Franklin Electric Co IncFELE

Franklin Electric, the Fort Wayne outfit best known for tiny electric motors that keep water moving from wells to taps, has just reported Q1 2026 revenue of $500.4 million, up from $455.2 million in the same quarter last year, according to the company’s own press release. The increase is real, the product is essential, and the customer base stretches from Iowa farms to municipal waterworks. Yet the same filing reveals the company burned $40.9 million in operating cash during the quarter while inventories ballooned to $583.2 million, up $28.9 million from the prior period. The optics are inconsistent: sales up, cash down, shelves full of motors nobody has paid for yet.

The company’s website still talks about ‘responsible innovation’ and ‘being an indispensable partner,’ language that sounds fine until you read the 10-Q and realise the cash conversion cycle is misbehaving. Franklin serves residential, commercial, agricultural, industrial, municipal, and energy customers with products that must work when the power does-so when the balance sheet shows rising receivables and rising inventory, the ‘indispensable’ part starts to feel like a polite fiction. The imagery on their site is all bright blues and whites and smiling engineers; the filings are all red cells and brackets.

The numbers in the 10-Q for the quarter ended 31 March 2026 are stark: revenue $500.4 million, net income $34.3 million, operating income $48.1 million, diluted EPS $0.77, and diluted shares outstanding at 44.7 million. Cash and equivalents stand at $80.4 million, while stockholders’ equity is a healthy $1.34 billion. The company spent $9.5 million on capex and $20 million on R&D last year, which is the kind of discipline you expect from a machinery outfit that has been at it for over 80 years. But the operating cash flow tells a different story: negative $40.9 million for the quarter, which is the financial equivalent of a pump running dry mid-sentence.

If you want a visual, Franklin’s own ‘Diamond BLK’ logo is the closest thing to a corporate mascot, appearing on press materials and earnings pages alike. The company is also scheduled to release its Q2 2026 results on a date they have not yet specified, which means the next instalment of numbers is still in the post. Until then, investors can track the story through the SEC filings, which are as voluminous as the inventory is concentrated.

The filing trail itself is easy to follow: six Form 4 insider-trading disclosures in July alone, two 11-K filings for the retirement plan, and a steady stream of 8-Ks that read like a management desks diary. The company’s own sources confirm the customer spread and the product promise, but the filings are where the rubber meets the road-and right now the road is a bit bumpy.

There is The source-change rail is filing/source-led and does not use chart-derived signals. Chart context is available separately on this page through the Atlas chart snapshot or TradingView route where available. If you want price context, you will need to consult a charting platform directly; the SEC filings here do not include share-price data. What they do include is enough operational detail to let you decide whether the story on the screen matches the story in the warehouse.