Long-term debt
Long-term debt is borrowing that falls due more than a year after the balance sheet date, reported as a liability; its change over a quarter is a rough proxy for net borrowing.
The exact record of borrowing is the financing section of the cash flow statement, which reports proceeds from and repayments of debt separately. The balance-sheet change is quicker to read but moves for other reasons: debt coming within a year of maturity is reclassified as current, acquisitions bring debt with them, and currency moves restate foreign borrowings.
For the build-out the question is not the level of debt but whether new borrowing is arriving in the same quarters as the funding gap. That pairing is what the debt question on this site tests.
How this site measures it
This site reads the long-term debt line from each structured balance sheet and reports its change from the prior quarter. Where a filer’s structured data carries no line for a quarter, the change is left blank rather than estimated.
Questions this page answers
- Why is the debt column blank for some companies?
- The structured filing feed does not always tag a long-term debt line, and the site shows nothing rather than a guess. The company’s own filing has the figure.
Where it is used
Every company page states it, for example Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Oracle, and the companies page sorts all twenty-one. It decides the questions debt-funded spending.
Related terms: Capital expenditures (capex), Free cash flow.