How to find a company's CapEx in a 10-K

By William March · Finterm

Capital expenditure is rarely labelled 'CapEx'. Here's where it sits in the cash flow statement, the names companies use, and how to read it per quarter.

Capital expenditure — the cash a company spends on property, plant and equipment — is one of the most useful numbers in a filing and one of the more annoying to locate, because almost no company labels the line 'CapEx'. It lives in the cash flow statement under a name that varies by company and industry.

Where it sits

CapEx is in the investing-activities section of the cash flow statement, not the income statement. It's an outflow, so it's reported as a negative number. The most common line is 'Purchases of property, plant and equipment', but you'll also see 'Payments for capital expenditures', 'Additions to property and equipment', or capitalised-software costs broken out separately.

The label problem

In the SEC's structured data, most companies tag this as the us-gaap concept PaymentsToAcquirePropertyPlantAndEquipment. But capital-light businesses sometimes report only a broader investing line, and capital-heavy ones split maintenance from growth CapEx in the footnotes rather than on the face of the statement. If you're comparing companies, make sure you're pulling the same concept for each.

Reading it per quarter

Rather than open every 10-K and 10-Q and hunt for the line by hand, you can read CapEx straight from the SEC's structured data. Finterm is a free SEC EDGAR viewer that pulls PaymentsToAcquirePropertyPlantAndEquipment from companyfacts and lays it out quarter by quarter next to revenue and cash flow, so the trend is visible without touching a spreadsheet.

CapEx is also the second half of free cash flow — see how to calculate free cash flow from a 10-K for the full picture.

Maintenance vs. growth CapEx

Total CapEx from the cash flow statement doesn't distinguish between spending that keeps existing assets running (maintenance) and spending that adds new capacity (growth). Some companies break this down in the MD&A or in an earnings presentation; most don't. A rough proxy: compare CapEx to the period's depreciation and amortisation figure. When CapEx roughly equals D&A, the company is approximately maintaining its existing asset base. When CapEx significantly exceeds D&A, it's expanding. When CapEx is well below D&A, it may be harvesting old assets rather than reinvesting.

Software companies and capitalised development costs

Under ASC 350, software companies can capitalise internal development costs once technological feasibility is established — meaning those costs show up on the balance sheet as an intangible asset and are amortised over time, rather than flowing through R&D expense immediately. The cash for this spending shows up in the investing section of the cash flow statement, sometimes labelled 'capitalised software costs' or 'internal-use software development'. If you're computing FCF for a software company, decide whether this belongs in CapEx (economically it often does) and be consistent when comparing peers.