Highest fundamental return stocks (2026)
The highest fundamental return among US large caps right now is NVDA at 98.5% a year. Fundamental return = earnings growth + cash returned to owners, over five years. It is the annual return the business produced before the market re-rated it: total shareholder return is roughly this plus the change in the valuation multiple. Ranking on it finds the companies that actually compounded, rather than the ones whose multiple happened to expand. Return columns are total returns (dividends reinvested). Not investment advice.
as of market close, Jul 24, 2026
Top 50 by fundamental return#
Sorted by fundamental return, with its two components beside it: Earnings CAGR 5Y and Realized sh. yield — they add up to it, so you can see whether a name compounded by growing or by shrinking its share count. Every 5Y figure here is a CAGR, i.e. a per-year rate rather than a five-year total. To compare against what the stock actually did, the stat cards above put the median business CAGR next to the median realized return on the same annualized basis. Valuation columns are in the column picker.
| #Company | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1NVDA | +11.1% | $5.02T | +98.45% |
| 2WDC | +202.0% | $189B | +77.35% |
| 3HWM | +41.3% | $112B | +70.78% |
| 4BSX | -53.6% | $64B | +69.33% |
| 5SMCI | +2.9% | $16B | +64.97% |
| 6NOW | -35.5% | $105B | +62.03% |
| 7EME | +21.9% | $34B | +60.78% |
| 8TDG | -7.0% | $67B | +55.46% |
| 9UDR | +10.5% | $15B | +53.24% |
| 10SBAC | -9.2% | $19B | +52.06% |
| 11MU | +222.5% | $1.10T | +49.94% |
| 12TRGP | +54.1% | $60B | +46.47% |
| 13BKNG | -17.2% | $139B | +43.44% |
| 14PTC | -32.0% | $14B | +41.59% |
| 15CF | +63.3% | $19B | +40.84% |
| 16AVGO | +10.6% | $1.84T | +40.73% |
| 17ANET | +32.8% | $220B | +40.02% |
| 18AMP | +8.5% | $47B | +39.31% |
| 19UPS | +19.3% | $99B | +38.99% |
| 20EIX | +36.4% | $30B | +38.92% |
| 21NI | +13.3% | $22B | +35.01% |
| 22FTNT | +91.9% | $116B | +33.97% |
| 23LLY | +11.7% | $1.05T | +33.82% |
| 24TJX | +1.0% | $171B | +33.64% |
| 25TMUS | -10.5% | $206B | +33.04% |
| 26WFC | -6.3% | $269B | +32.93% |
| 27PAYC | -8.2% | $7B | +32.28% |
| 28REG | +20.2% | $15B | +32.15% |
| 29SPG | +26.9% | $86B | +32.03% |
| 30CPT | +4.4% | $11B | +31.81% |
| 31ALL | +26.2% | $65B | +31.81% |
| 32JCI | +20.1% | $86B | +31.68% |
| 33CMG | -14.1% | $43B | +30.84% |
| 34IQV | -7.8% | $34B | +30.36% |
| 35MPWR | +47.1% | $68B | +30.34% |
| 36FRT | +27.9% | $11B | +30.13% |
| 37MET | +21.9% | $60B | +29.98% |
| 38NFLX | -25.2% | $289B | +29.92% |
| 39D | +23.8% | $61B | +29.49% |
| 40DUK | +13.2% | $98B | +28.87% |
| 41MLM | -9.9% | $33B | +28.59% |
| 42RMD | -18.5% | $28B | +28.41% |
| 43EQIX | +43.0% | $101B | +28.35% |
| 44GOOGL | +2.3% | $4.24T | +27.82% |
| 45GLW | +68.0% | $140B | +27.00% |
| 46INVH | +8.4% | $18B | +26.54% |
| 47FICO | -26.8% | $28B | +26.46% |
| 48WAB | +42.1% | $45B | +26.45% |
| 49CAT | +55.8% | $410B | +26.42% |
| 50TRV | +34.0% | $79B | +26.40% |
Methodology#
Universe: active US-listed stocks with market cap above $5B. Fundamental return = 5-year net-income CAGR + 5-year realized shareholder yield, where the yield is the annualized fall in share count plus trailing dividends paid ÷ market cap. Earnings and share counts come from our SEC EDGAR pipeline, normalized to today's share terms so a split can't fake a change. The earnings leg is net income, not EPS, because EPS growth already embeds the buyback — see the FAQ.
Guards: a CAGR is only meaningful from a normal starting year, so the 5-year base must be at least 10% of the company's median positive earnings over the window. Without that, a business passing through zero on its way out of a loss produces a nonsense rate — ConocoPhillips' trailing earnings crossed $20M in 2021, which annualizes to over 200% a year to today. Those cases are left blank rather than clamped. Totals above 150% a year are also treated as data artifacts.
Known limits: companies that were loss-making at either endpoint have no fundamental return and cannot appear, which excludes roughly 5% of the universe — this is a list of the highest, so they would rank at the bottom regardless, but the page does not cover every large cap. For about 40 multi-class filers (Charter, Visa, UPS, Comcast, Berkshire and similar) the SEC bulk dataset drops the per-share-class cover count, so the share count falls back to the weighted-average diluted figure, which lags a sudden buyback by up to a quarter. The dividend leg uses the current market cap, so a stock that has moved sharply since the last filing reads slightly high or low. See also the highest realized shareholder yield list, which ranks the cash-return leg on its own. Past performance does not predict future returns; not investment advice.
FAQ
- What is fundamental return?
- Fundamental return is the annual return a business generated on its own, before any change in how the market values it. It adds two things a company controls: the growth in its earnings, and what it returned to owners — shares retired plus dividends paid. Total shareholder return is roughly this plus (or minus) the re-rating of the valuation multiple. A stock can beat its fundamental return for years because the multiple expanded, and that part isn't repeatable; the fundamental part is the piece with a business behind it.
- Why use earnings growth instead of EPS growth?
- Because EPS growth already contains the buyback. Earnings per share is profit divided by share count, so retiring shares raises EPS on its own — adding a buyback yield on top of EPS growth would count the same retirement twice and systematically flatter the heaviest repurchasers. Pairing the yield with company-level earnings growth counts each effect once.
- Is a high fundamental return a buy signal?
- No — it is backward-looking, and it says nothing about price. It measures what the business did over the past five years, not what it will do or what you have to pay for it today. Two stocks with identical fundamental returns can trade at wildly different multiples; the P/E, P/S and P/FCF columns are on this table for exactly that reason. Fast historical compounding also tends to mean-revert as a business scales. Not investment advice.
- Which stock has the highest fundamental return?
- NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) currently leads US large caps at about 98.5% a year — 97.8% from earnings growth and 0.6% from cash returned to shareholders.
- What are the top 10 fundamental return stocks?
- The 10 highest fundamental returns right now: 1. NVDA 98.5%, 2. WDC 77.3%, 3. HWM 70.8%, 4. BSX 69.3%, 5. SMCI 65.0%, 6. NOW 62.0%, 7. EME 60.8%, 8. TDG 55.5%, 9. UDR 53.2%, 10. SBAC 52.1%.
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