CluenexUS Foods USFD
US Foods scores weak on business quality (3.7 of 10). Here is why, in plain words, and what our sealed record shows.
Why it matters
- What US Foods does
US Foods Holding delivers food and supplies to independent restaurants, hospitals, and hotels across the United States. Customers pay for broadline distribution, private-label products, and e-commerce ordering tools.
- What it does best
US Foods leads in broadline foodservice distribution scale, generating $40.1B in revenue while outperforming peer PFGC on gross margin at 17.5% versus 11.9%. This massive supply chain footprint creates high switching costs for independent restaurants relying on dependable daily deliveries.
- The main risk
A heavy net debt load of $5.3B combined with a mediocre 4.9 financial score leaves the business exposed to rising borrowing costs and margin compression if restaurant traffic slows down.
Quality, check by check
Scored against its own industry, from company filings.
Operating margin stands at 3.2% with a low profitability score of 2.1, showing that top-line scale fails to translate into strong bottom-line conversion.
Logistical scale locks in independent restaurants through entrenched supply chains, though gross margins sit in the bottom quartile at the 16th sector percentile.
Revenue grew 4.1% to reach $40.1B, showing steady middle-of-the-pack momentum sitting at the 57th sector percentile.
Net debt sits at $5.3B against $946M in free cash flow, supported by $41M in cash: the balance sheet remains heavily leveraged.
Insiders
Executives and directors, from SEC Form 4 filings we read ourselves. Open market trades only; grants, option exercises and pre-planned sales left out.
2 sold $3.6M outside pre-planned sales.
Our sealed record on USFD
Verdicts appear here 30 days after we publish them; members see today's. Each one is in the nightly ledger, fingerprinted the night it was made.
The first sealed verdicts appear here on Oct 11, 2026.
Questions
US Foods scores weak on the Cluenex quality check (3.7 of 10), measured against its own industry. Profitability is weak, moat weak, growth slow and financial health fair.
In the last 90 days of SEC Form 4 filings: 2 sold $3.6M outside pre-planned sales.
Nov 5, 2026, before the open.
See USFD today
- Today's verdict on USFD, and why
- Fair value with cautious, base and optimistic cases
- The exact price that would change the verdict
- Which stocks each signal names, the night it fires
Cite this page: Cluenex, “US Foods (USFD)”, https://cluenex.com/stocks/usfd/, data as of Oct 10, 2026.