AZO
AutoZone, Inc.Evidence as of 2026-10-01The desk's Snapshot
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Overview · AutoZone, Inc.
AutoZone, Inc. retails and distributes automotive replacement parts and accessories. The company offers various products for cars, sport utility vehicles, vans, and light trucks, including new and remanufactured automotive hard parts, maintenance items, accessories, and non-automotive products. Its products include A/C compressors, batteries and accessories, bearings, belts and hoses, calipers, chassis, clutches, CV…
Management team
- Mr. Kenneth E. Jaycox Jr. · Senior VP of Commercial & Customer SatisfactionFind on LinkedIn
- Mr. Brian L. Campbell · Vice President of Tax, Treasury & Investor RelationsFind on LinkedIn
- Mr. John Scott Murphy · Principal Accounting Officer, VP of Customer Satisfaction & ControllerFind on LinkedIn
- Mr. William R. Hackney · Executive Vice President of Merchandising, Marketing, Supply Chain & Customer SatisfactionFind on LinkedIn
Start free to see the full management team.
Links open LinkedIn searches, not verified profiles. Team data from our market-data vendor's company profile.
Moneyta sentiment
Where the published evidence leans after the desk debated it, not a rating or a recommendation.
−0.2 on a −2 to +2 scale.
What builds the score
Solid bars are analyst rubric scores; faded bars are computed directly from data. Claims dropped in debate count for nothing; weakened claims count at half weight.
Editor's note
Written after the debate settled. The rest of the page is the evidence behind it.
The surviving record presents a mixed picture. Revenues were $ 4,628,632,000 for Q1 2026 (fiscal quarter ended 2025-12-12), $ 3,952,012,000 for Q2 2026 (fiscal quarter ended 2026-03-13) and $ 4,840,950,000 for Q3 2026 (fiscal quarter ended 2026-06-05). Gross profit and gross margins held at roughly 51.0% in Q1, 53.9% in Q2 and 52.2% in Q3, while operating income rose from $ 784,205,000 (16.9% margin) in Q1 to $ 923,756,000 (19.1% margin) in Q3.
Net income and diluted EPS show the same intra-year swing: net income of $ 530,823,000 (EPS $ 31.04) in Q1, $ 487,923,000 (EPS $ 28.29) in Q2 and $ 641,491,000 (EPS $ 38.07) in Q3, with weighted-average diluted shares moving from 17,102,000 to 16,852,000 across the sample. Balance-sheet items show rising long-term debt from $ 8,623,112,000 to $ 9,016,477,000 and falling cash from $ 287,639,000 to $ 253,729,000 over the period, while reported stockholders’ equity remained negative but became less negative (for example, -$ 2,784,552,000 as of 2026-05-09). Valuation and ownership data survive: trailing‑twelve‑month FCF of $ 2,468,787,000, P/FCF of 19.32, EV/EBITDA of 13.34, P/E of 21.42, institutional 13F holdings of $ 50.25B as of 2026-06-30 (1,284 holders), and several large institutional holders each reporting multiple billions.
How this note was made
every stage ran before the note was writtenAnalyst desk
Mercer, Oakes, Nash, Ellis, Yates, Talbot and Archer. The desk: named AI agents, not people. Each reads one slice of the evidence and nothing else (no outside knowledge, no browsing), so every finding traces to a source you can open.
Reads the XBRL figures companies file with the SEC (revenue, margins, income, debt and share count, quarter by quarter) and reports which way the trend is running.
Revenues were $4,628,632,000 for fiscal Q1 2026 (2025-08-31 to 2025-11-22), $3,952,012,000 for fiscal Q2 2026 (2024-11-24 to 2025-02-15), and $4,840,950,000 for fiscal Q3 2026 (2026-02-15 to 2026-05-09).
XBRL companyfacts · 0001104659-25-123222Gross profit was $2,359,313,000 in fiscal Q1 2026, $2,128,401,000 in fiscal Q2 2026, and $2,524,574,000 in fiscal Q3 2026, implying gross margins of about 51.0% (Q1), 53.9% (Q2), and 52.2% (Q3) when compared to the revenues above.
XBRL companyfacts · 0001104659-26-073525Reads the filings themselves, above all the year-over-year diff of Item 1A risk factors: which risks a company added, dropped or quietly reworded since its last annual report.
Which filings the desk reads
The desk reads the annual 10-K in full: its risk factors, and how they changed since last year. Quarterly 10-Qs and event filings (8-Ks, insider Form 4s) are listed for context but not read line by line: the 10-K is where the material risk disclosures live. A brand-new company, or one we have only just begun tracking, may have no annual report on file yet; its risk analysis fills in once that lands.
In the 10-K filed 2025-10-27, management reported fiscal 2025 net sales of $18.9 billion, a 2.4% increase over the prior year, operating profit of $3.61 billion (a 4.7% decrease) and diluted earnings per share of $144.87 (a 3.1% decrease) for the year.
10-K filed 2025-10-27Management stated in Item 7 (filed 2025-10-27) that fiscal 2025 consisted of 52 weeks versus 53 weeks in fiscal 2024 and that the extra 53rd week in fiscal 2024 increased net sales by $365.9 million and operating profit by $86.7 million, and that foreign currency exchange rates unfavorably impacted fiscal 2025 net sales by $273.1 million and operating profit by $88.2 million.
10-K filed 2025-10-27Reads the signal panel above (momentum, volatility, drawdown, relative strength and beta) and ranks each against the whole research universe rather than judging it in isolation.
No computed signal history for this symbol yet — signals need roughly 70 trading days of price history.
Reads which funds hold the name and at what weight, plus insider Form 4 filings, to show the exposure you may already carry through index funds.
Institutional 13F-reported holdings total $50.25B as of the reporting period 2026-06-30, with 1,284 holders and a reported quarter-over-quarter value change of -13.3%.
13F holdings · 1284 filers · as of 2026-06-30Top reported institutional holders in the 13F data as of the period 2026-06-30 include JPMORGAN CHASE & CO at $3.95B, BlackRock, Inc. at $3.94B, VANGUARD CAPITAL MANAGEMENT LLC at $3.45B, VANGUARD PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT LLC at $2.45B, and STATE STREET CORP at $2.30B.
13F holdings · 1284 filers · as of 2026-06-30Reads recent headlines that are genuinely about this company, ignoring rating chatter and market-wide stories. Findings argue in the debate but never move the sentiment score.
Multiple outlets published pieces framing AutoZone in the context of a trade-off between growth/expansion and margin or leverage concerns on 29–30 September 2026.
News · finance.yahoo.com · 2026-09-30The same 'buy' / valuation question about AutoZone appeared on at least two distinct outlets on 30 September 2026, indicating syndication or similar coverage across outlets.
News · zacks.com · 2026-09-30Reads parsed Forms 3/4/5: who bought or sold, at what size, and whether a 10b5-1 plan was involved. Flags clustered open-market officer buying; treats plan sales as routine and never counts a fund or 10%-holder as an officer.
On 2026-08-28, Jaycox Kenneth E (SVP Commercial) reported an acquisition of 1,688 shares valued at "$5.0M".
Form 4 · Jaycox Kenneth E (SVP Commercial) · $5.0M code A · 2026-08-28The filing shows action code "A" (acquisition) and does not indicate a 10b5-1/trading plan for this transaction (trading_plan: null).
Form 4 · Jaycox Kenneth E (SVP Commercial) · $5.0M code A · 2026-08-28Reads the implied-expectations math built from the company's own filings (the growth rate today's price would justify, and the multiples beside it) and argues whether the market's bar looks high or low for this business. Never turns the math into a target.
The model-calculated implied free cash flow (FCF) growth rate that today's price would justify is 8.16% per year.
Valuation inputs · SEC XBRL + stored EOD closePrice-to-free-cash-flow (P/FCF, trailing twelve months) is 19.32.
Valuation inputs · SEC XBRL + stored EOD closeDebate and risk review
A bull and a bear contest the claims and the chair rules on each; the risk review stress-tests what survived.
A bull and a bear argue the analysts' claims across two rounds, then a chair rules on each one. Only what survives feeds the score. The argument is shown, not hidden, so you can judge the reasoning yourself.
The furnished SEC-sourced quarterly fundamentals show consistent revenue scale with rising operating margins (16.9% → 19.1% across the three reported quarters) and a rebound in diluted EPS to $38.07 in Q3; these items are strong, primary-source indicators of operating profitability. Trailing twelve‑month free cash flow of ~$2.47B and a model-implied FCF growth rate requirement of 8.16% (valuation model) provide a coherent cash-generation picture supported by the reported FCF figure; those valuation datapoints are model outputs of moderate strength. Share-count checkpoints show a declining common share base, and an officer open-market acquisition is recorded — both documented in filings and Form 4 data — which bolster the interpretation of shareholder-return dynamics; institutional 13F holdings are large in absolute terms and the third‑party street consensus shown is heavily weighted to buys, which are strong contextual indicators of market positioning. The bear points about rising long‑term debt and negative reported equity are also directly sourced and valid, but the negative-equity metric is becoming less negative over time (filed balances show improvement), and the core operating and cash metrics come from high-strength SEC filings that jointly support a favorable read when weighing operational profitability and cash flow against financing-related concerns.
Chair's verdict, claim by claim
Fragility · computed, not argued
balanced0.34
32 surviving claims rest on 15 distinct sources; the heaviest analyst carries 22% of them, and 97% of what the desk raised survived the debate.
The surviving claims draw from a modest set of distinct sources and rely disproportionately on a single analyst contribution; most of the desk’s initial points remained after debate, which raises the chance that remaining assertions reflect the original framing rather than fully independent corroboration. Source concentration and high survival through debate mean these reads can be informative about reported historical figures, but they are fragile for strong inference — cross-checks (new filings, independent filings, or materially different third‑party reports) would materially change confidence.
Disconfirming evidence · base rates · falsifiers
Context
Outside consensus, and where this name already sits in your own portfolio.
Third-party consensus shown for context. It never enters Moneyta sentiment. When the two diverge, the debate above is where the why lives.
What this was built from
Every figure on this page traces to one of these. The desk reads only what is listed here (no outside knowledge, no browsing), and each card shows who read it and what it contributed to the score.
12 filings· 3 cited
SEC XBRL filings
Quarterly figures as filed with the SEC, read straight from EDGAR's structured data, not retyped or estimated.
Read by Mercer+0.6 to the score
7 documents· 3 cited
SEC filing documents
The filings themselves, including the year-over-year comparison of Item 1A risk factors.
Read by Oakes−0.7 to the score
3 holdings records· 1 cited
Fund holdings
Which funds hold this name and at what weight, plus insider Form 4 filings.
Read by Ellis+0.0 to the score
8 headlines· 2 cited
News coverage
Recent headlines about this company, rating chatter excluded and nothing published after the report date.
Read by Yatesnothing survived
1 filing
Insider filings
Parsed Forms 3/4/5 from EDGAR: named insiders, share counts, prices, and 10b5-1 plan state, with stated and inferred flags kept apart.
Read by Talbot+1.0 to the score
1 computation
Valuation inputs
TTM cash-flow figures from the company's own XBRL filings, priced with the stored closing price. Implied growth and multiples only; no fair-value dollar figure reaches the desk, by design.
Read by Archercontext only
1 record· 0 cited
Company profile
Sector, industry and company details.
1 record· 0 cited
Analyst consensus
Third-party consensus, shown for context only; it never enters Moneyta sentiment.
Read means we pulled and handed it to an analyst; cited means a claim on this page points at it. Reading twelve quarters to state one trend is normal; the gap is shown rather than hidden.
Written by AI, checked against sources
The analysts, the bull–bear debate and the editor's note are AI agents reading only the evidence listed on this page. They can misread a filing or a headline, which is why every claim cites a source you can open and check yourself. The sentiment score is arithmetic over the claims that survived the debate, not a language model's opinion.
Educational analysis of published data. Moneyta does not give investment advice or make recommendations. Past patterns do not indicate future results.
The full terminal on AZO Gold
Who holds it, who's buying, what the Street thinks: live behind the lock, updated as filings land.
Institutional holders
Net institutional flow, Q/Q
Largest holder position
Insider buys, 90 days
Clustered insider value
Street target range
The real figures are for members. Educational analysis, not advice.
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Educational analysis of published data. Moneyta does not give investment advice or make recommendations.