The 10 highest returns on invested capital among U.S. companies worth $50 billion or more

Return on invested capital, or ROIC, measures how much operating profit a company earns for every dollar that shareholders and lenders have put into it. This analysis calculates it for every U.S. company worth at least $50 billion at the October 13, 2026 close, using the latest annual report (10-K) each one filed with the SEC. 195 companies passed the rules below; these are the top ten.

How the number is calculated

• Operating profit after tax: operating income multiplied by one minus the company’s own effective tax rate for the year (income tax divided by pre-tax income).
• Invested capital: debt plus shareholders’ equity plus lease liabilities, both operating and finance leases. A rented store or office is capital too.
• ROIC: operating profit after tax divided by the average of invested capital at the start and at the end of the fiscal year.
• Cash is not subtracted, and each company is measured over its own latest fiscal year, so the periods do not line up exactly.

* KLA’s income statement has no operating income line. Its figure is pre-tax income plus interest expense minus interest income.

Chips fill half of the list

Five of the ten are in the chip business: Nvidia, Sandisk and Micron sell chips, and Lam Research and KLA sell the equipment used to make them. The other five are a cybersecurity company (Fortinet), an advertising-software company (AppLovin), Apple, a payment network (Mastercard) and a building-systems contractor (Comfort Systems USA).

Nvidia’s number depends on the averaging. Its shareholders’ equity doubled during the fiscal year, from $79 billion to $157 billion. Measured against year-end capital alone its ROIC would be lower, and against start-of-year capital much higher; this analysis uses the average of the two for every company. Sandisk and Micron are close behind at 79.9% and 79.1%; both had 53-week fiscal years, one week longer than usual. Sandisk ended its year with no debt, after $1.85 billion a year earlier.

Tenth place came down to a tenth of a point

Comfort Systems USA, at 42.0%, edges out Western Digital at 41.9%. Western Digital’s effective tax rate was 4.9%, in a year when its pre-tax income of $9.9 billion was more than double its operating income of $4.5 billion, the difference coming from items outside its operations. At a 21% tax rate, its ROIC would be about 35%. Automatic Data Processing (ADP) is 12th at 40.8%.

Who is missing, and why

Companies with negative shareholders’ equity at the start or the end of the year are left out. Negative equity usually comes from buybacks larger than accumulated profits; the invested capital then shrinks, and the ratio stops measuring what it is meant to. Three of them would make the top ten if they were counted: McKesson at 84.1%, Seagate at 63.8% and Booking Holdings at 51.6%. Seagate is the borderline case: its equity was negative $453 million at the start of its fiscal year and positive $2.17 billion at the end.

Leases change one name. Without them, TJX, the owner of T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, would be 10th at 44.5%. Counting the $10.6 billion of operating lease liabilities on its balance sheet, it falls to 24.1%. KLA would then drop to 11th. For the other nine companies in the table, leases are small, and they stay in the top ten either way.

• Banks, insurers, brokers and asset managers are not included: for them, borrowing and lending are the business, so ROIC does not apply.
• Foreign companies that file their annual reports under IFRS or in another currency, such as TSMC, ASML and Novo Nordisk, are not included, because the SEC data does not carry their figures in U.S. dollars under U.S. accounting rules.
• Five companies whose debt could not be identified in their SEC data — Cadence, CME Group, Deere, GE Vernova and Teradyne — are left out rather than shown with an inflated number.

What will change soon

Apple’s figure is from its fiscal 2025, which ended on September 27, 2025. Its fiscal 2026 ended on September 26, 2026, and the 10-K for that year, expected around the end of October, will replace the number. Micron’s 10-K for fiscal 2026 no longer breaks out its operating leases; this analysis used the 2025 amount, $775 million, at both ends of the year, which lowers its ROIC slightly. Without it, Micron would be at 79.7%, still third.

A high ROIC describes how much profit a business produced on the capital it used over one year. It says nothing about the stock price or about the years ahead, and this list is not investment advice. The annual figures behind each number are on the company pages linked above.