Cash conversion is strongest among royalty, healthcare and asset-light businesses

Antero Midstream leads the reported screen at 92.02%, boosted by a $377 million litigation receipt. Natural Resource Partners follows at 86.81%, Dorchester Minerals at 81.52%, PaySign at 67.13%, LandBridge at 67.10% and AppLovin at 65.88%. VeriSign reaches 59.12% and Palantir 54.55%; both are included in the large-cap universe.

The 120 names are ranked within the 225 distinct tickers from the three supplied small-, mid- and large-cap FCF-margin articles. This is not a market-wide census. Noncomparable lending/asset-financing entries and entries without aligned usable cash-flow data were removed. The selection contains 25 small caps, 37 mid caps and 58 large caps, using approximate October 29 market values above $300 million.

YTD performance uses adjusted prices from December 31, 2025 to October 29, 2026. Five-year performance generally uses adjusted prices from October 29, 2021 to October 29, 2026. N/A indicates insufficient comparable trading history or unavailable validated pricing.

Regular dividend yield includes only recurring dividends recorded during the trailing twelve months through October 29, 2026, divided by the October 29 unadjusted closing price. Special and irregular distributions are excluded.

FCF/Sales = (operating cash flow − cash PP&E expenditure − separately classified productive intangible/software purchases) / reported sales. Business acquisitions and financial investments are excluded from capex. Financial publications are checked through October 30, 2026, using each company’s latest complete matched trailing period. Ligand includes its September 2026 cash-flow statement filed October 30. Yalla remains at December 2025 because newer income releases do not provide a complete matched cash-flow statement. Natural Resource Partners uses reported sales of $184.110M against OCF of $159.824M: its 86.81% margin differs from the API’s 79.93% standardized-sales baseline because of the denominator, not a cash-flow jump. Antero Midstream’s September TTM CFO of $1,348.674M less $184.190M cash capex gives $1,164.484M FCF on $1,265.481M reported sales; its $377M litigation receipt is nonrecurring. PaySign’s $74.924M CFO less $7.359M cash PP&E, software and other intangible investment gives 67.13%; client-funding and restricted-cash movements affect its cash conversion. Kodak’s cash conversion also includes nonrecurring pension-related cash flows. Hess Midstream’s September update gives OCF of $1,045.4M less capex of $140.3M, or $905.1M FCF on $1,603.4M sales: 56.45%.

EBIT/Interest uses reported operating income where available. Some ratios use provider-standardized statement inputs, whose normalization or interest classification can differ. ‡ identifies explicitly reported net interest expense. In the coverage column, N/A is reserved for a verified absence of debt and interest expense. ~ identifies estimated coverage: TTM EBIT divided by annualised interest implied from the latest debt balance and the disclosed borrowing or lease discount rate. The debt basis includes recognized lease liabilities; for operating leases this is an economic financing-cost proxy, not separately reported GAAP interest expense. Most recent disclosed balances and rates approximate a year of interest. Arista and Intuitive Surgical lease estimates use their last separately disclosed balances (December 2024 and December 2025 respectively); they do not reconstruct actual trailing accruals. Finance-lease and operating-lease rates are applied separately where disclosed. Undrawn-facility fees are excluded from this debt-balance estimate. Negative multiples are retained. Five-year and YTD returns follow the API’s split/distribution-adjustment conventions and are cumulative, not annualized. Market caps are approximate USD snapshot values scaled to the October 29 close; small $0.3–2B, mid $2–10B and large $10B+. The three supplied article lists define the selection universe.

High margins can reflect very different economic engines

Royalty and partnership economics support Dorchester Minerals, Natural Resource Partners and Kimbell Royalty Partners. Asset-light software and services businesses such as AppLovin, VeriSign, PaySign, Winmark and Consensus Cloud Solutions can also convert a substantial portion of revenue into cash.

The same percentage does not imply the same durability. Investors should distinguish recurring revenue from cyclical shipping rates, commodity realizations, milestone revenue, working-capital releases and temporarily low investment periods.

Healthcare and biotechnology require additional normalization

CorMedix, Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Collegium Pharmaceutical and Nutex Health rank highly, but their cash generation can depend on product launches, licensing receipts, reimbursement, inventory movements or concentrated portfolios. A strong trailing margin may therefore be less repeatable than the same figure from a diversified recurring-revenue business.

For these companies, product concentration, patent duration, regulatory exposure and the timing of collaboration or milestone payments should be reviewed alongside reported free cash flow.

Regular dividends provide a cleaner income comparison

FLEX LNG, Dorchester Minerals, The RMR Group, Kimbell Royalty Partners and Westlake Chemical Partners feature among the higher regular trailing yields in the screen. Companies without qualifying recurring payments are shown at zero.

The regular-dividend filter excludes splits, payments after October 29, 2026 and identifiable special distributions. Variable regular dividends can still fluctuate materially, particularly for shipping, commodity and partnership structures.

Partnership and royalty structures require additional context

Dorchester Minerals, Natural Resource Partners, Kimbell Royalty Partners and several shipping partnerships can report unusually high cash conversion because their structures require comparatively limited corporate capital expenditure or distribute variable cash flows to investors.

These margins remain useful, but they should not be interpreted as directly equivalent to those of conventional operating companies. Commodity exposure, reserve life, contract terms, maintenance obligations and distribution coverage require separate analysis.

Cash-flow quality matters more than a single ratio

Free cash flow can be influenced by working-capital timing, acquisition accounting, capitalized development, stock-based compensation and cyclical pricing. A high current margin should be reconciled with the cash-flow statement and compared across several periods.

The strongest candidates are not simply those with the highest percentage. They are businesses able to sustain cash generation, fund necessary investment and allocate the remaining cash without weakening their competitive position.