The Order Book
EliteCommitted order backlog growing fastest vs revenueRPO (Remaining Performance Obligations) is committed but unrecognized revenue, money that is essentially already on the books. Coverage = RPO ÷ trailing annual revenue; YoY = year-over-year change in RPO. Only names with Coverage ≥ 0.5× and positive YoY appear in the accelerating set. Sourced from SEC EDGAR XBRL (RevenueRemainingPerformanceObligation). Not investment advice.
How it works
Ours. Public companies disclose remaining performance obligations — revenue they are contractually owed but have not recognised yet — and almost nobody reads it. We pull it from SEC XBRL and set it against the last twelve months of revenue.
Coverage above 1 means the backlog is larger than a full year of sales: work already won, waiting to be delivered. The direction matters more than the level. A backlog growing faster than revenue is a company booking next year ahead of this one.
When it misleads
Only some companies disclose RPO in a usable form, so this screen sees a slice of the market rather than all of it. Absence from the list means we could not read the number, not that the backlog is weak.
A backlog is a promise, not cash. Contracts get cancelled, repriced and stretched, and the long-dated ones are the easiest to renegotiate.
| # | Ticker | Backlog (RPO) | Revenue | Coverage | YoY | Margin | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 33 | ADBE | $22.3B | $23.8B | 0.9× | +13.1% | 30.0% | Steady |
| 34 | CRM | $67.9B | $41.5B | 1.6× | +11.5% | 18.0% | Steady |
| 35 | IBM | $69.0B | $67.5B | 1.0× | +7.8% | 15.7% | Steady |
| 36 | LMT | $186.4B | $59.8B | 3.1× | +7.7% | 8.4% | Steady |
| 37 | CSCO | $43.5B | $56.7B | 0.8× | +4.3% | 18.0% | Steady |