Data: Wells Fargo Investment Institute; Chart: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios
Non-financial S&P 500 companies with the least cash are piling on the biggest loads of debt.
By the numbers: More than half of the S&P 500's total cash is held within just 25 companies — or the top 5% — while the bottom 95% of companies hold 73% of the index's debt, according to the Wells Fargo Investment Institute.
The most "cash-poor" S&P 500 companies collectively have a cash-to-debt ratio of 18% — the lowest since the financial crisis. In other words, there's 18 cents of cash for every dollar of these companies' total debt.
Alternatively, the cash-to-debt ratio at the top 25 cash-rich companies is 61%.
What to watch: Corporate debt-loads haven't hit financial crisis levels but analysts at Wells Fargo write, "leverage is rising, and debt burdens may become too large for some companies as this economic cycle extends."
