Forensic Analysis · Professional & Commercial Services · as of Aug 11, 2026
Adt Inc. (ADT)
A forensic read on Adt Inc. built from its complete SEC filings — financial-health screens, earnings quality, red flags and a price-aware rating. Reproducible math, not opinion.
D · Weak — demands caution
Forensic grade
Distress
Financial health
0.4
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
5
Forensic signals
8.4
P / E (ttm)
15.8%
ROE
$5.5B
Market cap
2.88%
Dividend yield
4.7%
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). 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.
Adt Inc. earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 0.4, placing it in the Distress zone. 5 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
6.3%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 6.3% in the latest fiscal year and rising from 4% — well below its ~10% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
+8.0%/yr
FY2017–FY2019
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +17% over the last 2 years to FY2019 (+8.0%/yr). The count is growing: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~8.0% shaved off per-share growth every year — total profit has to grow that much just to keep earnings-per-share flat, and a stake held since FY2017 has been diluted ~14%.
1.1% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 1.1% of revenue and 3% of free cash flow in FY2025. The cost of it is not in the cash flow — no cash left the business — it is in the count, and there it has run at about 8.3% a year and is falling.
$758M
FY2019–FY2023
Goodwill impairments.Took $758M of goodwill writedowns across 3 years (FY2019 ($45M), FY2022 ($201M), FY2023 ($511M)). Writedowns mean past acquisitions underperformed what was paid for them.
-89%
FY2017→FY2018
Dividend — cut.The payout was CUT ~89% in FY2018 (from FY2017) and hasn't been restored since. It still returns some cash, but it is NOT the dependable, rising dividend an unbroken streak implies.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$5.13B
Revenue Growth YoY+4.7%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+5.4%
Net Margin11.6%
Free Cash Flow$1.71B
Return on Equity15.8%
Debt / Equity2.04x
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 Adt Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?