Sysco SYY

NYSE SYY

$81.56 +1.72 (+2.15%)

As of: Sep 9, 2026 · 3:59 PM EDT

Key Stats

Market Cap39.01 Bn

P/E22.22

P/S0.46

Div. Yield0.03

Total Debt (Qtr)13.52 Bn

Revenue Growth (1y) (Qtr)4.66

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About

Sysco Corporation is the largest global distributor of food and related products primarily serving the food away from home industry. The company supplies a broad range of food items and non food supplies to approximately 730,000 customer locations including restaurants, hospitals, schools, hotels and other venues where foodservice is provided. Its purpose is to connect the world to share food and care for one another. Sysco operates through a network of temperature…

Revenue is generated through the sale of food and non food products distributed from its operating sites. In fiscal 2025 the company recorded sales of $81.4 billion derived from categories such as fresh and frozen meats, canned and dry foods, dairy, poultry, fresh produce, seafood, beverage products and various non food items including paper products, tableware, cookware, equipment and cleaning supplies. Ancillary services such as menu planning advice, food safety training and inventory management support also contribute to revenue. The company’s product mix remains relatively stable with fresh and frozen meats representing about 19% of sales, canned and dry foods about 18% and dairy about 11% in the most recent fiscal year.

The company operates through the following segments: U. S. Foodservice Operations, International Foodservice Operations, SYGMA, and Other.

U. S. Foodservice Operations: This segment includes U. S. Broadline operations distributing a full line of food products such as custom cut meat, seafood, produce, specialty Italian, specialty imports and a wide variety of non food products. It also comprises U. S. Specialty operations encompassing FreshPoint fresh produce distribution, Buckhead Newport Meat and Seafood specialty protein operations, the Italian Specialty platform anchored by Greco and Sons Inc., Edward Don restaurant equipment and supplies distribution, Asian specialty distribution and other smaller specialty businesses.
International Foodservice Operations: This segment covers operations outside the United States distributing a full line of food products and a wide variety of non food products. The Americas portion includes activities in Canada, Bahamas, Costa Rica and Panama as well as export operations serving international customers. The European portion consists of operations in the United Kingdom, France, Ireland and Sweden.
SYGMA: This segment provides U. S. customized distribution services to quick service chain restaurant customer locations delivering a full line of food products and a wide variety of non food items. SYGMA focuses on fulfilling the specific requirements of chain restaurants with tailored logistics and inventory solutions.
Other: This segment primarily comprises hotel supply operations under the Guest Worldwide brand offering a range of non food products such as textiles, amenities and other supplies for lodging establishments. It also supports other niche markets that require specialized non food offerings.

Sysco holds a leading position in the foodservice distribution industry serving about 17% of an estimated $370 billion annual foodservice market in the United States according to Technomic data for 2024. The company’s competitive advantages include its extensive sales force, diversified product base featuring quality assured private label brands, reliable service performance, value added services such as business reviews and menu analysis, and a multi regional presence across North America and Europe that helps mitigate regional economic fluctuations. Sysco competes with local and regional distributors as well as national broadline competitors, yet its scale and breadth of product offerings allow it to maintain a strong market share. The company’s focus on customer service and supply chain efficiency further strengthens its standing within the industry.

Sysco serves a diverse customer base consisting of restaurants, healthcare and educational facilities, lodging establishments and other foodservice venues. The company reports that no single customer accounted for 10% or more of total sales in fiscal 2025 with restaurants representing roughly 60% of revenue, education and government 8%, healthcare 8%, travel and leisure 7% and the remainder spread across other categories such as cafeterias, bakeries, caterers and vending operators. In addition, Sysco supplies foodservice operators in sectors including government facilities, leisure venues and industrial caterers. The broad customer mix reduces reliance on any single market segment and supports stable revenue streams.

Investment Thesis

▲ Bull case

Sysco's core business demonstrates underlying resilience through accelerating local case volume growth, which reached 3.3% in Q3 FY26 – a 210 basis point improvement over the prior quarter and the strongest growth in three years – despite ongoing macro headwinds in national chain restaurant traffic, indicating effective execution of sales productivity initiatives like AI360 and disciplined operational levers that are driving share gains in the highly profitable local segment where margins are structurally superior to national accounts. This momentum is further validated by the company's ability to outperform industry traffic trends (down 1.9% per Black Box) by 120 basis points on a year-over-year basis, proving that improvement stems from internal controls rather than external tailwinds, and positions Sysco to capture incremental profitability as local volumes continue to grow faster than overall business, directly enhancing enterprise margin expansion.
The Restaurant Depot acquisition represents a transformational opportunity that is significantly underappreciated by the market, with pro forma impacts projecting a 20% revenue increase, 45% adjusted EBITDA growth, and 55% free cash flow expansion – driven by $250 million in annualized net cost synergies by year three and a business model generating $1.9 billion in unlevered free cash flow with less than 1% of sales as capital expenditures – while management's guidance for mid to high single-digit EPS accretion in year one and low to mid-teens in year two appears conservative given Restaurant Depot's thirty consecutive years of profit growth and twenty-eight out of thirty years of revenue growth, suggesting substantial upside potential from revenue cross-selling opportunities not included in current accretion models, such as click-and-collect or same-day delivery solutions for Sysco's delivery customers needing spur-of-the-moment products.
Sysco's financial discipline and capital allocation strategy provide a strong foundation for value creation, evidenced by a 19% year-to-date increase in free cash flow to $1.1 billion, a maintained investment-grade net debt leverage ratio of 2.80x ahead of the Restaurant Depot transaction, and a $60 million annualized run rate cost savings initiative with benefits beginning in Q4 FY26 and carrying over into FY27, which directly offsets the suspension of $800 million in share repurchases and supports the company's commitment to deleveraging to 3.5x net leverage within 24 months post-close and a glide path to 2.75x thereafter – all while maintaining a 6% annual dividend increase and raising the quarterly payout to $0.55 per share for FY27, signaling confidence in sustained cash generation and shareholder returns independent of acquisition timing.
International segment performance continues to be an underleveraged growth engine, with Q3 FY26 delivering 12.4% sales growth, 3.8% local case volume increase, 14.6% gross profit growth, and 12.5% adjusted operating income growth – marking the tenth consecutive quarter of double-digit adjusted operating income growth – fueled by expanded supply chain capacity, increased Sysco Brand availability, and disciplined expense management, which together demonstrate the scalability of Sysco's operating model across geographies and provide a diversified profit stream less correlated with U.S. restaurant traffic volatility, thereby reducing overall enterprise risk while contributing meaningfully to consolidated profitability.

Sysco's core business demonstrates underlying resilience through accelerating local case volume growth, which reached 3.3% in Q3 FY26 – a 210 basis point improvement over the prior quarter and the strongest growth in three years – despite ongoing macro headwinds in national chain restaurant traffic, indicating effective execution of sales productivity initiatives like AI360 and disciplined operational levers that are driving share gains in the highly profitable local segment where margins are structurally superior to national accounts. This momentum is further validated by the company's ability to outperform industry traffic trends (down 1.9% per Black Box) by 120 basis points on a year-over-year basis, proving that improvement stems from internal controls rather than external tailwinds, and positions Sysco to capture incremental profitability as local volumes continue to grow faster than overall business, directly enhancing enterprise margin expansion.
The Restaurant Depot acquisition represents a transformational opportunity that is significantly underappreciated by the market, with pro forma impacts projecting a 20% revenue increase, 45% adjusted EBITDA growth, and 55% free cash flow expansion – driven by $250 million in annualized net cost synergies by year three and a business model generating $1.9 billion in unlevered free cash flow with less than 1% of sales as capital expenditures – while management's guidance for mid to high single-digit EPS accretion in year one and low to mid-teens in year two appears conservative given Restaurant Depot's thirty consecutive years of profit growth and twenty-eight out of thirty years of revenue growth, suggesting substantial upside potential from revenue cross-selling opportunities not included in current accretion models, such as click-and-collect or same-day delivery solutions for Sysco's delivery customers needing spur-of-the-moment products.
Sysco's financial discipline and capital allocation strategy provide a strong foundation for value creation, evidenced by a 19% year-to-date increase in free cash flow to $1.1 billion, a maintained investment-grade net debt leverage ratio of 2.80x ahead of the Restaurant Depot transaction, and a $60 million annualized run rate cost savings initiative with benefits beginning in Q4 FY26 and carrying over into FY27, which directly offsets the suspension of $800 million in share repurchases and supports the company's commitment to deleveraging to 3.5x net leverage within 24 months post-close and a glide path to 2.75x thereafter – all while maintaining a 6% annual dividend increase and raising the quarterly payout to $0.55 per share for FY27, signaling confidence in sustained cash generation and shareholder returns independent of acquisition timing.
International segment performance continues to be an underleveraged growth engine, with Q3 FY26 delivering 12.4% sales growth, 3.8% local case volume increase, 14.6% gross profit growth, and 12.5% adjusted operating income growth – marking the tenth consecutive quarter of double-digit adjusted operating income growth – fueled by expanded supply chain capacity, increased Sysco Brand availability, and disciplined expense management, which together demonstrate the scalability of Sysco's operating model across geographies and provide a diversified profit stream less correlated with U.S. restaurant traffic volatility, thereby reducing overall enterprise risk while contributing meaningfully to consolidated profitability.

▼ Bear case

The Restaurant Depot acquisition introduces substantial execution risk that the market may be underestimating, particularly given the company's acknowledgment that Restaurant Depot was an "unknown entity" as a privately held company, which creates uncertainty around the sustainability of its reported financials – including the claimed $2 billion EBITDA and 13% margin – despite management's emphasis on thirty consecutive years of profit growth, as the lack of historical public disclosure increases the potential for post-close surprises in working capital trends, contingent liabilities, or operational metrics that could undermine synergy realization and deleveraging timelines, especially since the deal's accretion model relies solely on procurement and new store growth synergies without incorporating revenue cross-selling upside, leaving no buffer if integration complexities delay or reduce expected benefits.
Sysco's core U.S. Foodservice segment remains vulnerable to persistent structural headwinds in national chain restaurant traffic, which management explicitly attributed to industry-wide declines – noting that volume with these customers was down year-over-year and directly tied to "traffic declines that are being experienced in the industry" – and while local volume growth shows improvement, the company's dependence on winning share in a fragmented, low-margin local segment to offset national weaknesses may prove unsustainable if macroeconomic pressures intensify, as evidenced by commentary from major restaurant chains about low consumer confidence and inflation-driven spending constraints, which could suppress discretionary foodservice purchases across all customer types and limit the scalability of local growth initiatives like AI360 and Sysco Your Way.
The company's financial outlook contains multiple overlapping headwinds that could pressure earnings quality, including a $100 million compensation-related headwind lapping into FY26 (equating to ~$0.16 per share), ongoing investments in sales headcount and infrastructure that increased adjusted operating expenses by 51 basis points as a% of sales, and corporate expenses up 31.1% year-over-year – all of which are occurring alongside the suspension of $800 million in share repurchases – and while management reiterated high-end EPS guidance of $4.50–$4.60, this assumes successful execution of cost savings initiatives and volume growth targets that may be optimistic if local case growth fails to meet the 2.5% Q4 outlook or if inflation-driven product cost pressures exceed the assumed 2% rate, potentially eroding the 31 basis point gross margin expansion achieved in Q3.
Leverage management post-acquisition carries meaningful risk despite the disclosed deleveraging plan, as Sysco expects to close the Restaurant Depot transaction at approximately 4.5x net debt leverage and targets a reduction to 3.5x within 24 months – a timeline that depends on achieving $1.1 billion in year-to-date free cash flow growth and sustaining 55% pro forma free cash flow expansion – but any delay in synergy realization, higher-than-expected integration costs, or weaker-than-anticipated performance from Restaurant Depot (which reported only 4% volume growth in Q1 2026 with margins "in line with expectations" rather than exceeding them) could extend the deleveraging cycle, increase interest expense pressure, and constrain financial flexibility for dividends, share repurchases, or future M&A, particularly given the company's reliance on term loans and upcoming maturities to fund the prepayable debt structure intended to enable rapid deleveraging.

The Restaurant Depot acquisition introduces substantial execution risk that the market may be underestimating, particularly given the company's acknowledgment that Restaurant Depot was an "unknown entity" as a privately held company, which creates uncertainty around the sustainability of its reported financials – including the claimed $2 billion EBITDA and 13% margin – despite management's emphasis on thirty consecutive years of profit growth, as the lack of historical public disclosure increases the potential for post-close surprises in working capital trends, contingent liabilities, or operational metrics that could undermine synergy realization and deleveraging timelines, especially since the deal's accretion model relies solely on procurement and new store growth synergies without incorporating revenue cross-selling upside, leaving no buffer if integration complexities delay or reduce expected benefits.
Sysco's core U.S. Foodservice segment remains vulnerable to persistent structural headwinds in national chain restaurant traffic, which management explicitly attributed to industry-wide declines – noting that volume with these customers was down year-over-year and directly tied to "traffic declines that are being experienced in the industry" – and while local volume growth shows improvement, the company's dependence on winning share in a fragmented, low-margin local segment to offset national weaknesses may prove unsustainable if macroeconomic pressures intensify, as evidenced by commentary from major restaurant chains about low consumer confidence and inflation-driven spending constraints, which could suppress discretionary foodservice purchases across all customer types and limit the scalability of local growth initiatives like AI360 and Sysco Your Way.
The company's financial outlook contains multiple overlapping headwinds that could pressure earnings quality, including a $100 million compensation-related headwind lapping into FY26 (equating to ~$0.16 per share), ongoing investments in sales headcount and infrastructure that increased adjusted operating expenses by 51 basis points as a% of sales, and corporate expenses up 31.1% year-over-year – all of which are occurring alongside the suspension of $800 million in share repurchases – and while management reiterated high-end EPS guidance of $4.50–$4.60, this assumes successful execution of cost savings initiatives and volume growth targets that may be optimistic if local case growth fails to meet the 2.5% Q4 outlook or if inflation-driven product cost pressures exceed the assumed 2% rate, potentially eroding the 31 basis point gross margin expansion achieved in Q3.
Leverage management post-acquisition carries meaningful risk despite the disclosed deleveraging plan, as Sysco expects to close the Restaurant Depot transaction at approximately 4.5x net debt leverage and targets a reduction to 3.5x within 24 months – a timeline that depends on achieving $1.1 billion in year-to-date free cash flow growth and sustaining 55% pro forma free cash flow expansion – but any delay in synergy realization, higher-than-expected integration costs, or weaker-than-anticipated performance from Restaurant Depot (which reported only 4% volume growth in Q1 2026 with margins "in line with expectations" rather than exceeding them) could extend the deleveraging cycle, increase interest expense pressure, and constrain financial flexibility for dividends, share repurchases, or future M&A, particularly given the company's reliance on term loans and upcoming maturities to fund the prepayable debt structure intended to enable rapid deleveraging.

Segments Breakdown of Revenue (2026)

Peer group

Peer Comparison

Companies in the Food Distribution

S.No.	Ticker	Company	match	Market Cap	P/E	P/S	Total Debt (Qtr)
1	SYY	Sysco Corp	primary	39.01 Bn	22.22	0.46	13.52 Bn
2	USFD	US Foods Holding Corp.	primary	21.36 Bn	29.34	0.53	5.41 Bn
3	PFGC	Performance Food Group Co	primary	14.87 Bn	41.37	0.22	5.01 Bn
4	CHEF	Chefs' Warehouse, Inc.	primary	4.27 Bn	46.45	0.97	0.72 Bn
5	UNFI	United Natural Foods Inc	primary	2.71 Bn	-73.34	0.09	1.67 Bn
6	KRT	Karat Packaging Inc.	primary	0.93 Bn	18.11	1.89	0.03 Bn
7	WILCF	G Willi Food International Ltd	primary	0.37 Bn	15.76	1.87	-
8	HFFG	HF Foods Group Inc.	primary	0.09 Bn	-2.69	0.07	0.18 Bn

Sysco SYY

About

Investment Thesis

Geographical Breakdown of Revenue (2026)

Segments Breakdown of Revenue (2026)

Peer Comparison

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