Advance Auto Parts Inc (AAP) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
Forensic Analysis · Retail / Consumer Discretionary · as of Sep 24, 2026
Advance Auto Parts Inc (AAP)
A forensic read on Advance Auto Parts Inc built from its complete SEC filings — financial-health screens, earnings quality, red flags and a price-aware rating. Reproducible math, not opinion.
F · Poor — capital at risk
Forensic grade
Safe
Financial health
3.1
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
6
Forensic signals
30.6
P / E (ttm)
2.0%
ROE
$2.5B
Market cap
1.88%
Dividend yield
-5.4%
Revenue growth
This free snapshot doesn't read filing or proxy text, so the auditor-quality and governance checks that can lower a grade were not evaluated (red flags, auditor quality, say on pay, board independence, going concern, valuation). Those checks only ever lower a grade, so the full analysis can land below the grade above but never above it — treat it as the most favourable reading, not the settled one.
Advance Auto Parts Inc earns an F (Poor — capital at risk) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 3.1, placing it in the Safe zone. 6 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
-0.8%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -0.8% in the latest fiscal year, against 0.5% in FY2023, having run between -13.2% and 0.5% across FY2023–FY2025 with no direction held. The capital base behind it came down -30% across FY2023–FY2025, from $6.5B to $4.5B, so this is a return struck on a smaller base rather than a record of money put to work.
FCF ($298M)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $60M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($298M) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, and operating cash flow itself was negative or zero that year too. The entire return is coming from debt or cash reserves, not cash the business itself generated — a harder case than returns merely running ahead of free cash flow, since here there was none to run ahead of.
+17.3%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +17.3% relative to their own average in FY2025 — scaled by NOA itself, not by total assets, which is what the Forensic Screens card's own accrual row divides by. Accruals are building faster than is comfortable — part of profit is sitting in the balance sheet rather than turning to cash. The build is led by payables paid down 13% against -14% in cost of sales. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran in line with operating cash by 4% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 17.3%. The two are computed differently: the accruals ratio is the change in net operating assets over average net operating assets, while the cash-flow figure is net income less operating cash flow over that same average. Read them as two results, not one.
272d
FY2024→FY2025
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$8.60B
Revenue Growth YoY-5.4%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)-3.3%
Net Margin0.5%
Free Cash Flow-$298.0M
Return on Equity2.0%
Debt / Equity0.81x
The forensic grade and screens above are free — no account needed. Want the AI investment read on top — the 0–100 rating, thesis, bull-vs-bear, red flags and the 12-month scenario, written from Advance Auto Parts Inc's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Sep 24, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.
Inventory days.
Days inventory outstanding moved from 241 to 272 FY2024→FY2025 (against cost of goods sold; inventory +1% vs -14% in cost of sales). Inventory is building a little faster than sales — watch for markdowns.
+0.8%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share count.Diluted share count changed +2% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+0.8%/yr). Roughly flat — the count is neither shrinking nor growing meaningfully. Per-share value isn't being meaningfully helped or hurt by the count.
-71%
FY2023→FY2024
Dividend — cut.The payout was CUT ~71% in FY2024 (from FY2023). It still returns some cash, but it is NOT the dependable, rising dividend an unbroken streak implies.