FWRGFirst Watch Restaurant Group, Inc.
Is it safe?
Mostly sound, with a caveat: comfortable debt (AA), but big price swings.
Rock-solid balance sheet, low leverage. A rule of thumb on leverage, not a credit rating.
Large price swings, high volatility. Worst drawdown -60% · now 41% 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 FWRG take a bad year?
First Watch Restaurant Group, Inc. carries $272M of net debt at 2.43× 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
- 2.43×
Net debt / EBITDA · 2.88× a year ago · the load is coming down
- Cash runway
- 1.0 years
Cash runway · burning $5.2M a quarter at the current rate
- Annualised volatility
- 54%
Annualised volatility · roughly twice as jumpy as the market
Details›
- Total debtQ2 2026
- $293M
- Cash and short-term investments
- $20M
- Net debt
- $272M
- EBITDA, trailing twelve months
- $112M
- Operating profit, trailing twelve months
- $28M
- Debt / equity
- 0.46×
- Total debt / EBITDA
- 2.62×
- Annualised volatilitytwo years of daily moves
- 54%
- Worst drawdown on file
- −60%
- Below its 52-week high
- 41%
Balance sheet from SEC filings; drawdown and volatility from end-of-day closes; Altman Z from the filed statements.