Capex is each company's capital expenditure over its trailing four reported quarters; debt is the long-term debt on its latest reported balance sheet. Both come straight from SEC filings, and every figure carries the date of the period it covers — the periods differ, and this page shows that rather than smoothing it away.
The ranking metric is debt ÷ capex: the number of years of construction, at the current rate, that each company already owes. It is the leverage of the build-out expressed in its own unit — a builder at 1x owes one year of construction before a single new chip is switched on.
The figures update as the builders report to the SEC, and nothing is estimated or interpolated to force a common date. That honesty has a cost: the reporting periods genuinely differ between companies, and can differ between a company's own capex and debt, so a ratio can mix periods slightly. Where the gap is wide enough to matter, the table flags it under the affected company rather than smoothing it away.
Read the ratios against each other, not against an absolute rule. Most of the large builders generate enough cash to fund their entire build-out from operations — their debt equals a fraction of one year of spending. One borrows heavily: its long-term debt equals more than two years of construction at the current rate, a build-out that only continues while the credit market keeps lending. Ratios rising across the table would mean the build-out shifting from cash flow to borrowed money — for US equities, more of the index's investment story riding on credit staying open. Ratios falling mean the opposite: builders deleveraging against their own spending, and the financing question getting quieter.
For US equities the exposure is concentration: the same handful of names drives both the index's earnings and its capital spending, so a financing crack reaches index holders whether or not they own the borrower directly. The spending also flows to chip makers, server vendors, construction firms and power suppliers, so a stop would hit every revenue line built on top of it. The price the credit market puts on that risk is tracked on the CCC-minus-AAA spread page.