Coherent Corp. is the kind of outlier that forces a second look — its five-year EBITDA climb is running well ahead of revenue, a slope rarely sustained without real operating leverage behind it. When we ran a broader screen through the FMP's Income Statement API, four more companies showed similarly shaped trajectories. This article breaks down how the API reveals those curves and what they signal.

Five Names Where Growth Still Has Real Momentum

COHR Coherent Corp.

5-Year Revenue CAGR: 26.39%
5-Year EBITDA CAGR: 37.44%

Coherent's growth curve — with EBITDA expanding far faster than revenue — reflects a company moving into a more profitable mix rather than simply scaling volume. A key driver has been the surge in demand for high-end optical components tied to AI infrastructure, data-center interconnect, and advanced communications. The company's recent results underline this trend: revenue reached roughly $1.58B in Q1 2026 with gross margins improving meaningfully year over year (Q1 earnings release). That margin lift is the tell — it shows that Coherent isn't just shipping more units; it's shipping higher-value ones.

The signal to watch is whether those premium optics continue gaining share in the product mix. If margin expansion persists even as volumes rise, that would validate the structural leverage implied in the five-year EBITDA CAGR. A reversal — especially if demand softens in datacenter or telecom cycles — would show up quickly through gross-margin retracement. For now, the five-year profile points to durable operational momentum.

BOOT Boot Barn Holdings, Inc.

5-Year Revenue CAGR: 19.47%
5-Year EBITDA CAGR: 36.79%

Boot Barn's five-year performance places it among the rare retailers that managed to scale while also thickening margins. The almost 2× spread between revenue and EBITDA CAGR indicates disciplined inventory management, favorable category mix shifts, and high-return store expansion rather than merely riding cyclical demand. The company reported a 210-basis-point increase in merchandise margin rate in Q4, primarily driven by supply-chain efficiencies and growth in exclusive-brand penetration (10-K).

The real signal here is the sustainability of merchandising efficiency. Specialty retail often falters when growth forces assortments too broad or inventory too heavy; Boot Barn has so far avoided that trap. Keep an eye on same-store trends and merchandise margin behavior — those will show whether the five-year EBITDA arc still has room or if normalization begins to pull growth closer to revenue rate.

DIS The Walt Disney Company

5-Year Revenue CAGR: 5.91%
5-Year EBITDA CAGR: 12.32%

Disney's five-year numbers reflect a company shifting its center of gravity. Revenue growth has been modest, but EBITDA growing at more than 2× the pace suggests a meaningful realignment of cost structure and content monetization. Over the past year, Disney has pushed significant efficiency efforts across Entertainment and DTC, leading to clear margin improvements (Reuters). Recent quarterly results showed operating income climbing at a rate far ahead of revenue — consistent with the long-term trend captured in the CAGR data.

The signal to track is whether Disney's profitability rebound is structural or merely the result of aggressive cost-cutting. If DTC contribution margins continue improving while Experiences (parks & travel) remains resilient, the EBITDA curve could steepen further. If content-spend reinflation or softness in consumer travel appears, the gap between revenue and EBITDA growth may narrow. Right now, the five-year profile shows a company in the middle of a still-unfolding efficiency transition.

VOYA Voya Financial, Inc.

5-Year Revenue CAGR: 6.78%
5-Year EBITDA CAGR: 77.85%

Voya's numbers tell a striking story: revenue creeping higher at ~7% annually while EBITDA grows nearly 80% on a five-year basis. That scale of profitability improvement in financial services rarely occurs without a meaningful shift in mix, underwriting quality, or operating model. Recent earnings reinforce this picture — adjusted operating EPS and assets under administration have been growing at strong double-digit rates, reflecting improved margins across retirement, investment, and benefits businesses (Q3 earnings release).

The key signal is whether this expansion is coming from durable improvements (better underwriting, higher-fee asset flows) or from unusually favorable conditions that could revert. The five-year EBITDA curve implies structural progress, but financials can see rapid shifts if credit conditions change or asset-market flows slow. Keep an eye on benefits ratios, asset-flow velocity, and capital-return consistency — those will confirm whether the EBITDA trend remains credible.

NTES NetEase, Inc.

5-Year Revenue CAGR: 13.03%
5-Year EBITDA CAGR: 14.69%

NetEase's five-year trajectory shows a steady, inflation-resistant operator rather than a boom-and-bust tech story. Revenue and EBITDA growing in close lockstep suggests a stable monetization model, largely anchored by long-cycle franchises and disciplined cost control. Recent results have been consistent with this pattern — gaming revenue remained resilient, international titles gained traction, and the company maintained enough profitability to continue delivering dividends.

The signal worth following is the durability of NetEase's content pipeline in the face of both competitive pressure and regulatory cycles in China. Because its EBITDA CAGR only modestly outpaces revenue CAGR, any disruption to release cadence or licensing could pull profitability down quickly. Conversely, if its global expansion continues to broaden the revenue base, the company may break out of the steady-state profile implied by the five-year numbers.

Decoding the Shape of Sustained Growth

Looking across the five companies, one through-line stands out: durable growth isn't about absolute CAGR—it's about how a company grows. The strongest names show a widening gap between revenue and EBITDA slopes, a sign that their business models are compounding internally rather than relying solely on scale. Others show steadier but still meaningful profitability lift despite modest top-line expansion. Together, these patterns point to a broader market theme: investors are rewarding efficiency curves, not growth-for-growth's-sake.

From an analytical workflow perspective, this means reading CAGR as a first signal—not the full story. Pulling multi-year performance from the FMP's Income Statement API gives the backbone, but the real insight emerges when it's cross-checked with adjacent datasets: cash-flow stability from FMP's Cash Flow Statement API, margin and return trends from Ratios TTM, and even sentiment drift via Analyst Estimates. This type of cross-validation echoes the logic behind assessing earnings quality through cash-flow behavior, as outlined in this analysis of cash-flow-based erosion patterns. Layered together, these help determine whether an EBITDA-heavy profile reflects structural leverage or a cycle-driven anomaly.

Strategically, the group illustrates three archetypes of sustained growth:

• Leverage accelerators (COHR, BOOT) where expanding margins are doing more work than revenue.
• Model refiners (VOYA) whose profitability shift signals transformation rather than scale.
• Steady compounders (DIS, NTES) where incremental improvements create durability over flash.

The takeaway: the market's strongest signals come from companies reshaping their internal economics. CAGR shows the contour; combining multiple FMP endpoints shows the credibility of that contour—and whether the trajectory is still strengthening or about to flatten.

Building a Streamlined CAGR Process with FMP API

A recurring CAGR screen is easy to automate if you build it directly off the FMP Income Statement data. You don't need spreadsheets—just consistent pulls and a clear sequence.

Step 1: Pull Income Statement Data

Start by running a single-ticker call using the standard Income Statement API. This initial request gives you the full history of reported periods you'll use for the calculation.

If you don't already have one, you'll need to generate your API key before making your first request.

Endpoint:
https://financialmodelingprep.com/stable/income-statement?symbol=AAPL&apikey=YOUR_API_KEY

Step 2: Gather Historical Figures

From the JSON response, pull the metric you plan to study—revenue, EBITDA, EPS, etc.—and line up each period in order. You want a clean, chronological series before doing any growth math.

Step 3: Calculate CAGR

Once you have the earliest and latest values, run the standard CAGR formula across the span of years:

CAGR = (Ending Value / Beginning Value)^(1 / Years) - 1

This smooths out year-to-year noise and gives you a single annualized growth rate that reflects the underlying trend instead of the volatility around it.

Step 4: Scale Screening with Bulk API

After confirming that the calculation works for one ticker, extend it across a broader universe by calling the Income Statement Bulk API:
https://financialmodelingprep.com/stable/income-statement-bulk?year=2025&period=FY&apikey=YOUR_API_KEY

Running the same calculation across a full universe lets you filter for specific thresholds—say, five-year revenue CAGR above a target level—and compare names on a consistent footing. With everything structured this way, the screen becomes easy to refresh, rerun, and adjust without touching anything manually.

Scaling the Screen to Wider Coverage

A clean way to expand this workflow is to build it in stages. Begin with a small universe and make sure the CAGR logic holds up; the Basic plan gives you enough room to run those initial Income Statement tests and confirm the calculations behave the way you expect.

Once the setup is solid, moving to the Starter tier opens full U.S. equity coverage. That's where the screen becomes broad enough to run consistently and compare results across the entire domestic market.

If you need cross-region analysis or deeper historical spans, the Premium plan adds global exchanges and extended reporting years. At that point, the same growth framework scales into an institutional-level screen without changing the underlying workflow.

Turning Recurring Data into a Forward-Looking Signal

With a steady workflow in place, CAGR becomes less a historical summary and more a live indicator of how efficiently a business is scaling. Running the process through the FMP Income Statement API and Income Statement Bulk API keeps the signal current, helping highlight where underlying momentum is building long before it shows up in broad market narratives.

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