Capex: how companies report capital expenditures, from the cash flow statement to the release

Capex, short for capital expenditures, is the cash a company spends to acquire or build long-lived assets such as property, plant and equipment, and it is reported as a line in the investing section of the statement of cash flows, in the 10-Q, the 10-K and most earnings releases. Across the 76 companies behind CFO Voice's quotes, 57 latest releases print that line in a form the counting rule can read, under 21 different labels.

Those labels are the first thing a reader meets, and the reason "capex" is hard to search for in a filing. The second is the XBRL tag beneath the label, which is the same for most companies and is how the SEC's own data finds the number.

What capex is, in the filings' terms

The filings rarely use the abbreviation. In the cash flow statement capex is an outflow, printed in brackets, in the investing activities section, between the operating section above and the financing section below. In the 10-Q it sits in Part I, Item 1, the financial statements. In the release it usually sits in the same statement, reproduced at the back.

What counts is set by the statement, not by a separate definition: cash paid during the period for property, plant and equipment, which can include buildings, machinery, data centers, stores and, for some companies, capitalized software. Spending on operating costs such as rent, wages and repairs runs through the income statement and the operating section instead. That boundary, cash spent on assets the company will use for more than a year against cash spent within the year, is what separates capital expenditure from operating expenditure.

The cash flow line and its XBRL tags

Every 10-Q and 10-K carries machine-readable tags, and the tag on the capex line is far more uniform than the label. Microsoft's release for the quarter ended September 30, 2026 prints the line this way:

Investing¹ Additions to property and equipment² (39,367) (19,394)³

1. 1The section heading: capex is an investing cash flow, not an operating one.
2. 2Microsoft's own label. In its annual report the same line carries the US GAAP tag PaymentsToAcquirePropertyPlantAndEquipment.
3. 3Brackets mean cash out, in millions, for this quarter and the same quarter a year earlier.

The SEC's frames API returns one tag's value for every filer that used it in a given period. For calendar 2025, PaymentsToAcquirePropertyPlantAndEquipment was reported by 3,577 filers. Among the 76 companies on this record, 52 used it, 12 used the broader PaymentsToAcquireProductiveAssets instead, and 12 used neither in that frame. A company can tag the line with another element, or report a fiscal year the frame files under a different calendar year.

For a reader the point is practical. In the releases counted below, the phrase "capital expenditures" begins the line in 19 of 57, so a search for it misses most of them. The tag, used by 52 of the 76 companies, or the word "property" inside the investing section, finds far more.

The same line also shows how fast capex can move. Microsoft's additions to property and equipment were $39,367 million in the quarter, against $19,394 million in the same quarter a year earlier, a ratio of 2.0. The release prints both columns side by side, so the change can be read without any other source; what the money was spent on is a matter for the MD&A and the company's own commentary, not the cash flow line.

The release and the 10-Q usually agree on this line, because the release reproduces the same statement. Of the 76 companies on the record, 63 printed a cash flow statement in at least one release behind their quotes. For the other 13, the full cash flow statement first appears in the 10-Q filed after the release, whatever capex figure the release mentions in its text.

Fifty-seven companies, twenty-one labels

To collect labels, the script read each company's latest release on the record, found the cash flow statement heading ("statements of cash flows", "cash flow statement", "cash flows data" or "cash flows information") and took the first line after it that begins with "Capital expenditures", or with "Purchases", "Additions", "Payments", "Acquisitions", "Investments" or "Expenditures" followed by "of", "to", "for" or "in" and a word for fixed assets: property, plant, equipment, premises, land or buildings. Of the 76 companies, 57 releases have such a line.

57 companies, five ways to name one line: "Purchases of" and "Capital expenditures" lead

Companies, of 57; n = 57

The numbers

How the capex line begins	Companies, of 57
"Capital expenditures"	19
"Purchase(s) of property ..."	20
"Additions to property ..."	8
"Payments for property ..."	5
Other wording	5

Twenty companies begin the line with "Purchase" or "Purchases", 19 with "Capital expenditures", 8 with "Additions to", 5 with "Payments for" and 5 with other wording. Counted as exact strings, ignoring capitals and a trailing ", net", there are 21 distinct labels. The most common single label is "Capital expenditures", used by 18 companies; "Purchases of property and equipment" follows with 8.

Some labels carry more than fixed assets. Fiserv's line reads "Capital expenditures, including capitalized software and other intangibles". Hewlett Packard Enterprise prints "Investment in property, plant and equipment and software assets", and Criteo "Acquisition of intangible assets, property and equipment". A company that folds software or intangibles into the line will show a larger capex figure than one that reports them on a separate line, even if the two spend the same on hardware. That difference carries straight into free cash flow, whose company definitions are grouped in the free cash flow piece.

What the MD&A must say about capital commitments

The cash flow statement reports what was spent. The rule that requires a company to discuss what it has committed to spend is Item 303 of Regulation S-K, management's discussion and analysis, which the 10-Q carries as Part I, Item 2. The capital resources paragraph reads:

Describe the registrant's material cash requirements¹, including commitments for capital expenditures², as of the end of the latest fiscal period, the anticipated source of funds³ needed to satisfy such cash requirements and the general purpose⁴ of such requirements.

1. 1The test is materiality: not every purchase order, only commitments large enough to matter to the company's liquidity.
2. 2Spending already committed, such as contracts for plant or equipment, as distinct from what was spent in the period.
3. 3The company must say how it will pay: cash on hand, operating cash flow or borrowing.
4. 4What the money is for, in words.

This is where a reader finds the forward view that the cash flow statement cannot give. A release may carry a capex outlook too, but the MD&A in the 10-Q is the filed document, and Item 303 sets what it must cover.

How CFOs describe capital spending in their own words

The phrase "capital expenditures" is rare in the CFO quotes themselves. Only 2 of the 199 verified quotes use "capital expenditures", "capex", "capital spending" or "capital investment", both from Paccar, whose finance chief gave the year's capex range in two consecutive releases:

Capital expenditures are projected to be in the range of $700-$750 million and research and development expenses are estimated to be in the range $450-$480 million in 2026.

Brice Poplawski, senior vice president and chief financial officer, Paccar, in the release furnished on July 28, 2026 (Exhibit 99.1; quote record).

In 2026, capital expenditures are projected to be in the range of $650–$700 million and research and development expenses are estimated to be in the range $440–$460 million.

Brice Poplawski, senior vice president and chief financial officer, Paccar, in the release furnished on October 27, 2026 (Exhibit 99.1; quote record).

Read together, the two sentences show the outlook range for the year moving between the second-quarter and third-quarter releases. Each is the company's own figure, and the record holds both, so the change can be read from the filings rather than from memory.

Most CFOs speak about investment in broader terms. Using the site's capital allocation and investment topic rule, which matches words such as "capital allocation", "capital expenditure", "capex", "invest" and "investment", 37 of the 199 quotes qualify, or 18.6 percent. A typical sentence pairs investment with restraint:

Customer demand is strong, and we remain disciplined about investment, efficiency and profitable growth.

Natalie Derse, CFO of Gen, Gen Digital Inc., in the release furnished on October 28, 2026 (Exhibit 99.01; quote record).

37 CFO quotes match the capital allocation and investment rule

Quotes; n = 37

The numbers

Calendar quarter of the release	Quotes
Q3 2026	17
Q4 2026	20

By industry, 16 of the 37 come from manufacturers and 10 from services companies, by the SIC code each company has on file with the SEC. Every quote behind the count is on the capital allocation topic page.

Capex as a share of operating cash flow

How large is capex against the cash a business generates? The frames give both numbers for the same fiscal year, so the ratio can be computed for every company on the record that tagged both: capex, from PaymentsToAcquirePropertyPlantAndEquipment or, where that is absent, PaymentsToAcquireProductiveAssets, over NetCashProvidedByUsedInOperatingActivities. Sixty-one companies have both with positive operating cash flow. The 2025 frame assigns each company's fiscal year to the calendar year; for these companies it covers years ending from June 30, 2025 to April 24, 2026.

For 32 of 61 companies, capex took under a fifth of operating cash flow

Companies, of 61 with both tags; n = 61

The numbers

Capex as a share of operating cash flow	Companies, of 61 with both tags
0% to under 10%	25
10% to under 20%	7
20% to under 30%	10
30% to under 50%	11
50% to under 75%	4
75% or more	4

The median company spent 17.5 percent of its operating cash flow on capex. For 32 of the 61, the share was under 20 percent, and for 8 it was 50 percent or more. The chart shows bands, not names, because the ratio reflects the kind of business more than how it is run: a company that operates plants or networks needs more capital spending than one that licenses software.

The ratio is also the bridge to free cash flow. On the plain formula, a company that spends 17.5 percent of its operating cash flow on capex keeps the rest as free cash flow, before any of the other items companies add or subtract.

Where to look in a 10-Q

1. Open Part I, Item 1 and find the statement of cash flows. Capex is in the investing section, in brackets.
2. Do not search for the word "capex". Search the investing section for "property", or for the tag PaymentsToAcquirePropertyPlantAndEquipment in the XBRL viewer.
3. Read the full label. Words such as "software", "intangibles" or "land" tell you what the line includes.
4. Check the period. A 10-Q's cash flow statement can cover the year to date rather than the quarter alone, and the column heading says which; the release may print the quarter.
5. Go to Part I, Item 2, the MD&A. Item 303 asks for material cash requirements, including commitments for capital expenditures, and how they will be funded.
6. Compare with the release. A capex outlook in the release, like Paccar's, can be checked against the MD&A and against the next quarter's cash flow statement.

How the release around these tables is built is set out in what an earnings report contains, and the adjusted measures beside capex in the same releases are counted in GAAP vs non-GAAP. The methodology explains how each quote reaches the site.