WESTINGHOUSE AIR BRAKE TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION (WAB): what the price requires
At today's price, WESTINGHOUSE AIR BRAKE TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION (WAB) is priced for +24.4% growth. boothcheck doesn't publish a fair value or a price target; it shows what the price assumes, so you can judge whether that bar is too high.
Generated: 2026-07-14 · Exported: 2026-07-16 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/WAB
Headline
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Ticker | WAB |
| Company | WESTINGHOUSE AIR BRAKE TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION |
| Current price | $260.10/sh |
| Composition | Freight - Services 27% / Freight - Equipment 21% / Freight - Components 14% / Freight - Digital Intelligence 9% / Transit - Original Equipment Manufacturer 12% / Transit - Aftermarket 16% |
What The Price Requires (Inversion)
The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Inversion basis | whole-company |
| Operating margin needed | 6.4% |
| Operating margin today | 17.5% |
| Margin compression implied | -11.1pp |
| Implied growth | 24.4% |
| Multiple paid | 26x operating income |
The operating-margin requirement is derived from the framework's value band at year 10, a separately labeled basis from the headline growth/duration solve.
Solve inputs: computed at a 9.2% cost of capital with 4% terminal growth over a 5-year stage; each 1pp of cost of capital moves the implied operating-profit growth ~7.7pp.
How unusual the bet is: elevated
| Reference | Value |
|---|---|
| vs own history | +0.65σ |
| cohort percentile (of 225 peers) | 60 |
| sustained it ~5 years at this level | 31% |
| implied end-window share | 0% |
Valuation X-Ray
Every valuation family lands below the price. The price therefore requires assumptions beyond what those standard frames encode.
How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.
| Family | Median price/FV | Models | Reads |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asset | 3.14x | 5 | expensive |
| Earnings | 5.62x | 5 | expensive |
| Relative | 2.23x | 5 | expensive |
| Growth | 1.28x | 3 | expensive |
Families that call it expensive: Asset, Earnings, Relative
The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 7.9%); the inversion above states its own rate.
Per-Model Detail (n=18)
| Model | Family | FV | Price/FV | Applicable | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DCF Perpetual Growth | Growth | $203.29 | 1.28x | yes | FCF base $1.6B, growth 10% (input: historical growth), terminal g 4.0%, WACC 7.9%, 6yr projection |
| DCF Exit Multiple | Growth | $246.38 | 1.06x | yes | Exit EV/EBITDA: 20.4x / 22.4x / 24.4x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull), 6yr |
| Relative Valuation | Relative | $171.56 | 1.52x | yes | P/E 23.61x (blended: static sector reference 18x + trailing (TTM) 37x), scenarios: 19.7x / 23.6x / 27.5x (bear / base = reference held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA 15.12x |
| Simple DDM | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Two-Stage DDM | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Simple Excess Return | Asset | $76.63 | 3.39x | yes | BV/sh $65.04, ROE (TTM) 10.9%, ke 9.3% |
| Two-Stage Excess Return | Asset | $82.92 | 3.14x | yes | 5yr excess ROE then converge to ke=9.3% |
| Discounted Future Market Cap | Growth | $192.85 | 1.35x | yes | Rev $11.5B, growth 10% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 3.2x / 3.9x / 4.5x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 8x) |
| Peter Lynch Fair Value | Relative | $84.84 | 3.07x | yes | EPS $7.07, growth 10% (input: historical EPS growth), PEG=3.81 (Overvalued) |
| Margin Trajectory | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Earnings Power Value | Earnings | $26.37 | 9.86x | yes | Normalized EBIT (5y avg op income, one-time charges added back) $1.39B × (1−23%) / WACC 7.9% → EPV (no growth) |
| Residual Income | Asset | $84.13 | 3.09x | yes | BV $65.04 + 5yr PV of (ROE (TTM) 10.9% − Kₑ 9.3%) × BV; BV grows 7.1%/yr |
| Graham Number | Asset | $101.72 | 2.56x | yes | √(22.5 × EPS $7.07 × BVPS $65.04) — Graham's conservative floor |
| EV/EBITDA Relative | Relative | $116.60 | 2.23x | yes | EBITDA $2.36B × sector EV/EBITDA 12.0x |
| FCF Yield | Earnings | $46.29 | 5.62x | yes | FCF $1505.0M / Kₑ 9.3% — zero-growth perpetuity |
| SBC-Adj FCF Yield | Earnings | $39.71 | 6.55x | yes | SBC-adj FCF $1.40B (FCF $1.50B − SBC $0.10B) capitalized at Kₑ |
| Ben Graham Formula | Earnings | $164.38 | 1.58x | yes | EPS $7.07 × (8.5 + 2×9.6%) × (4.4 / 5.3%) |
| ROIC-Justified P/B | Asset | $16.95 | 15.35x | yes | BV $65.04 × (ROIC 2.1% / WACC 7.9%) |
| P/Sales Sector | Relative | $168.53 | 1.54x | yes | Revenue $11.51B × sector P/S 2.5x |
| PEG Fair Value | Relative | $102.03 | 2.55x | yes | EPS $7.07 × (PEG 1.5 × growth 9.6% (input: historical EPS growth)) → PE 14.4x |
| Earnings Yield | Earnings | $76.43 | 3.40x | yes | EPS $7.07 / required return 9.3% (Rf 4.3% + ERP 5.0%) |
| Funds From Operations Multiple | Relative | — | — | no | — |
| Clinical Phase NPV | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Merton | Asset | — | — | no | — |
| V5 Mechanical | — | — | — | no | — |
Solvency
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Net debt | $6.5b |
| Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax) | 4.32x |
| Net debt / operating income (pre-tax) | 3.35x |
| Interest coverage | 8.6x |
| Share count CAGR (buyback) | -2.0% |
| Burning cash | no |
Bullet Takeaways
- Wabtec sells the brakes, controls, and digital signaling that keep freight and transit rail moving, and roughly 56% of its Transit segment revenue comes from the aftermarket on an installed base it already owns, per the FY2025 10-K, which is the recurring-revenue engine most equipment makers lack.
- The price is the risk: at about 27 times company-wide operating income, it embeds operating growth held near its self-funding ceiling for roughly five years, a pace only about 28% of comparable fast-growers have sustained that long.
- Next event is the Q2 2026 print on July 22, 2026; the 38% jump in multi-year backlog to $30.8 billion is the number that tells you whether the revenue behind the price is actually booked.
Bull Case
Start with why the business is hard to dislodge. Wabtec has been building rail equipment for over 150 years, and the FY2025 10-K frames that legacy as a competitive strength: an "Iconic legacy and strong reputation with a history of over 150 years of innovation" that sits under locomotives, freight cars, and the signaling that keeps them apart on the track. The moat is not the age; it is where the age has left the company. Once a Wabtec brake system, propulsion package, or train-control unit is designed into a locomotive or a transit car, it stays there for the multi-decade life of the asset, and the parts and service to keep it running flow back to Wabtec. The 10-K puts a number on this for Transit: approximately 56% of that segment's net sales are aftermarket, drawn from "a large installed base of original equipment globally which allows for a significant recurring revenue stream in the aftermarket." Aftermarket revenue is stickier and higher-margin than winning a new build, and it compounds as the installed base grows rather than churning.
That structural position is now showing up in the operating numbers. Company-wide operating margin runs about 16%, and management is explicit that the direction is up: the filing states the intent to "continue to increase operating margins, improve cash flow and strengthen our ability to invest" through its Lean program and scalable-technology strategy. The first quarter of 2026 gave the thesis a data point, with sales up 13% to $2.95 billion and GAAP earnings per share of $2.12, up 12.8% year over year. The demand behind that is not a one-quarter surge. Multi-year backlog reached $30.8 billion at the end of Q1, up 38% year over year, and the rolling 12-month backlog was $9.2 billion, up 13%. Backlog is not guaranteed revenue, and the 10-K says so plainly, warning that some of it "may be delayed or canceled, and reported backlog should not be viewed as a guarantee of future revenue." But a book of orders that large, growing that fast, is the clearest sign that the freight and transit customers are committing years of spending to Wabtec's platforms.
Capital allocation reinforces the compounding rather than fighting it. Wabtec bought back $223 million of stock and paid $173 million in dividends over the trailing period covered by the 10-K, and the share count has been falling at roughly 2% a year. Management widened the buyback authorization to $1.2 billion in early 2026 and raised the dividend 24%. A falling share count is buyback deployment that shows up where it cannot be faked. Add the Dellner Couplers acquisition, which strengthened the Transit portfolio and contributed several points of the backlog growth, and the picture is a company reinvesting in the same installed-base flywheel that already defines it. The bull case is that this is a mature industrial with a genuinely recurring revenue core, widening margins, a record order book, and management returning cash while it grows. The question the bear will press is not whether the business is good. It is what you pay for it.
Bear Case
Begin with what the price asks the balance sheet and the cash to do. Wabtec carries about $6.5 billion of net debt against trailing operating income near $1.8 billion, which is roughly 3.6 times operating income before tax, and interest coverage sits around 7 times. That is serviceable, not fragile, but it is leverage taken on largely to buy growth: the 10-K's own risk language warns that debt can end up "reducing the availability of our cash flow to fund working capital, capital expenditures, acquisitions, and other general corporate purposes" and can "place us at a disadvantage compared to competitors." The company has been an active acquirer, most recently of Dellner Couplers, and each deal layers on customer-relationship and technology intangibles measured with "significant inputs that are not observable in the market" and carried at Level 3 fair value. Acquisition-fed growth that leans on debt and hard-to-verify intangibles is exactly the kind of growth that looks cleanest at the top of a cycle and gets tested at the bottom.
The deeper problem is the price, not the balance sheet. At today's level the market is paying about 27 times company-wide operating income, and that multiple embeds operating growth running near the company's self-funding ceiling and holding there for roughly five years. Wabtec has recently delivered that kind of pace, so the stretch is not the rate; it is the duration. Sustaining ceiling-level growth for about five years is something only around 28% of comparable fast-growers have managed. If that persistence falls short and growth mean-reverts toward the ordinary industrial pace, the multiple compresses toward what earnings power and peers actually support, and none of the standard valuation families currently reaches this price to catch the fall. The revenue Wabtec sells is also cyclical by its own account, subject to "cyclical variations in the railway" market and to a freight environment that "has historically been subject to fluctuations due to overall economic conditions and the level of use of alternative modes of transportation." A rail-equipment maker priced for five years of premium growth is priced for the cycle not to turn.
There is also concentration under the demand. Wabtec's customers are the large Class I railroads, leasing companies, and transit authorities, a short list of buyers whose own capital plans move together. When a handful of railroads defer locomotive spending or an infrastructure budget slips, the order book that looks like a fortress today thins quickly, and the same multi-year backlog the bull cites can be "delayed or canceled." The bear case is not that Wabtec is a weak business. It is that a good, cyclical, acquisitive industrial has been priced as if the aftermarket recurring revenue removed the cycle entirely, and it has not. Pay 27 times operating income for a company whose own filing lists cyclicality and customer concentration among its top risks, and you are underwriting five years of things going right in a business that periodically has years of things going wrong.
Valuation
Take the price and run it backwards. At $273.79 (July 1, 2026), the market is paying about 27 times company-wide operating income, and that price implies operating growth held near Wabtec's self-funding ceiling for roughly five years. The rate itself is within what the company has recently delivered; the demand is in the duration. Only about 28% of comparable fast-growers have sustained that pace for the roughly five-year stretch the price requires, which is what makes the assumption an elevated one rather than a comfortable extrapolation. Set against demonstrated economics, the gap is visible in the margins: the price leans on operating profitability that would need to hold and compound, while the trailing operating margin sits near 16%.
What makes this a demanding price is that no family of valuation method reaches it. The peer-multiple lens, the earnings-power lens, and the asset-value lens all land well below today's quote, and even the forward-growth methods, which credit next-period growth explicitly, come up short. The forward-growth family gets closest: the perpetual-growth and exit-multiple cash-flow methods sit nearest the price because they are the only frames that pay for years of future compounding rather than trailing results. The earnings-power and asset-value methods land much further below, because they value what Wabtec earns and owns today, not what five years of ceiling-level growth would build. The pattern is unambiguous. This is not a value or turnaround setup where the static methods say cheap and only growth looks demanding; here every method finds the price rich, and the entire case for it rests on growth persisting well past what the base rate delivers. That spread between where the methods land and where the price trades is the premium, and it is doing all the work.
The balance sheet bounds the downside without cushioning the premium. Net debt of about $6.5 billion runs roughly 3.6 times pre-tax operating income, interest coverage is near 7 times, and the company is not burning cash. That is a serviceable, mid-industrial leverage profile, not a distressed one, and the falling share count and the $223 million of buybacks and $173 million of dividends the FY2025 10-K reports show cash being returned rather than consumed. But solvency here is a floor under the business, not a defense of the multiple. The backlog is the load-bearing forward input, and the 10-K is candid that reported backlog "should not be viewed as a guarantee of future revenue." Wall Street's mean target of roughly $303 sits above today's price, crediting the backlog and the raised guidance more fully than a framework that measures the price against demonstrated fundamentals does; the difference between that target and where the methods land is precisely the durability of growth the street is willing to underwrite and this decomposition holds to a base rate.
Catalysts
The next scheduled event is the second-quarter 2026 report on July 22, 2026, before market open. The bar it has to clear was set by a strong first quarter: sales up 13% to $2.95 billion, GAAP earnings per share of $2.12 up 12.8%, and management raising its full-year adjusted earnings guidance while holding the revenue range. The number to watch is backlog conversion. Multi-year backlog reached $30.8 billion, up 38% year over year, and 12-month backlog was $9.2 billion, up 13%, so the July print will show how much of that order book is actually turning into shipped freight and transit revenue.
Recent capital-return and portfolio moves frame the setup. The board raised the quarterly dividend 24% and increased the share-repurchase authorization to $1.2 billion in early 2026, and the completed acquisition of Dellner Couplers, a Sweden-based supplier, added to the Transit portfolio and contributed several points of the backlog growth. On the freight side, Forsee Power announced a memorandum of understanding to integrate its battery systems into Wabtec's battery-electric locomotive platforms, a small but directionally relevant step in the low-carbon-rail strategy the company has been emphasizing.
Analyst sentiment has been moving up alongside the prints. Rothschild and Co Redburn upgraded the stock to Buy with a $285 target, Bank of America raised its target to $291 with a Buy rating, and Citi moved to $292, with the mean target near $303. The consistent direction of these revisions is upward, which tells you the sell side is crediting the backlog and the guidance raise. It also means expectations are elevated heading into July, so the risk is asymmetric: a strong quarter is largely anticipated, while any softening in backlog conversion or freight demand would land against a price already paying for years of persistence.
Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)
Freight Segment (reported)
- GBX (THE GREENBRIER COMPANIES, INC.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- TRN (TRINITY INDUSTRIES INC)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- RRX (REGAL REXNORD CORP)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- CW (CURTISS-WRIGHT CORPORATION)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- ITT (ITT INC.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
Transit Segment (reported)
- RRX (REGAL REXNORD CORP)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- ITT (ITT INC.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- CW (CURTISS-WRIGHT CORPORATION)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- TRN (TRINITY INDUSTRIES INC)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- GBX (THE GREENBRIER COMPANIES, INC.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
Methodology Note
- Priced-in inversion: the valuation is inverted on the current price to recover the operating-income growth, duration, and steady-state margin the price embeds (ROE for financials, FFO growth for REITs).
- Valuation x-ray: the valuation models, grouped into four families (asset, earnings, relative, growth). Each model is expressed as a price/FV ratio (distance from price), not a point fair-value estimate. The spread across families is the disagreement.
- Solvency: net cash/debt, net-debt-to-NOPAT, interest coverage, and share-count CAGR from EDGAR financials (net debt / FFO and fixed-charge coverage for REITs; regulatory-capital framing for financials).
- Peer cohorts: per-segment comparables with deep-linkable SEC filing citations.
Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.
Sources
Wabtec Q1 2026 earnings release, April 22, 2026 · Wabtec Q4 2025 earnings release, February 2026 · MarketBeat analyst consensus, 2026 · Wabtec press release, June 24, 2026