Financial health
Capital expenditure
CapEx
What it is
Money spent on long-lived assets: plants, machinery, servers, buildings. Things that serve the business for years, as opposed to expenses consumed within the year.
How to read it
Measured against revenue, it reveals how capital-intensive the business is. A software publisher invests little; a telecom operator or a miner, enormously.
What it does not tell you
The reported figure doesn't separate MAINTENANCE capex (replacing what exists, unavoidable) from GROWTH capex (new capacity, discretionary) — two very different things.
Other measures — Financial health
Educational content. Polaris is not a registered investment adviser and makes no recommendation.