DEODiageo plc

$95.94+0.79% 1Y

Is it safe?

Mixed

Nothing alarming, nothing pristine: comfortable debt (BBB) and typical volatility.

2 neutral, 4 without data
Credit gradeBBBderived · Jun 30, 2023

Investment-grade balance sheet. A rule of thumb on leverage, not a credit rating.

Drawdown risk30% volderived · Oct 23, 2026

Moderate price swings, typical volatility. Worst drawdown -63% · now 5% 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 DEO take a bad year?

Diageo plc carries $16.4B of net debt at 2.88× EBITDA: a load its earnings can carry.

$16.4B

Net debt · as at FY2023 · between two and four years of EBITDA, normal for a stable business

Net debt / EBITDA
2.88×

Net debt / EBITDA · 2.87× a year ago · the load is going up

Interest cover
5.40×

Interest cover · operating profit covers the interest bill several times over

Annualised volatility
30%

Annualised volatility · S&P 500 16% · roughly twice as jumpy as the market

Details›
Total debtFY2023
$18.2B
Cash and short-term investments
$1.79B
Net debt
$16.4B
EBITDA, trailing twelve months
$5.70B
Operating profit, trailing twelve months
$4.63B
Debt / equity
2.33×
Total debt / EBITDA
3.19×
Annualised volatilitytwo years of daily moves
30%
Worst drawdown on file
−63%
Below its 52-week high
5.1%

Balance sheet from SEC filings; drawdown and volatility from end-of-day closes; Altman Z from the filed statements.

The balance sheet

What it owes against what it owns, and how close that comes to trouble.

How far can it fall?

How much the price moves, how deep and how long its falls have run, and what each unit of risk has paid.