and typical volatility.
Rock-solid balance sheet, low leverage. A rule of thumb on leverage, not a credit rating.
Moderate price swings, typical volatility. Worst drawdown -70% · now 23% 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 FSTR take a bad year?
L.B. Foster Company carries $42M of net debt at 1.22× EBITDA: a load its earnings can carry.
Net debt · as at Q2 2026 · under two and a half years of EBITDA, comfortable
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 1.22×
Net debt / EBITDA · 2.83× a year ago · the load is coming down
- Debt / equity
- 0.27×
Debt / equity
- Annualised volatility
- 42%
Annualised volatility · roughly twice as jumpy as the market
Details›
- Total debtQ2 2026
- $48M
- Cash and short-term investments
- $5.8M
- Net debt
- $42M
- EBITDA, trailing twelve months
- $35M
- Operating profit, trailing twelve months
- $24M
- Debt / equity
- 0.27×
- Total debt / EBITDA
- 1.39×
- Annualised volatilitytwo years of daily moves
- 42%
- Worst drawdown on file
- −70%
- Below its 52-week high
- 23%
Balance sheet from SEC filings; drawdown and volatility from end-of-day closes; Altman Z from the filed statements.