Key Points
CPI Card stock beat on sales but missed on earnings this morning.
Free cash flow soared 21% year over year in 2025.
- 10 stocks we like better than Cpi Card Group ›
CPI Card Group (NASDAQ: PMTS) stock soared 41.4% through 11:50 a.m. ET Thursday, breaking above a $200 million market capitalization again for the first time this year, despite reporting only mixed results for fiscal Q4 2025.
Heading into the report, analysts forecast the credit card manufacturer to earn $0.69 per share on sales of $145.2 million. In fact, earnings were only $0.62 per share -- but sales raced past expectations to land at $153 million.
Will AI create the world's first trillionaire? Our team just released a report on the one little-known company, called an "Indispensable Monopoly" providing the critical technology Nvidia and Intel both need. Continue »
Image source: Getty Images.
CPI Q4 earnings
Americans love their credit cards. According to recent research from The Motley Fool, 81% of Americans have at least one -- and 31% of us carry four or more! That's good news for CPI, which makes the cards so that banks can hand them out to customers.
CPI's sales surged 22% year over year, driven by debit and credit card sales up 40%... but offset by a 27% decline in the company's smaller prepaid debit card business. Gross profit margins slipped 260 basis points to 31.5%.
Net income grew 9% regardless.
For the full year, CPI reported 13% sales growth, 31.3% gross profit margin (down 430 b.p. from 2024), and a 23% decline in net income. Free cash flow came in substantially ahead of reported net income, however -- $41.3 million, up 21% year over year.
Is CPI Card stock a buy?
Valued at $200 million, CPI stock trades for a 5x price-to-free cash flow ratio, which seems cheap. Don't forget to add the company's $265 million in net debt, though, which more than doubles CPI's enterprise value.
To still be a buy after today's share price surge, I'd want to see CPI continue growing FCF in at least the low double-digits. With management predicting "high single-digit" sales growth this year, that's possible... but not guaranteed.
Should you buy stock in Cpi Card Group right now?
Before you buy stock in Cpi Card Group, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Cpi Card Group wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $532,066!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,122,072!*
Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 960% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 193% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors.
*Stock Advisor returns as of March 5, 2026.
Rich Smith has positions in Cpi Card Group. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
