Ross Stores ROST

Consumer Cyclical · Apparel - Retail · Synthos Deep Dive · 2026-08-04

$228.55

Hold

—

The Overview

Ross Stores runs two chains of discount clothing shops — Ross Dress for Less and dd's DISCOUNTS — with 2,282 locations, all in the United States. It buys brand-name clothing and homeware cheaply, usually because someone else over-ordered it, and sells it at 20% to 60% below department-store prices. It has done this for decades and it is very good at it.

In the three months to early May 2026 it had the best quarter it has ever had. Sales at stores open more than a year rose 17%. Most of that was more people walking in the door, not people spending more — which is the healthier of the two. Profit per share went from $1.47 to $2.02.

The stock has noticed. It is up 83% in a year while the broad market is up 24%. It is within three quarters of one percent of its highest price ever, and — unusually — it has not had a single meaningful dip in twelve months.

Here is the arithmetic problem. At $251.11 you are paying about 32 times what analysts think the company will earn in the year ending January 2027, and about 29 times the January 2028 figure. Those same analysts think profit growth slows to about 10% a year after this one. Historically this company has traded well below 30 times earnings. So the price now needs the extraordinary quarter to become the ordinary quarter.

Analysts covering the stock have an average price target of $259.89 — about 3.5% above today's price. They do not see much left either.

Our estimate of fair value is $233, roughly 7% below the current price. If the growth normalises and the multiple returns to a more typical level, we get $170. If the company keeps compounding at this rate and holds a high multiple, we get $295. That is a worse-than-even bet.

The company reports again on 20 August, sixteen days from now. That report answers the only question that matters.

One more thing worth saying plainly: our expert knowledge base — 52,021 recorded claims from investors, economists and analysts — contains not one claim about Ross Stores. We are not going to pretend otherwise.

Downside Risk 5/10. Net cash, no debt problem, a counter-cyclical model — attached to a stock with no drawdown and an RSI of 79.
Growth Quality 7/10. A 17% comparable-sales quarter driven by traffic is the real thing. One quarter is one quarter.
Exponential Potential 2/10. The growth engine is building about 110 more shops a year. That is linear and it is fine.

Putting a number on it: our fair-value estimate is $233 against a current price of $228.55 — real upside if our numbers are right.

Our summary metrics

Downside Risk (lower = safer)5/10Moderate

"Rated 5 — an unusually safe business attached to an unusually extended price. The supports are real and filing-verified. Ross holds $4,130,980 thousand of cash against $1,018,187 thousand of senior notes at 2026-05-02, i.e. $3.11 billion of NET CASH, plus an undrawn $1.3 billion revolving credit facility with no borrowings or letters of credit outstanding. There is no goodwill, no intangible assets, no non-controlling interest and no preferred stock. Return on equity is 36.7% on trailing figures. The model is counter-cyclical by construction — off-price gains share when consumers trade down, which is precisely what the one relevant macro claim in the knowledge base describes. Against that: the entire risk in this security today is the price. At $251.11 the stock trades at 32.1x the consensus for the fiscal year ending January 2027, RSI 79.0, 0.7% below its 52-week high, 23.5% above its 200-day moving average, after a 12-month return of 83.2%. Its maximum drawdown over the trailing year is MINUS 0.73% — there has effectively been no pullback to absorb a disappointment into. Comparable store sales of 17% in the April quarter are more than three times any full-year rate the company has posted in the last five years and the consensus already assumes deceleration to roughly 11% revenue growth in the July quarter. More than half of the merchandise Ross sells originates in China; fiscal 2025 earnings carried an estimated $0.16 per share of tariff cost, and the February 2026 Supreme Court decision voiding the IEEPA tariffs has produced refund claims the company has explicitly NOT recognised because realisation is not assured. Capital expenditure is guided to approximately $1.1 billion in fiscal 2026 against $819 million filed for fiscal 2025, a 34% increase that compresses free cash flow before any operating disappointment."

Growth Quality7/10High

"Rated 7 — genuinely excellent recent growth whose durability is the open question. Sales, filed: $20,377M (FY2023), $21,129M (FY2024, +4%), $22,751M (FY2025, +8%), and the quarter ended 2026-05-02 at $6,010M against $4,985M, +21%. Comparable store sales: +5% (FY2023), +3% (FY2024), +5% (FY2025), then +17% in the April 2026 quarter, of which approximately 11 points is TRAFFIC and 6 points basket. A traffic-led 17% comp at a 2,282-store chain is not a promotional artefact; it is customers arriving. Margins moved with it — cost of goods sold fell 145 basis points to 70.4% of sales on an 85 basis point merchandise-margin gain and 60 basis points of occupancy leverage, and operating margin rose 120 basis points to 13.4%. Diluted earnings per share went from $1.47 to $2.02, +37%, against a $1.73 consensus. Unit growth is steady and modest — 90 net new stores in FY2025, approximately 110 planned for FY2026, about 5% square-footage growth, with entry into Puerto Rico and the New York metropolitan area. What holds this at 7 rather than 9 is that consensus does not believe the run-rate persists and neither, on the evidence, should we without a second data point. The vendor consensus for the July 2026 quarter is $6,146M of revenue, +11.2% year on year — roughly half the April rate — and full-year FY2026 revenue of $25,157M, +10.6%. Beyond that the estimate rows imply EPS growth of 10.1% then 9.6%, and the FY2029 row actually shows revenue and EPS FALLING (to $27,904M and $9.31 from $28,504M and $9.46) on three analysts, which is a coverage artefact and is excluded from every conclusion in this dive."

Exponential Potential2/10Low

"Rated 2 — there is no exponential mechanism here and the company does not claim one. Ross's growth function is stores multiplied by sales per store, and stores grow at roughly 5% a year by physical construction — 80 Ross and 10 dd's DISCOUNTS opened in fiscal 2025, approximately 85 and 25 planned for fiscal 2026, at a cost the company funds from cash. There is no e-commerce channel of consequence, no subscription, no network, no software layer and no operating leverage that compounds; the 60 basis points of occupancy leverage in the April quarter came from selling more through the same fixed rent, which is linear and reverses. The one genuinely non-linear feature of the model is inventory opportunism — packaway was 36% of total inventory at 2026-05-02 against 41% a year earlier, and the ability to buy distressed merchandise at scale is a real advantage that widens exactly when the rest of retail is in trouble. That is a counter-cyclical option, not a compounding curve. A 2 is the honest number for a company whose fifty-year strategy is to open a hundred more boxes a year and buy other people's mistakes well."

Fair value$233 $170–$295

What does “fair value” mean?

Fair value is Synthos’s estimate of what one share is worth today, based on our model of the company’s future cash generation and the risks to it. It is not a price target or a prediction of where the stock trades next quarter — it’s the price where we think risk and reward are balanced. Above it, you’re paying for outcomes better than our base case; below it, the market is offering a margin of safety.

The model’s inputs and weightings are proprietary — they’re the product. What we publish is the output, plus an independent, public-math cross-check further down the page (“Check our number”) so you can judge it for yourself.

What do the 5 tiers mean? (Core · Tactical · Watch · Hold · Avoid)

Buy — CoreOwn it as a foundation — start or add now, size it for years, let dips be gifts.

Buy — TacticalGood price + confirmed trend + a defined exit — buy the setup, not a marriage.

WatchWe want the business, just not at this price/setup — act only when the listed trigger hits.

HoldFine to keep if you own it — no reason to buy more; new money does better elsewhere.

AvoidDon't own it — the problem is the business or the expectations, so a cheaper price won't fix it.

The Road Ahead

What we expect to matter in each window, and the evidence that would prove us wrong.

Short term 0-6 months

No differentiated view

Driver: "The technical configuration is the most extended in this batch and it is extended in the direction of the position we are declining to take. Ross closed 2026-08-04 at $251.11, DOWN 0.71% on the day from $252.91, having traded $250.34 to $253.445 on 2.12 million shares. That places it 0.7% below a 52-week high of $252.91 and 77.1% above a 52-week low of $141.79, 8.8% above a 50-day moving average of $230.72 and 23.5% above a 200-day average of $203.40. RSI is 79.0 — the only overbought reading in this batch — and MACD is +7.60. The maximum drawdown from peak across the entire trailing year is MINUS 0.73%, which is to say this stock has not had a correction in twelve months. Relative performance is 3-month +11.1% against SPY +7.6%, 6-month +32.1% against +11.1%, and 12-month +83.2% against +24.3% and QQQ +30.8%. None of this is a reason to sell a business this good; all of it is a reason not to buy it sixteen days before a print where consensus has already halved the growth rate. The street's own consensus target of $259.89 is 3.5% above spot, and the LOW target of $230 is 8.4% below it — the analyst community sees almost no upside from here either."
What we’re watching: "The 2026-08-20 print, and inside it exactly one number — the comparable store sales rate, with its traffic-versus-basket split. April was +17% on +11% traffic. Consensus revenue of $6,146M implies roughly +11% total sales growth against 5% unit growth, i.e. a mid-single-digit comp. A second consecutive double-digit traffic-led comp would force a genuine reassessment of the estimate base this dive is built on and is the named upgrade trigger. A comp back at 4-6% confirms the spike reading and leaves a 32x multiple with nothing under it. Also watch merchandise margin, which added 85 basis points in April, and any first quantification of an IEEPA tariff refund — the company has submitted claims and recognised NOTHING, so any recognition is pure upside to a line that cost $0.16 per share in fiscal 2025."
Confidence: Medium

Medium term 6-24 months

Neutral

Driver: "Over one to two years the business almost certainly does fine and the shareholder almost certainly does less well than the last twelve months, because the multiple is doing the work the earnings used to. Consensus has EPS at $7.833 for the year ending January 2027, $8.624 for January 2028 and $9.455 for January 2029 — growth of 18.5%, 10.1% and 9.6%. Unit growth is a dependable 5% and the merchandising machine is running well. But the return decomposition is unattractive from here. Shareholder yield is approximately 2.3% — a $2.55 billion two-year repurchase authorisation approved in March 2026, running at $318.7 million in the April quarter, roughly 1.58% of market capitalisation annualised, plus a $0.4450 quarterly dividend, $1.78 annualised, a 0.71% yield. Add roughly 10% EPS growth and the return is about 12% a year BEFORE any multiple movement, from a starting multiple of 29.1x on the January 2028 year against a company whose trailing five-year growth rate is high single digits. Free cash flow is $2,632 million on trailing twelve months against a market capitalisation of $80,551 million — a 3.27% yield — and management has guided capital expenditure UP 34% to approximately $1.1 billion for fiscal 2026 to build distribution centres in Randleman, North Carolina and elsewhere, which mechanically reduces that yield next year."
What we’re watching: "Whether the 17% comp proves to be share capture that persists — off-price historically takes share when department and specialty retail closes doors, and traffic up 11% is the signature of exactly that. Whether the eighth distribution centre in Buckeye, Arizona (opened May 2025, which cost 25 basis points of deleverage in fiscal 2025) and the ninth in Randleman convert to the leverage the company expects. Whether the dd's DISCOUNTS reacceleration works — 10 openings in FY2025 rising to a planned 25 in FY2026, a deliberate change of pace at the lower-income banner. Whether tariff costs recur; more than half the merchandise Ross sells originates in China and the legal position was overturned in February 2026 with refunds unquantified. And whether the buyback pace increases — at $2.55 billion over two years against $3.11 billion of net cash and $2.6 billion of annual free cash flow, the authorisation is smaller than the capacity."
Confidence: Medium

Long term 2+ years

Tailwind

Driver: "Ross Stores is one of the small number of American retailers whose model has survived every format shift of the last forty years, and the long-run case is unglamorous and sound. It sells first-quality branded merchandise at 20-60% off department-store prices out of 2,282 low-rent boxes, buys opportunistically from a supply chain that is permanently mismatched to demand, holds no goodwill and no intangibles, generates a 36.7% return on equity, funds every store it opens from cash, and is structurally advantaged when other retailers fail. It has run this model from 1,693 Ross stores in 2023 to 1,917 at 2026-05-02, and management's stated long-term ambition is to keep opening on market penetration and demographic criteria without a stated terminal store count. The threat that has not arrived is e-commerce — Ross has essentially no online business and has never needed one, because the treasure-hunt format is the reason customers come. The threat that could arrive is a sustained period in which branded manufacturers stop over-producing, which is the raw material of the entire model. Neither is imminent and neither is measurable quarter to quarter. Over a long enough horizon this is a compounder; the question this dive answers is what it is worth today, not whether it is good."
What we’re watching: "Whether packaway inventory — 36% of the total at 2026-05-02 against 41% a year earlier — signals a tightening supply of distressed branded merchandise or simply better in-season flow. Whether the New York metropolitan and Puerto Rico entries prove the model travels into denser, costlier real estate. Whether dd's DISCOUNTS becomes a second engine at scale rather than a 365-store adjunct. Whether James G. Conroy, appointed chief executive, sustains the merchandising discipline through a cycle — the April quarter is the strongest evidence yet and it is one quarter. And whether the company ever chooses to lever a balance sheet that carries $3.11 billion of net cash and $1.0 billion of senior notes against $80.6 billion of equity value."
Confidence: Medium

Exponential Potential

Exponential Potential2/10Low

What could take this further than the base case — and where the market may be underpricing it. Full forward-growth and acceleration math in Deeper analysis, §4 below.

Deeper analysis

Technicals, fundamentals, valuation, and the full expert-claim evidence panel — the detail behind the numbers above.

Check our number Market-implied growth ≈ 60%/yr This isn’t how we calculate fair value — it’s public math you can verify yourself. To justify today’s $229, earnings would have to compound roughly 60% a year for 10 years (9% discount rate). Analysts forecast ~12%/yr, so the market is pricing in MORE than what the Street expects.

⚠ Earnings banner

Ross reports second-quarter fiscal 2026 results on 2026-08-20 — sixteen days after this dive. Vendor consensus is EPS $1.94 (against $1.56 a year ago) on revenue of $6,146,173 thousand (against $5,529,152 thousand), i.e. +11.2% revenue growth — roughly half the +21% just delivered in the April quarter. The verdict below is set with that timing as an explicit input: the single question that decides this name is answered in sixteen days, and the position we would take before the answer is smaller than the position we would take after it. This is a reason to wait, not a reason to sell.

Reference table

Street consensus	$259.89 (+3.5%) · median $260 · high $290 (+15.5%) · low $230 (−8.4%) · 30 buy / 13 hold / 4 sell across 47 analysts. The street's own average target is 3.5% above spot — even the crowd sees almost nothing left
Valuation	32.1x FY26E (Jan-2027) · 29.1x FY27E (Jan-2028) · 26.6x FY28E · 35.1x trailing diluted EPS of $7.16 · 12.8x book · EV/EBITDA 22.6x on rebuilt figures (vendor prints 21.2x — see Section 8)
Balance sheet — filing-verified	Cash $4,130,980k, senior notes $1,018,187k at 2026-05-02 → NET CASH $3,112,793k. Undrawn $1.3bn revolver. No goodwill, no intangibles, no non-controlling interest, no preferred. The vendor reports NET DEBT of $592M — a $3,705M error equal to operating lease liabilities to the dollar
Cash generation	Trailing operating cash flow $3,453M, filed capex $821M, free cash flow $2,632M, yield 3.27%. Capex guided to ~$1.1bn for FY2026, +34%
Capital return	$2.55bn two-year repurchase authorisation (March 2026 → January 2028); $318.7M repurchased in the April quarter, ~1.58% of market cap annualised; dividend $0.4450/quarter, $1.78 annualised, 0.71%. Total shareholder yield ≈ 2.3%
Conviction	ZERO. Not one claim in 52,021 names Ross Stores. An empty lane, reported as empty
Technicals	−0.7% from the 52-week high of $252.91, +77.1% above the low of $141.79; +8.8% above the 50-DMA ($230.72), +23.5% above the 200-DMA ($203.40); RSI 79.0; MACD +7.60; maximum trailing-year drawdown −0.73%; 12-month +83.2% vs SPY +24.3%

What the experts actually said

No independent expert claims in the Synthos knowledge base yet for ROST — this dive is fundamentals- and technicals-driven, not panel-driven.

Price & moving averages 12 months · 50 & 200-day averages · 52-week range

Solid line = price · dashed line = 50-day average · dotted line = 200-day average · the two thin horizontal lines mark the 52-week high and low. Price above both averages is an uptrend.

Bollinger Bands 20-day average ± 2 standard deviations

The shaded band widens when the stock gets more volatile. Riding the upper edge = strong momentum (sometimes stretched); the lower edge = weak / potentially oversold.

RSI (14) momentum gauge · 0–100

Above 70 (overbought zone, shaded) = overbought, below 30 (oversold zone, shaded) = oversold. Currently 39.

MACD 12 / 26 / 9 · trend & momentum

The MACD line crossing above the signal line (bars flip to the up color) = momentum turning up; crossing below (bars flip to the down color) = turning down. Bar height = the size of that gap.

Relative performance vs S&P 500 & its sector (XLY (sector)), set to 100 a year ago

Solid = ROST · dashed = S&P 500 · dotted = XLY (sector). A rising line means it is beating that benchmark — the sector line shows whether it is a leader or laggard within its own group.

Forward revenue & earnings actual → estimate · "FY" = fiscal year, "E" = estimate

Darker bars = actual results, brighter = analyst estimates. Taller bars to the right = expected growth.

Key stats an RIA wants

Price$228.55

Market cap$73B

P/E trailing27×

P/E FY26E / FY27E35× / 27×

EV / Sales3.0×

EV / EBITDA18.0×

Gross margin29.9%

Net margin10.8%

Dividend yield0.74%

Beta0.877

52-wk range$145 – $255

RSI(14)26

50 / 200-DMA$234 / $211

12-mo return+52% (SPY +19%)

Street target$274 ($234–$310)

Analyst grades30 Buy · 13 Hold · 4 Sell

FMP ratingB+

Next earnings2026-08-20 (Q2 fiscal 2026 earnings, 16 days away; vendor consensus EPS $1.94 against $1.56 a year ago and revenue $6,146,173 thousand against $5,529,152 thousand, implying +11.2% revenue growth — roughly HALF the +21% just delivered. The prior four prints beat by +16.8%, +5.3%, +11.3% and +2.0% on EPS.)

1. What the business is

From the 10-K filed 2026-03-31: "Ross is the largest off-price apparel and home fashion chain in the United States, with 1,904 locations in 44 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico as of January 31, 2026... We also operate 363 dd's DISCOUNTS stores in 22 states." By 2026-05-02 that had become 1,917 Ross and 365 dd's DISCOUNTS — 2,282 stores. Total selling square footage at fiscal year-end was 45.1 million square feet, against 43.9 million and 42.8 million in the two prior years.

Chief executive James G. Conroy; approximately 111,000 employees; NASDAQ, common stock par value $0.01.

The company reports ONE reportable segment. From the 10-K: the two operating segments, Ross and dd's DISCOUNTS, "include only activities related to off-price retailing in stores throughout the United States and its territories" and are aggregated. That single sentence explains two vendor data points that would otherwise look like defects, and Section 8 says so.

Store growth, filed:

	FY2023	FY2024	FY2025	Q1 FY2026
Ross opened	72	75	80	13
Ross closed	(1)	(8)	(7)	—
dd's opened	25	14	10	4
dd's closed	(2)	(4)	(2)	(2)
Total stores, end	2,109	2,186	2,267	2,282

Guidance is for approximately 110 new stores in fiscal 2026 — 85 Ross and 25 dd's DISCOUNTS — roughly 5% growth, with the dd's figure representing a deliberate reacceleration from 10 openings last year. (Company guidance, half-weighted per house rule.) Forty-seven stores are planned for the quarter ending 2026-08-01.

2. The April 2026 quarter — the whole argument, in one table

All figures filed, from the 10-Q for the quarter ended 2026-05-02 ($000):

	Q1 FY2026	Q1 FY2025	change
Sales	$6,010,476	$4,984,971	+20.6%
Comparable store sales	+17%	+3%	—
of which traffic / basket	+11% / +6%	—	—
Cost of goods sold	$4,230,589	$3,581,366	+18.1%
as % of sales	70.4%	71.8%	−145bp
Selling, general & administrative	$975,861	$797,135	+22.4%
as % of sales	16.2%	16.0%	+25bp
Operating income	$804,026	$606,470	+32.6%
operating margin	13.4%	12.2%	+120bp
Interest income, net	$33,449	$34,409	—
Net earnings	$649,964	$479,249	+35.6%
Diluted EPS	$2.02	$1.47	+37.4%
Diluted shares (000)	321,231	327,005	−1.8%
Operating cash flow	$836,009	$409,715	+104%
Capital expenditure	$208,954	$207,378	+0.8%

Four observations.

First, the comp is traffic-led and that is the version that matters. The 10-Q: "The 17% increase in comp store sales was primarily driven by an approximately 11% increase in traffic and 6% increase in basket." A basket-led comp can be inflation or mix. An 11% increase in the number of transactions at a 2,282-store chain is people choosing to come, and it is the signature of share capture from failing competitors — the exact mechanism that makes off-price counter-cyclical.

Second, the margin came from merchandise, not from cutting. Of the 145 basis points of cost-of-goods improvement, 85 basis points was merchandise margin, 60 was occupancy leverage, 15 distribution and 10 domestic freight, partly offset by 25 basis points of higher buying costs from incentive compensation. Merchandise margin expanding while traffic rises 11% means the goods were bought well, not marked down to move.

Third, the base was soft. Q1 FY2025 comps were +3% and sales growth +3%. The 21% is measured against the weakest quarter in the recent series. That does not make it less real; it makes it less extrapolable.

Fourth, operating cash flow doubled — and roughly half of it is working capital timing. Accounts payable leverage (payables ÷ inventory) rose to 89% from 81%, which the company attributes to "the timing of inventory receipts and related payments." Payables contributed $262,115k of the increase. That is a genuine cash benefit and it does not repeat.

The full-year picture the quarter sits on top of

($M except EPS)	FY2023	FY2024	FY2025
Sales	20,377	21,129	22,751
Sales growth	+9%	+4%	+8%
Comparable store sales	+5%	+3%	+5%
Cost of goods sold, %	72.7%	72.2%	72.3%
SG&A, %	16.0%	15.5%	15.8%
Operating margin	11.3%	12.2%	11.9%
Net earnings	1,875	2,091	2,145
Diluted EPS	$5.56	$6.32	$6.61
Operating cash flow	2,514	2,357	3,027
Capital expenditure	763	720	819

Fiscal 2025 was a decent year, not a great one — operating margin fell 35 basis points and EPS grew 5%. Two headwinds are named in the filing: "Merchandise margin decreased 20 basis points primarily due to tariff-related costs", and a 25 basis point distribution deleverage from opening the eighth distribution centre in Buckeye, Arizona in May 2025. Fiscal 2025 earnings carried an estimated $0.16 per share of tariff cost; fiscal 2024 had carried a $0.14 per share benefit from selling a packaway warehouse. Adjusting both, underlying EPS growth in FY2025 was closer to 10% than 5%.

3. The tariff position — an unrecognised asset and a live exposure

Two filings address it, and the company has taken the conservative side of both.

From the 10-K (subsequent events): "On February 20, 2026, the United States Supreme Court issued a decision that tariffs imposed in 2025 under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act were not authorized under the statute. The Company is currently evaluating the impact of this ruling..."

From the 10-Q, ten weeks later: "U.S. Customs and Border Protection has initiated a process for claiming refunds of tariffs paid under IEEPA, and the Company has submitted claims for IEEPA tariffs paid... As of May 2, 2026, the Company has not recognized a receivable or gain relating to tariff refunds because realization was not assured."

So: a $0.16 per share fiscal-2025 cost, a Supreme Court decision voiding the statutory basis, claims filed, and nothing whatever booked. That is unquantified upside sitting outside every estimate in this file. It is also a reminder of the standing exposure — the 10-K states that "more than half of the goods we sell originate from China", and that Ross "directly import[s] only a small portion", meaning most tariff cost arrives embedded in domestic vendors' prices and is neither controllable nor precisely measurable by the company.

4. Balance sheet and capital return

From the 10-Q at 2026-05-02 ($000), against the fiscal year-end:

	2026-05-02	2026-01-31
Cash and cash equivalents	$4,130,980	$4,594,392
Merchandise inventory	$2,976,958	$2,630,970
Property and equipment, net	$4,147,666	$4,088,760
Operating lease assets	$3,531,945	$3,519,610
Total assets	$15,554,572	$15,548,737
Accounts payable	$2,653,741	$2,386,418
Current operating lease liabilities	$735,528	$727,855
Current portion of long-term debt	$241,344	$499,743
Long-term debt	$776,843	$1,017,863
Non-current operating lease liabilities	$2,969,435	$2,966,877
Total stockholders' equity	$6,305,003	$6,187,443
Shares issued and outstanding (000)	321,035	322,333

The debt is five series of senior notes and nothing else: 4.700% due 2027 ($241,344k), 4.800% due 2030 ($133,179k), 1.875% due 2031 ($497,106k), 5.450% due 2050 ($146,558k) — total $1,018,187k. The 0.875% notes due 2026 ($500,000k) were repaid at maturity in April 2026; $700,000k was repaid in April 2025 and $250,000k in September 2024. The $1.3 billion revolving credit facility entered into in 2025 had no borrowings and no letters of credit outstanding, and the financial covenant was met.

Net cash at 2026-05-02 is $4,130,980 − $1,018,187 = $3,112,793 thousand — 3.9% of market capitalisation. The vendor payload reports net DEBT of $592 million. Section 8 shows the error is exactly the operating leases, to the dollar.

Capital return, filed:

	FY2023	FY2024	FY2025	Q1 FY2026
Shares repurchased (M)	8.2	7.3	7.1	1.5
Average price	$115.24	$144.46	$147.61	~$212
Amount ($M, ex-excise)	950	1,050	1,050	318.7
Dividends paid ($M)	455	489	528	143.6

In March 2026 the board approved a new two-year, $2.55 billion authorisation through 2028-01-29, of which $2.2 billion remained available at 2026-05-02. Annualising the April-quarter pace gives roughly $1.275 billion, 1.58% of market capitalisation. The dividend was raised from $0.4050 to $0.4450 per quarter in March 2026 (+9.9%), $1.78 annualised, a 0.71% yield. Total shareholder yield is approximately 2.29% — against a company holding $3.11 billion of net cash and generating $2.63 billion of free cash flow. The capital return is conservative relative to the capacity, and that is a choice, not a constraint.

Note the average repurchase price. Ross bought 7.1 million shares at $147.61 in fiscal 2025 and 1.5 million at approximately $212 in the April quarter. The stock is now $251.11. The company's own buying has been at materially lower prices than today's, which is worth stating in a dive whose conclusion is that today's price is full.

5. Free cash flow — recomputed, and the vendor verified clean

Per the standing rule, we never quote a vendor free-cash-flow figure. Here is the rebuild.

Trailing twelve months to 2026-05-02 ($000)
Operating cash flow FY2025 (filed)	$3,026,883
less Q1 FY2025 (filed)	($409,715)
plus Q1 FY2026 (filed)	$836,009
= Operating cash flow, TTM	$3,453,177
Capex FY2025 (filed, "Additions to property and equipment")	$819,275
less Q1 FY2025 (filed)	($207,378)
plus Q1 FY2026 (filed)	$208,954
= Capital expenditure, TTM	$820,851
= FREE CASH FLOW, TTM	$2,632,326	3.27% yield on $80.55bn

The vendor's capital-expenditure datum is CORRECT and we record it as such. cf_a.capitalExpenditure for fiscal 2025 reads −$819,275,000; the 10-K cash-flow statement reads $(819,275) thousand. An exact match. The 10-K's capital-expenditure detail table breaks the same total into distribution and transportation $297M, new stores $232M, existing stores $189M, and information systems/corporate/other $101M — $819 million, reconciling.

Two of the vendor's own trailing ratios reproduce from filed figures to five decimal places, which is a stronger verification than a single-year match:

capexToOperatingCashFlowTTM = 0.23770892717 — our rebuild gives $820,851 ÷ $3,453,177 = 0.237709. ✓
capexToDepreciationTTM = 1.56039897196 — our rebuild gives $820,851 ÷ $526,052 = 1.560399. ✓
freeCashFlowYieldTTM = 0.03267886 — our rebuild gives $2,632,326 ÷ $80,551,336 = 0.0326784. ✓

The $526,052k denominator in the second ratio is the CASH-FLOW-STATEMENT depreciation, which is correct — and it is NOT the depreciation figure the vendor carries on its income statement, which is wrong by 72%. That is the "diagnostic and datum fail independently" pattern, arriving here in its inverted form: the diagnostic is clean and the income-statement datum is corrupt. Section 8 has the detail.

Forward warning on this line. Management guides capital expenditure of approximately $1.1 billion for fiscal 2026 — +34% on the $819 million filed for fiscal 2025 — for new stores, existing-store improvement, the Randleman, North Carolina distribution centre and information systems. (Company guidance, half-weighted.) Holding operating cash flow flat, that alone takes the free-cash-flow yield from 3.27% toward 2.9%.

6. Valuation — priced in or room?

At $251.11 (market capitalisation $80.55B, 321,035,000 shares outstanding at 2026-05-02):

	Trailing	FY26E (Jan-2027)	FY27E (Jan-2028)	FY28E (Jan-2029)
Consensus EPS	$7.16 (sum of four filed quarters)	$7.833 (12)	$8.624 (14)	$9.455 (8)
EPS growth	—	+18.5%	+10.1%	+9.6%
P/E	35.1x	32.1x	29.1x	26.6x
Consensus revenue ($M)	23,776 (TTM)	25,157 (14)	26,755 (13)	28,504 (8)
Revenue growth	—	+10.6%	+6.4%	+6.5%
EV / EBITDA (rebuilt)	22.6x	—	—	—
Price / book	12.8x	—	—	—
Free cash flow yield	3.27%	—	—	—

Estimate coverage is good on the anchor years — 14 analysts on FY27E EPS with a range of $8.430 to $8.949, a 6.2% spread, the narrowest in this batch. FY28E rests on 8. The FY29E row (year ending January 2030) is excluded from every conclusion in this dive, and for an unusual reason: it goes BACKWARDS. Revenue falls from $28,504M to $27,904M and EPS from $9.455 to $9.31, on 4 and 3 analysts respectively. That is not a forecast of decline; it is a thin-coverage artefact in which the small set of analysts carrying a FY29 number is not the same set carrying FY28. We name it rather than average through it.

est.ebitdaAvg and est.ebitAvg are rejected, per the standing rule and on this file's own evidence. In every row from fiscal 2025 onward — six of the eight years in the file — ebitdaAvg is exactly 14.7846% of revenueAvg and ebitAvg exactly 12.3757%, to five decimal places. That is the fixed-ratio fabrication signature. The FY26E ebitdaAvg of $3,719M compares to a rebuilt trailing EBITDA of $3,431M, which is not absurd, but the constancy of the ratio to four decimal places across eight years is not a forecast. All forward valuation in this dive uses epsAvg only.

6a. What today's price assumes (the inversion)

At $251.11 — 32.1x the January-2027 consensus and 29.1x January-2028 — the price embeds roughly the following, each falsifiable and each dated:

EPS reaches $7.83 in the year ending January 2027 and $8.62 in January 2028. (Consensus; 12 and 14 analysts.) The April quarter delivered $2.02 of the first, so the remaining three quarters need $5.81 against $5.14 a year ago, +13%. The 2026-08-20 consensus of $1.94 against $1.56 is +24%, so the implied second half is +8% — the estimate base already assumes sharp deceleration.
Comparable store sales settle in the mid-single digits rather than reverting to 3%. (Our derivation from the consensus revenue path.) FY26E revenue of $25,157M against $22,751M is +10.6%, of which roughly 5 points is square footage. That implies a full-year comp near 5-6% against a first quarter of 17% — i.e. roughly 3-4% for the remaining three quarters. Consensus is not extrapolating the spike, and neither should a reader of the multiple.
The market keeps paying roughly 29-32x forward earnings. (Our number.) This is the most fragile assumption in the price. Ross earns 36.7% on equity and grows units 5% a year; the consensus growth rate two years out is 9.6%. At 25x FY27E the stock is $216; at 22x it is $190. The multiple, not the earnings, is where the money is.
Merchandise margin holds the 85 basis points it gained in April. (Filing-derived.) That gain arrived alongside a tariff regime the Supreme Court voided in February 2026 and a distribution network absorbing a new Arizona facility. A single reversal of either takes operating margin back under 13%.
Capital expenditure of ~$1.1 billion does not become a habit. (Company guidance, half-weighted.) A 34% step-up funded from cash is affordable; a permanently higher capital intensity at 3.27% free-cash-flow yield is not what a 32x multiple is paying for.

6b. The return bridge (why the multiple moves)

Expected return over the next twelve months decomposes as EPS growth (+10.1%, from FY26E $7.833 to FY27E $8.624) + multiple drift + shareholder yield (+2.3%).

Our base assumes the multiple COMPRESSES, and we state the mechanism rather than asserting it. Today the market pays 29.1x the year ending January 2028. Our base pays 27.0x the same year — a 7% de-rating, not a rolldown. The driver is growth maturation: the consensus itself has EPS growth falling from 18.5% to 10.1% to 9.6%, and a company growing high single digits with 5% unit growth and a 2.3% shareholder yield does not sustainably command 29x. We are not forecasting a de-rating to the historical band; we are forecasting a partial one, which is the charitable version.

That gives +10.1% earnings − 7.0% multiple + 2.3% yield ≈ +5% over the year on the same multiple basis, against a starting price already 7.2% above our base — which is how a good business produces a negative expected return. If the multiple merely HELD at 29.1x the FY27 number, fair value would be $251 — precisely spot, which is the honest statement of what today's price is: the whole of the next year's growth, taken in advance.

Sensitivity, stated openly: on the FY27E consensus mean of $8.624, 22x = $190, 25x = $216, 27x = $233, 29.1x = $251 (spot), 33x = $285. The entire answer lives in a 22-33x band on one estimate row, and today's price is at the 88th percentile of that band.

6c. Variant perception (where we differ, what would surprise)

We are 10.3% below the street and the gap is entirely multiple, not earnings. Our base of $233 against consensus $259.89 uses the street's own EPS number. We do not think analysts are wrong about what Ross will earn; we think 29x is too much to pay for it. That is a cleaner disagreement than a forecast disagreement, and it is testable — if the stock is at $260 in a year on $8.62 of FY27 earnings, we were wrong about the multiple and should say so.
We think the +17% comp is being read as a level and is more likely a spike, and we can be proved wrong in sixteen days. The strongest counter-argument is the traffic split: 11 points of the 17 was transactions, which is what durable share capture looks like. Watchable number: the comparable store sales rate in the 2026-08-20 print. A second consecutive double-digit traffic-led comp is a genuine positive surprise and the named upgrade trigger — it would put FY27 EPS materially above $8.62 and make 29x defensible.
We think the tariff refund is under-appreciated in both directions. The company has submitted claims and recognised nothing, and the fiscal-2025 cost was $0.16 per share. A recognised refund is a one-time gain no estimate carries. A reimposition of equivalent tariffs on a different statutory basis is a recurring cost no estimate carries either. Neither is in the consensus and both are in the filings.
Negative surprise that would break the thesis: a comp below 4% on 2026-08-20; merchandise margin giving back the 85 basis points; capital expenditure guidance rising above $1.1 billion; or any deterioration in packaway availability, which has already fallen from 41% to 36% of inventory year on year and is the raw material of the whole model.
Positive surprise that would force us to reprice: the second double-digit comp described above; a materially larger buyback authorisation against $3.11 billion of net cash; or recognition of an IEEPA tariff refund at scale.

Synthos fair values

All three anchors are multiples of the FY27E (year ending January 2028) consensus EPS distribution — mean $8.62363, low $8.43041, high $8.94905, 14 analysts — each cross-checked against the FY26E and FY28E rows.

Bear ~$170 — 20.2x the FY27E consensus LOW of $8.430. Cross-check: 21.7x FY26E; 19.9% above the 52-week low of $141.79. The scenario: comps revert to the 3-5% of the last five years, the distribution build-out weighs on margin, capital expenditure stays at $1.1 billion, and the market re-rates a high-single-digit grower to its historical band. −32.3%.
Base ~$233 — 27.0x the FY27E consensus MEAN of $8.624. Cross-check: 29.7x FY26E; 24.6x FY28E; 11.9x book. The scenario: comps settle in the mid single digits as consensus assumes, margins hold near 13%, the buyback runs at the authorised pace, and the multiple compresses 7% from today's 29.1x rather than the 25% a full reversion would imply. −7.2%.
Bull ~$295 — 33.0x the FY27E consensus HIGH of $8.949. Cross-check: 31.2x FY28E; 16.6% above the 52-week high. The scenario: the 17% comp proves to be sustained share capture from a shrinking mid-market, tariff refunds are recognised, EPS beats the high estimate, and the market pays a premium multiple for the only large retailer taking traffic. +17.5%.

Base is 7.2% BELOW spot; asymmetry is roughly 0.54:1 AGAINST (32.3% down, 17.5% up). That is the arithmetic reason for the verdict, and no business-quality argument overrides it. We are not calling this company overrated; we are calling this price full.

7. Knowledge base — an empty lane, reported as empty

Raw hits on the primary sweep: ZERO. Entity matches: 0. Name-level claims: 0. Discarded: 0.

The primary sweep ran entity terms ROST, Ross Stores, Ross, dd's DISCOUNTS and TJX, plus free text on "ross stores", "off-price" and "dress for less", across all 52,021 distilled claims. It returned nothing — not a case-sensitive match, not a case-insensitive match, not a text match. The sweep mechanism was verified working on the same run (a control query returned 88 exact entity matches on an unrelated large-cap), so this is an absence, not a failure.

The bare entity term "Ross" is a homograph hazard — it collides with Ross Gerber, Wilbur Ross and any number of surnames — and it was included in the sweep precisely to see whether such noise would arrive. It did not. That is worth recording: on this name the store is silent rather than confidently wrong, which is the better of the two failure modes documented elsewhere in this programme.

A deliberately widened second sweep on "off price", "offprice", "discount retail", "ross store", "tjx", "marshalls", "dollar general" and "retailer" returned 29 text-only claims across 15 channels. None names Ross Stores. None enters the conviction score, the breadth count or any number in this dive. Three are quoted below for context at zero weight, because they bear on the mechanism the April quarter demonstrated:

> 2026-07-09 · bearish · conviction 75 · horizon: thesis · no entities · channel: eurodollar_university · no named speaker · skill 0.7

> "Retailers are miniaturizing products and cutting ticket sizes to coax weak shoppers — evidence of trade-down and absent pricing power, a weak consumer economy getting weaker."

> 2023-05-01 · bullish · conviction 70 · horizon: principle · entities: Costco, Home Depot, TJ Maxx, O'Reilly, Best Buy · channel: business_breakdowns · no named speaker

> "Best-in-class retailers win by maniacal customer/employee focus over unit expansion; service and store experience protect the moat as merchandise commoditizes."

> 2025-05-09 · neutral · conviction 55 · horizon: fact · no entities · channel: all_in · no named speaker

> "Only ~50% of tariffs get passed through to pricing (per a giant retailer), not 100% — tariffs are less inflationary than the 'it's a tax' narrative claims."

What these are and are not. The first is a bearish macro claim that is, for this specific business, structurally a tailwind — trade-down is the condition under which off-price takes traffic, and it is a plausible partial explanation for +11% transactions. The second names TJ Maxx, Ross's direct competitor, in a list of retailers whose moat is service rather than expansion. The third bears on the $0.16 per share of tariff cost in fiscal 2025. All three are channel-attributed with speaker: null except where noted, none names Ross Stores, and none is evidence about this company. We quote them so that a reader can see the shape of what the store does hold on the theme, and then we set them aside.

Conclusion. Breadth 0, claim count 0, net conviction none. The Synthos knowledge base has no view on Ross Stores. This is the twelfth sector or name-level void identified and published in this programme; the correct behaviour is to say so, and the incorrect behaviour would be to promote the 29 adjacent macro claims into a conviction reading they cannot support. The verdict below is therefore built entirely on filings, the vendor payload and arithmetic.

8. Data integrity — what we rejected and why

Six findings, of which three are defects and three are verifications. Ross's vendor file is materially better than average — the capital-expenditure line is exactly right and reproduces three trailing ratios — but it carries one large leverage error and one precise, quarter-level income-statement corruption.

1. totalDebt is inflated by operating leases, and the gap equals the lease liabilities TO THE DOLLAR — REJECTED and rebuilt. The vendor reports fiscal-2025 totalDebt of $5,212,338k and netDebt of $617,946k. The 10-Q debt note states "Total long-term debt" of $1,517,606k at 2026-01-31 — five series of senior notes, itemised — and the vendor's own shortTermDebt ($499,743k) plus longTermDebt ($1,017,863k) sums to exactly that figure. The residual is $5,212,338 − $1,517,606 = $3,694,732k, and the balance sheet shows current operating lease liabilities of $727,855k plus non-current of $2,966,877k = $3,694,732k. An exact match, to the dollar.

The same test on the more recent quarter is cleaner still. At 2026-05-02: cash $4,130,980k, senior notes $241,344k + $776,843k = $1,018,187k, so NET CASH of $3,112,793k. The vendor's implied net debt, derived from netDebtToEBITDATTM (0.1547481) × its own trailing EBITDA, is +$592,171k. The swing is $3,704,964k. Operating lease liabilities at 2026-05-02 are $735,528 + $2,969,435 = $3,704,963k — a one-thousand-dollar rounding difference on a $3.7 billion reconciliation. This is the AMT signature, reproduced exactly.

Consequences, all rejected: netDebt $617,946k, netDebtToEBITDATTM 0.1547x, debtToEquityRatioTTM 0.7492x (correct: 0.162x), debtToAssetsRatioTTM 0.3037 (correct: 0.065), and enterpriseValueTTM. Rebuilt enterprise value is $80,551.3M − $3,112.8M = $77,438.5M, against the vendor's $81,143.5M — the vendor is 4.8% high.

2. inc_a and inc_q depreciation is corrupt for fiscal 2025 only, and it is corrupt in exactly two of four quarters — REJECTED. This is a textbook partial-row corruption and the field-by-field check is what finds it:

Quarter	Vendor `inc_q` D&A	Filed	Verdict
Q1 FY2025	$115,938k	$115,938k	correct
Q2 FY2025	$217,781k	$126,399k	+72.3% WRONG
Q3 FY2025	$408,050k	$132,187k	+208.7% WRONG
Q4 FY2025	$135,000k	$134,867k	correct (0.1%)
FY2025 total	$876,769k	$509,391k	+72.1% WRONG
Q1 FY2026	$132,599k	$132,599k	correct

The filed figures come from the 10-Q for the nine months ended 2025-11-01 ("Depreciation and amortization expense | 132,187 | 111,803 | 374,524 | 329,584" and the cash-flow statement's $374,524k nine-month total) and the 10-K's $509,391k full year. The vendor's annual figure is the sum of its own corrupted quarters — $115,938 + $217,781 + $408,050 + $135,000 = $876,769 exactly — so the error is coherent between inc_a and inc_q and would survive a cross-file consistency check. cf_a.depreciationAndAmortization for FY2025 is $509,391,000 and is CORRECT. FY2024's inc_a D&A of $446,788k matches both the filing and cf_a, so the corruption is confined to fiscal 2025.

Consequence — inc_a.ebitda of $3,751,824k for FY2025 is overstated by 16.6%. It is built as net income + tax + interest + the corrupt D&A ($2,145,044 + $697,113 + $32,898 + $876,769 = $3,751,824, exactly). True FY2025 EBITDA is operating income $2,707,357k + D&A $509,391k = $3,216,748k. On a trailing basis the vendor's ebitdaMarginTTM of 16.095% implies TTM EBITDA of $3,826,672k against a rebuilt $3,430,965k — 11.5% overstated. Rejected: ebitdaMarginTTM, evToEBITDATTM (21.20x; correct, using rebuilt EV and rebuilt EBITDA, is 22.57x) and netDebtToEBITDATTM.

Note the direction. Both errors flatter. Understating net debt lowers enterprise value; overstating EBITDA lowers the multiple. Correcting both moves EV/EBITDA from 21.2x to 22.6x — the vendor's version of this stock is 6% cheaper than the filings say it is.

3. The diagnostic and the datum failed INDEPENDENTLY, in the inverted direction — recorded because it is the pattern this programme has been asked to watch for. capexToDepreciationTTM of 1.56039897 is correct — it reproduces from filed figures as $820,851 ÷ $526,052 = 1.560399 — and its denominator is the cash-flow depreciation series, which is right. The income-statement depreciation series, in the same file, is wrong by 72%. So the file simultaneously contains a clean capex diagnostic and a badly corrupt depreciation datum. A dive that had trusted the diagnostic as a proxy for the whole depreciation complex would have carried an 11.5% EBITDA error into every multiple.

4. seg_geo is EMPTY — and it is CORRECTLY empty. This traces to the issuer, not the vendor. The 10-K states that both operating segments' "operations include only activities related to off-price retailing in stores throughout the United States and its territories." Ross has no foreign operations and discloses no geographic disaggregation because there is none to disclose. An empty array is the right answer. We record this explicitly to distinguish it from the six genuine seg_geo failures found in the previous batch.

5. seg_prod is a percentage allocation, not a reported segment, and it is a year stale — used with caveats. The most recent entry is fiscal 2024; there is no fiscal 2025 row. The dollar figures are not disclosed by Ross at all — they are the 10-K's sales-mix percentage table multiplied by total revenue. The reconciliation confirms it: the fiscal-2024 entries sum to $21,129,219,000, matching inc_a.revenue for that year to the dollar, and "Home Accents and Bed and Bath" of $5,493,596,940 is exactly 26.00% of revenue, matching the 10-K's disclosed 26. The tell that these are rounded percentages rather than measured dollars is that in fiscal 2021 "Men's" and "Accessories, Lingerie, Fine Jewelry, and Cosmetics" carry the identical figure of $2,648,274,160 — because both rounded to the same integer percent. This dive uses the filed percentage tables directly. Latest filed mix, from the 10-Q: Home Accents and Bed and Bath 25%, Ladies 23%, Accessories/Lingerie/Fine Jewelry/Cosmetics 15%, Men's 14%, Shoes 14%, Children's 9%.

6. Minor: interestExpense does not tie to the filing, and it does not matter here. The vendor reports FY2025 interestExpense of $32,898k against the 10-K's $49 million of interest expense on long-term debt (before $13 million of capitalised interest); inc_q reports $7,602k for the April 2026 quarter against a filed $10,333k (before $3,077k capitalised). The differences are immaterial to every conclusion because Ross earns net interest INCOME — $135 million in fiscal 2025 and $33.4 million in the April quarter — so interestCoverageRatioTTM of 79.4x is a meaningless statistic for a company with net cash and no coverage question. Not used.

Verified clean — recorded because a clean payload is a finding:

capitalExpenditure is EXACTLY right. −$819,275,000 against the 10-K's $(819,275) thousand, with the 10-K's four-way breakdown summing to the same total.
Three trailing ratios reproduce from filed figures to five decimal places — capexToOperatingCashFlowTTM 0.237709, capexToDepreciationTTM 1.560399, freeCashFlowYieldTTM 0.0326784.
priceToSalesRatioTTM 3.38792 reproduces as $80,551,336k ÷ $23,776,064k = 3.38793. ✓
The share count. Market capitalisation ÷ price gives 320,783,547; the 10-Q states 321,035,000 issued and outstanding at 2026-05-02, three months earlier, during which 1.5 million shares were repurchased. Consistent to 0.08%.
effectiveTaxRateTTM 23.79% against filed rates of 24.5% (FY2025) and 22.4% (April quarter). Consistent.
minorityInterest is 0 and that is correct — Ross has no non-controlling interests, so the NCI-omission defect class does not apply. Checked and cleared.
goodwill and intangibleAssets are 0 and that is correct — the balance sheet carries neither, which is why bookValuePerShareTTM and tangibleBookValuePerShareTTM are legitimately identical at $19.766 (our figure from the filing: $6,305,003k ÷ 321,035k = $19.64). This is the one context in which identical book and tangible book is not the GS/AXP/MS defect, and we say so rather than flagging it.

Peer set — REJECTED as unusable. The vendor peers are AutoZone, Chipotle, Coupang, Copart, eBay, Ford, Hilton, JD.com, Las Vegas Sands and Trip.com. There is not one off-price retailer, not one apparel retailer and not one discount retailer in the list. TJX, Burlington and Marshalls are absent. No peer-multiple comparison is drawn anywhere in this dive.

Vendor composite rating — noted, not used. rating gives B / 3 overall, with 2 out of 5 on discounted cash flow, 5 on return on equity, 5 on return on assets, 2 on debt-to-equity, 2 on price-to-earnings and 1 on price-to-book. The debt-to-equity sub-score is computed on the operating-lease-inflated debt figure rejected in finding 1 and should carry no weight; on the filed figures Ross's debt-to-equity is 0.162x, not 0.749x. The low price-to-book and price-to-earnings sub-scores point the same way this dive does.

Non-equity tripwire — checked and passed. ROST is common stock, par value $0.01, NASDAQ Global Select Market, 1,000,000,000 shares authorised and 321,035,000 issued and outstanding per the 10-Q balance sheet. Beta 0.879; the dividend is discretionary and was raised 9.9% in March 2026; volume 2.12 million shares (~$533M of turnover); the 52-week band of $141.79 to $252.91 is a 78% range. This is common equity.

9. Technicals

Price $251.11, −0.71% on the day. 0.7% below the 52-week high of $252.91 and 77.1% above the 52-week low of $141.79. Position within the annual range: 99th percentile.
Both moving averages are far below the price: +8.8% above the 50-day of $230.72 and +23.5% above the 200-day of $203.40, with the 50-day well above the 200-day. A textbook uptrend, and a textbook extension.
RSI 79.0 — the only overbought reading in this batch. MACD +7.60.
Maximum drawdown from peak over the trailing year: −0.73%. There has been no correction in this stock in twelve months. That is the statistic that most concerns us: a position taken here has no recent support level beneath it, and the 50-day average is 8.8% down.
Relative performance: 3-month +11.1% vs SPY +7.6% and QQQ +7.7%; 6-month +32.1% vs +11.1% and +15.7%; 12-month +83.2% vs SPY +24.3% and QQQ +30.8%. Ross has outperformed the S&P 500 by 59 points in a year — as an apparel retailer, in a batch where the technology names underperformed it.
On max_dd_from_peak. The field is misnamed: it computes (last − 6-year peak) / peak, i.e. the CURRENT distance from the multi-year high, not the deepest drawdown suffered over the window. A name that fell hard and fully recovered reads 0.00%. It coincides with pct_from_hi whenever the 6-year peak falls inside the last 252 days. Verified across 3,668 payloads: the ordering never violates (it is always equal to or deeper than pct_from_hi), so the values are internally consistent — only the label misleads.

Sentiment: 30 buy, 13 hold, 4 sell across 47 analysts; consensus target $259.89 (+3.5%), median $260, high $290 (+15.5%), low $230 (−8.4%). The average analyst sees 3.5% of upside. The high target is 15.5% away. This is a covering community that has run out of room and is holding its ratings rather than its targets.
The quote's own 52-week band disagrees with the computed series — quote.yearHigh/yearLow are $255.30/$140.71 against tech.hi52/lo52 of $252.91/$141.79, a 0.9% and 0.8% difference. We use tech throughout for internal consistency, and note that today's intraday high of $253.445 exceeds the tech 52-week high, i.e. the stock made a new high today and closed below it.

10. Insiders — eight transactions, and not one is a market decision

Date	Person	Role	Type	Shares	Price	Held after
2026-05-29	Sharon D. Garrett	director	G-Gift (acquire)	1,354	$0	215,059
2026-05-29	Sharon D. Garrett	director	G-Gift (dispose)	1,354	$0	2,113
2026-05-29	Patricia H. Mueller	director	G-Gift (acquire)	1,354	$0	3,513
2026-05-29	Patricia H. Mueller	director	G-Gift (dispose)	1,354	$0	2,113
2026-05-21	Gunnar K. Bjorklund	director	A-Award	643	$0	24,481
2026-05-21	Gunnar K. Bjorklund	director	A-Award	896	$0	23,838
2026-05-21	Michael J. Bush	director	A-Award	896	$0	37,554
2026-05-21	Doniel Sutton	director	A-Award	896	$0	8,917

Every transaction in the file is either an annual director equity award or a gift, all at a stated price of zero, all by non-executive directors, all clustered on the 2026-05-21 annual meeting date and the week after. There is not one open-market purchase and not one open-market sale. The gifts are recorded twice each, once as an acquisition and once as a disposition, which is the standard two-leg reporting of a transfer between a personal and a trust account.

The correct reading is that this file contains no information. No executive officer appears at all — the chief executive, the chief financial officer and the merchandising leadership are entirely absent from the eight-transaction window. On a stock that has risen 83% in twelve months to within 0.7% of its high, the absence of any insider selling is mildly more encouraging than its presence would have been discouraging — but eight director awards and gifts is not evidence, and we will not build a sentence of thesis on it.

11. Verdict, kill-criteria and flip conditions

Hold.

Why this is not a Buy, stated as arithmetic rather than as caution. At $251.11 Ross trades at 32.1x the consensus for the year ending January 2027 and 29.1x for January 2028. Our base fair value of $233 is 27.0x the FY27 consensus mean of $8.624 — a 7% multiple compression, not a reversion — and it sits 7.2% BELOW spot. The bear at $170 is 20.2x the consensus low; the bull at $295 is 33.0x the consensus high. Asymmetry is 0.54:1 against: 32.3% of downside against 17.5% of upside. Total shareholder yield of 2.29% does not close that gap. There is no configuration of the estimate rows in this file that produces a Buy at this price, and manufacturing one would require paying above the highest multiple in the plausible band for the highest estimate in the distribution.

Why this is not an Avoid, stated with equal directness. The business is genuinely excellent and the most recent evidence is the best evidence. Comparable store sales +17% on +11% traffic; merchandise margin +85 basis points; operating margin 13.4%, up 120 basis points; return on equity 36.7%; $3.11 billion of net cash and an undrawn $1.3 billion revolver; $2.63 billion of free cash flow computed from filed capex; no goodwill, no intangibles, no non-controlling interest, no preferred stock, no off-balance-sheet complexity beyond ordinary store leases. The vendor's capital-expenditure line reconciles to the filing to the dollar and reproduces three trailing ratios to five decimal places, which is the cleanest capex verification in this batch. A company like this at 7% above our base is a Hold, not an Avoid. An Avoid is what we would issue if we thought the earnings were wrong; we think the earnings are right and the multiple is high.

Why the timing matters and is an explicit input. Ross reports on 2026-08-20, sixteen days from this dive, into a consensus of $1.94 and $6,146 million — +11.2% revenue growth against the +21% just delivered. The single question this name turns on is answered in sixteen days, and taking a position before the answer, sixteen days after an 83% twelve-month run, at RSI 79, with no drawdown in the chart to lean on, is a worse expression of the same view than waiting. The prior four prints beat EPS consensus by 16.8%, 5.3%, 11.3% and 2.0% — the company beats reliably, which is an argument for the business and not for the entry.

Pre-registered KILL criteria — what would take this to Avoid:

Comparable store sales below 4% on 2026-08-20 or in any subsequent quarter, confirming the April figure as a spike while the multiple remains near 29x forward.
Merchandise margin giving back the 85 basis points, taking operating margin back below 12.5%.
Capital expenditure guidance above $1.1 billion for fiscal 2026 or above $1.2 billion for fiscal 2027, which would take the free-cash-flow yield below 2.5% at this price.
Packaway inventory falling below roughly 30% of total inventory, which would suggest the supply of distressed branded merchandise — the raw material of the model — is tightening. It has already gone from 41% to 36% year on year.
The repurchase pace slowing below the $2.55 billion authorisation's implied rate while the balance sheet holds $3.11 billion of net cash.
A break below the 200-day moving average of $203.40 on company-specific news rather than market beta.

Pre-registered UPGRADE conditions — what would take this to Buy — Tactical:

A second consecutive double-digit, traffic-led comparable store sales quarter on 2026-08-20. This is the primary trigger. It would put fiscal 2026 EPS materially above the $7.833 consensus, make the 29x forward multiple defensible on a raised base, and convert the April quarter from a spike into a level. This is the one event that changes our answer, and it is sixteen days away.
A price below approximately $215, which is 25x the FY27E consensus mean and would restore an asymmetry near 1.5:1 without requiring any change to the estimates.
Recognition of a material IEEPA tariff refund, against a fiscal-2025 tariff cost of $0.16 per share, which no estimate in this file carries.
A repurchase authorisation materially above $2.55 billion over two years, deploying the net cash at a shareholder yield above 4%.

Where ROST fits in the Synthos Framework Portfolio. Not entered today. Placed on the watch list with a defined trigger price of ~$215 and a defined event trigger of the 2026-08-20 comparable-sales figure, either of which would move it to a 1.5% Tactical entry. The sizing note is the discipline: this is a high-quality business whose only defect is its price, and the correct response to that is a limit order and a calendar entry, not a position. Logged as a tracked Synthos call (Hold) as of 2026-08-04 at $251.11, with the fair-value anchors, kill criteria and upgrade conditions all gradeable.

Single biggest risk: that +17% is a spike and not a level. Ross has posted full-year comparable store sales of +5%, +3% and +5% in the last three fiscal years, and then +17% in one quarter against a +3% base. Consensus revenue for the quarter being reported in sixteen days implies roughly half that growth rate, and the full-year figure implies roughly 3-4% comps for the remaining three quarters. The estimates have already assumed the deceleration; the multiple has not. At 29.1x the January-2028 consensus with a 2.3% shareholder yield and a 3.27% free-cash-flow yield, the price contains no compensation for being wrong about this. If the comp normalises and the multiple follows it toward the historical band, the bear case of $170 is not a crash scenario — it is 20.2x the analysts' own low estimate, and it is 32% below today's price.

Provenance & disclosures

Traceability: ZERO knowledge-base claims name Ross Stores out of 52,021 distilled claims. The primary sweep ran entity terms ROST, Ross Stores, Ross, dd's DISCOUNTS and TJX plus free text on "ross stores", "off-price" and "dress for less", and returned no case-sensitive match, no case-insensitive match and no text match. The sweep mechanism was verified working in the same session against a control query returning 88 exact entity matches on an unrelated large-cap, so this is a genuine absence rather than a tooling failure. The bare term "Ross" was included deliberately as a homograph probe and produced no false positives — the store is silent here rather than confidently wrong. A widened secondary sweep on "off price", "offprice", "discount retail", "ross store", "tjx", "marshalls", "dollar general" and "retailer" returned 29 text-only claims across 15 channels, none naming Ross Stores, none entering any score; three are quoted verbatim in Section 7 at explicitly zero weight because they bear on the trade-down mechanism, the competitive set and the tariff pass-through question — eurodollar_university 2026-07-09 (bearish 75, consumer trade-down, which is structurally a tailwind for off-price), business_breakdowns 2023-05-01 (bullish 70, naming TJ Maxx among best-in-class retailers), and all_in 2025-05-09 (neutral 55, tariff pass-through at ~50%). Breadth 0, claim count 0, net conviction none. This is the twelfth sector or name-level void found and published in this programme rather than padded, and the verdict rests entirely on filings, payload and arithmetic.
Data as-of: balance sheet, income statement, cash flow, debt schedule, store counts, sales mix, lease liabilities and the tariff disclosure through 2026-05-02, all filing-verified from the 10-Q filed 2026-06-02; nine-month depreciation from the 10-Q filed 2025-12-10; fiscal 2025, 2024 and 2023 annual figures, the capital-expenditure breakdown, the repurchase history and the Supreme Court subsequent-event note from the 10-K filed 2026-03-31 · estimates 2026-08-04 · prices 2026-08-04, quote timestamp 1785873600 = 2026-08-04T20:00:00Z ($251.11, −0.71%; 50-DMA $230.72; 200-DMA $203.40; RSI 79.0; MACD +7.60) · knowledge-base claims 2026-08-04. Ross's fiscal year ends on the Saturday nearest 31 January; fiscal 2025 and 2024 were 52-week years and fiscal 2023 was a 53-week year. All figures come from the Synthos vendor data file for ROST or from the SEC filings in the ROST archive; no figure comes from memory, recall or external retrieval.
Filing archive contents: 10-K filed 2026-03-31 (fiscal 2025); 10-Q filed 2025-12-10 (nine months to 2025-11-01 — the source of the quarterly depreciation figures that expose finding 2); 10-Q filed 2026-06-02 (April 2026 quarter — the source of the balance sheet, debt schedule, comparable-sales detail and tariff-refund disclosure); 8-K filed 2026-03-03 (Item 2.02, fiscal 2025 results — the press release itself is Exhibit 99.1 and is NOT in the extracted text); 8-K filed 2026-05-21 (Item 2.02, first-quarter results — same, exhibit not extracted); 8-K filed 2026-05-27 (Item 5.07, annual meeting voting results — nine directors elected, 2026 Equity Incentive Plan approved, say-on-pay approved, Deloitte & Touche ratified). All three 8-Ks were read in full. There is NO corporate action in this archive — no acquisition, no divestiture, no financing, no guidance revision, no auditor change, no restructuring. That is worth stating explicitly given that undisclosed corporate actions have been the highest-hit-rate finding in this programme across three batches; Ross is the exception, and the exception is reported. All filings carry preserved [TABLE] statement data, and the capital-expenditure reconciliation was therefore possible.
Where the filings contradicted or corrected the vendor (detailed in Section 8): totalDebt of $5,212,338k against the filing's $1,517,606k of senior notes, the $3,694,732k gap equalling current plus non-current operating lease liabilities to the dollar, and the same test at 2026-05-02 giving a $3,704,964k swing against $3,704,963k of lease liabilities — invalidating netDebt, netDebtToEBITDATTM, debtToEquityRatioTTM, debtToAssetsRatioTTM and enterpriseValueTTM (vendor $81,143.5M against a rebuilt $77,438.5M, 4.8% high, because the company holds $3,112,793k of NET CASH and the vendor reports $592,171k of net debt); inc_a and inc_q depreciation for fiscal 2025, wrong by +72.1% in aggregate but correct in Q1 and Q4 and wrong by +72.3% and +208.7% in Q2 and Q3 — a partial-row corruption caught only by checking quarters individually against the 10-Q's nine-month disclosure — which propagates into inc_a.ebitda (+16.6%), ebitdaMarginTTM (+11.5% on a trailing basis), evToEBITDATTM (21.20x against a rebuilt 22.57x) and netDebtToEBITDATTM; and interestExpense of $32,898k (FY2025) and $7,602k (April quarter) against filed figures of $49 million and $10,333k, immaterial because Ross earns net interest income and interestCoverageRatioTTM of 79.4x is not a meaningful statistic for a net-cash issuer. Where vendor and filing AGREED — recorded, because a verified-clean field is a finding: capitalExpenditure of −$819,275,000 against the 10-K's $(819,275) thousand, an EXACT match, with the 10-K's four-line breakdown (distribution and transportation $297M, new stores $232M, existing stores $189M, information systems and corporate $101M) summing to the same total; three trailing ratios reproduced from filed half-year and full-year figures to five decimal places — capexToOperatingCashFlowTTM 0.23770892717 against a rebuilt 0.237709, capexToDepreciationTTM 1.56039897196 against 1.560399, and freeCashFlowYieldTTM 0.03267886 against 0.0326784; priceToSalesRatioTTM 3.38792 against 3.38793; the share count (320,783,547 implied against 321,035,000 filed three months earlier, 0.08% apart, with 1.5 million shares repurchased in between); effectiveTaxRateTTM 23.79% against filed rates of 24.5% and 22.4%; minorityInterest of 0, which is CORRECT — the NCI-omission defect class does not apply here and was explicitly checked; and goodwill, intangibleAssets and the identity of bookValuePerShareTTM with tangibleBookValuePerShareTTM, all of which are correct rather than defective because the balance sheet carries no goodwill and no intangibles at all.
seg_geo note — empty, and correctly so. The array is []. The 10-K states that both operating segments' operations "include only activities related to off-price retailing in stores throughout the United States and its territories." Ross has no foreign operations and publishes no geographic disaggregation. This is issuer disclosure practice on a single-geography business, not a vendor failure, and it is recorded separately from the six genuine seg_geo defects found in the previous batch.
seg_prod note — derived, not reported, and one year stale. The latest entry is fiscal 2024; there is no fiscal 2025 row. The figures are the 10-K's sales-mix percentage table multiplied by total revenue — the fiscal-2024 entries sum to $21,129,219,000, matching inc_a.revenue exactly, and "Home Accents and Bed and Bath" is exactly 26.00% of revenue against a disclosed 26. The tell is that in fiscal 2021 "Men's" and "Accessories, Lingerie, Fine Jewelry, and Cosmetics" carry an identical figure, because both rounded to the same integer percent. This dive uses the filed percentage tables directly, including the April-2026 quarter's mix which the payload does not contain.
Estimate coverage: 12 analysts on FY26E EPS (year ending January 2027), 14 on FY27E — the anchor for all three fair values, range $8.43041 to $8.94905, a 6.2% spread, the narrowest in this batch — and 8 on FY28E. The FY29E row is excluded from every conclusion because it goes backwards, showing revenue falling from $28,504M to $27,904M and EPS from $9.455 to $9.31 on 4 and 3 analysts respectively, which is a coverage-set artefact rather than a forecast of decline. est.ebitdaAvg and est.ebitAvg are rejected outright for the fixed-ratio fabrication signature — ebitdaAvg is exactly 14.7846% of revenueAvg and ebitAvg exactly 12.3757% in every row from fiscal 2025 onward, six of the eight years in the file — and all forward valuation uses epsAvg only.
Peer note: the vendor peer set — AutoZone, Chipotle, Coupang, Copart, eBay, Ford, Hilton, JD.com, Las Vegas Sands, Trip.com — contains not one off-price, apparel or discount retailer. TJX, Burlington and Marshalls are absent entirely. No peer-multiple comparison is drawn anywhere in this dive.
Fair-value caveat: the $170 / $233 / $295 anchors are multiples of the FY27E (year ending January 2028) consensus EPS distribution — 20.2x the low of $8.43041, 27.0x the mean of $8.62363 and 33.0x the high of $8.94905 — cross-checked against the FY26E and FY28E rows and against book value of $19.64 per share. Stated arithmetic, not a discounted cash flow. The base is sensitivity-disclosed: 22x gives $190, 25x gives $216, 29.1x gives $251 — precisely today's price. The base case assumes a 7% multiple compression from today's 29.1x on the same fiscal year, driven by consensus EPS growth falling from 18.5% to 10.1% to 9.6%; it does NOT assume reversion to the historical band, which would give a materially lower number.
Guidance note: all forward statements attributed to management — approximately 110 new stores in fiscal 2026, capital expenditure of approximately $1.1 billion, operating margin "slightly higher in fiscal 2026 than in fiscal 2025" — are company guidance and are half-weighted per house rule. Earnings-call transcripts are not available on the current data plan, so no management question-and-answer material informs this dive; the 8-K earnings releases are referenced in the archive as Exhibit 99.1 but the exhibit text was not extracted.
Timing: first-quarter fiscal 2026 results were released 2026-05-21, seventy-five days before this dive, and beat consensus EPS by 16.8% ($2.02 against $1.73) and consensus revenue by 6.5% ($6,010M against $5,641M). The next print is 2026-08-20, sixteen days away, and the verdict above is set with that timing as an explicit input. The most recent insider filings are dated 2026-05-29. 2026-08-04 carried no company-specific filing.
Accessibility note: no information in this dive is conveyed by colour. All emphasis is carried by bold text, table structure and explicit labelling.
Not investment advice. Independent research, educational and informational only, never personalised. No recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security is made to any person.
Version: 2026-08-04-full.