How Financially Strong Are Indian FMCG Leaders? A Ratio and Cash Flow Analysis of Five Listed Companies, FY2024–FY2026

This paper presents a descriptive, comparative financial statement analysis of five listed Indian fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies—Hindustan Unilever (HUL), Britannia, Dabur, ITC, and Nestlé India—for FY2024–FY2026. Balance sheet, cash flow, and profit data from Screener.in, cross-checked against annual reports, are used to compute liquidity, solvency, efficiency, free cash flow, cash-to-operating-profit, and net profit margin measures, which are read against the FMCG business model rather than as pass/fail thresholds. All five companies generated positive operating cash flow in every year, and debt-to-equity stayed below 0.55 times throughout. Negative working capital appeared at HUL and Nestlé India in all three years and, by FY2026, at Dabur and Britannia, and was read as a supplier-credit pattern rather than distress. ITC scored highest on a six-metric composite scorecard (23 of 30), followed by HUL (19), Dabur (17), Nestlé India (16), and Britannia (15). The scorecard is a FY2026 snapshot, not a forecast or investment recommendation, and rests on five companies, three years, secondary data, and general textbook benchmarks. Index Terms—FMCG, financial statement analysis, ratio analysis, free cash flow, earnings quality, working capital.