Payment technology company Crane NXT (NYSE: CXT) reported Q4 CY2025 results exceeding the market’s revenue expectations, with sales up 19.5% year on year to $476.9 million. Its non-GAAP profit of $1.27 per share was 1% above analysts’ consensus estimates.

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Aaron W. Saak, Crane NXT's President, and Chief Executive Officer, stated: "In 2025, we made significant progress evolving our portfolio and are accelerating organic growth while maintaining margins and strong free cash flow. We continue to gain share in Crane Currency, winning a total of 20 new denominations with our leading micro-optics technology in 2025, and we further solidified our position as a trusted technology leader in the global authentication market with the creation of Crane Authentication. In Q4, we closed on our initial equity investment in Antares Vision, expanding our portfolio to the attractive Life Sciences and Food & Beverage sectors, and are on track to complete the acquisition in 2026."

Company Overview

Born from a corporate transformation completed in 2023, Crane NXT (NYSE: CXT) provides specialized technology solutions for payment processing, banknote security, and authentication systems for financial institutions and businesses.

Revenue Growth

Examining a company’s long-term performance can provide clues about its quality. Even a bad business can shine for one or two quarters, but a top-tier one grows for years.

With $1.66 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, Crane NXT is a mid-sized business services company, which sometimes brings disadvantages compared to larger competitors benefiting from better economies of scale.

As you can see below, Crane NXT grew its sales at a tepid 3.3% compounded annual growth rate over the last three years. This shows it failed to generate demand in any major way and is a rough starting point for our analysis.

Long-term growth is the most important, but within business services, a stretched historical view may miss new innovations or demand cycles. Crane NXT’s annualized revenue growth of 9.1% over the last two years is above its three-year trend, suggesting its demand recently accelerated.

Crane NXT also reports its backlog, or the value of its outstanding orders that have not yet been executed or delivered. Crane NXT’s backlog reached $492.8 million in the latest quarter and averaged 14.7% year-on-year growth over the last two years. Because this number is better than its revenue growth, we can see the company accumulated more orders than it could fulfill and deferred revenue to the future. This could imply elevated demand for Crane NXT’s products and services but raises concerns about capacity constraints.

This quarter, Crane NXT reported year-on-year revenue growth of 19.5%, and its $476.9 million of revenue exceeded Wall Street’s estimates by 5.5%.

Looking ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 5.9% over the next 12 months, a deceleration versus the last two years. Despite the slowdown, this projection is above the sector average and suggests the market is forecasting some success for its newer products and services.

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Operating Margin

Operating margin is an important measure of profitability as it shows the portion of revenue left after accounting for all core expenses – everything from the cost of goods sold to advertising and wages. It’s also useful for comparing profitability across companies with different levels of debt and tax rates because it excludes interest and taxes.

Crane NXT has been a well-oiled machine over the last four years. It demonstrated elite profitability for a business services business, boasting an average operating margin of 18.8%.

Looking at the trend in its profitability, Crane NXT’s operating margin decreased by 7.6 percentage points over the last four years. This raises questions about the company’s expense base because its revenue growth should have given it leverage on its fixed costs, resulting in better economies of scale and profitability.

In Q4, Crane NXT generated an operating margin profit margin of 16.7%, down 1 percentage points year on year. This reduction is quite minuscule and indicates the company’s overall cost structure has been relatively stable.

Cash Is King

Free cash flow isn't a prominently featured metric in company financials and earnings releases, but we think it's telling because it accounts for all operating and capital expenses, making it tough to manipulate. Cash is king.

Crane NXT has shown terrific cash profitability, enabling it to reinvest, return capital to investors, and stay ahead of the competition while maintaining an ample cushion. The company’s free cash flow margin was among the best in the business services sector, averaging 16.3% over the last four years.

Taking a step back, we can see that Crane NXT’s margin dropped by 8.1 percentage points during that time. Continued declines could signal it is in the middle of an investment cycle.

Crane NXT’s free cash flow clocked in at $96 million in Q4, equivalent to a 20.1% margin. This result was good as its margin was 1.3 percentage points higher than in the same quarter last year, but we wouldn’t put too much weight on the short term because investment needs can be seasonal, causing temporary swings. Long-term trends are more important.

Key Takeaways from Crane NXT’s Q4 Results

We were impressed by how significantly Crane NXT blew past analysts’ revenue expectations this quarter although EPS beat by a smaller amount. On the other hand, its full-year EPS guidance missed. Overall, this quarter was mixed. The stock remained flat at $51.25 immediately following the results.

Is Crane NXT an attractive investment opportunity at the current price? We think that the latest quarter is only one piece of the longer-term business quality puzzle. Quality, when combined with valuation, can help determine if the stock is a buy. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here (it’s free).