Free cash flow divided by revenue; how many cents of genuinely spendable cash each sales dollar produces after capital spending.
FCF margin is the strictest of the margin family and the hardest to fake for long. It captures working capital discipline and capital intensity that every income statement margin ignores.
Compare it with net-margin over three to five years. A business whose FCF margin consistently exceeds net margin is under-reporting its economics through heavy non-cash charges; one where it lags is tying cash up somewhere.
Example: Northwind Tools converts $840M of revenue into $89M of free cash flow, a 10.6% FCF margin against a 9.3% net margin. Northwind Cloud alone runs at 21%.
Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.
Margin and leverage. A $5,000 deposit can control a $100,000 position, which is 20:1 leverage. Because the loss is measured on the full $100,000, a 2.5% move against you halves the deposit and brings a margin call, and a 5% move uses all of it.
Educational only, not advice. Spotted an error? Post in Site Feedback.