Net current asset value (NCAV) is Benjamin Graham's conservative estimate of a company's liquidation value, first described in Security Analysis (1934). Unlike working capital or net working capital, which subtract only current liabilities from current assets, NCAV subtracts a company's *total* liabilities — current and long-term — from its current assets. The result approximates what would be left for shareholders if the company's current assets (cash, receivables, inventory) were liquidated at book value and every liability, including long-term debt, was paid off in full, before assigning any value at all to fixed assets, intangibles, or the business as a going concern.
Graham used NCAV as the basis for his "net-net" investing strategy: buying stocks trading at a market capitalization below their NCAV, on the theory that the market price offered a margin of safety even if the business itself never generated another dollar of profit. A company can have positive working capital while still failing the NCAV test, since NCAV also has to absorb the company's long-term obligations.
NCAV per share divides this figure by shares outstanding, making it directly comparable to the stock's trading price — a company trading below its NCAV per share is, by this measure, priced below its liquidation value.
NCAV = Total Current Assets − Total Liabilities NCAV Per Share = NCAV / Shares Outstanding
GeminIQ computes NCAV as total current assets minus total liabilities, both sourced directly from the company's SEC filing via their as-filed XBRL tags — no reclassification of what counts as a current vs. long-term item. NCAV per share (TTM) divides this figure by period-end basic shares outstanding.
A: Working capital and net working capital subtract only *current* liabilities from current assets, leaving long-term debt and other long-term obligations out of the picture entirely. NCAV subtracts total liabilities — current and long-term — making it a more conservative, liquidation-oriented measure. A company can look healthy on working capital while carrying enough long-term debt to turn its NCAV negative.
A: It means the market is pricing the company below the estimated liquidation value of its current assets after settling every liability, without assigning any value to fixed assets, intangibles, or future earnings power. This is the classic Graham "net-net" setup. It doesn't automatically make a stock a good investment — companies can trade below NCAV for years because of weak or deteriorating operations — but it does provide a quantifiable margin of safety on the balance sheet alone.
A: The most common source of variation is how a platform classifies current vs. long-term liabilities, and whether it uses as-filed figures or reclassifies them under its own template. GeminIQ uses the company's own as-filed XBRL classifications rather than normalizing them through a third-party aggregator, so NCAV reflects the company's own reporting structure.
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