Forensic Analysis · General / Diversified · as of Sep 24, 2026
Aes Corp (AES)
A forensic read on Aes Corp 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
0.0
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
5
Forensic signals
5.7
P / E (ttm)
22.4%
ROE
$10.6B
Market cap
3.92%
Dividend yield
-0.4%
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.
Aes Corp earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 0.0, placing it in the Distress zone. 5 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by accruals ratio (% of noa).
What the filings flag
+23.4%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +23.4% 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 sharply — a large slice of profit sits in operating assets, not cash. An accrual is a claim that still has to be collected or written down, so the gap resolves in a later period whichever way it goes. The build is led by PP&E up +14% against revenue 0%. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 141% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 23.4%. 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.
3.2%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 3.2% in the latest fiscal year, against 3% in FY2023, having run between 2.7% and 5.7% across FY2023–FY2025 with no direction held. The capital base behind it grew +25% across FY2023–FY2025, from $33.6B to $41.9B, and the return did not fall doing it, so the dollars added over that window earned at least the 3% the older base was already earning.
FCF ($1.6B)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $501M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($1.6B) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, though operating cash flow alone was $4.3B — 12% of that. 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.
+0.1%/yr
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$12.23B
Revenue Growth YoY-0.4%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)-1.7%
Net Margin7.4%
Free Cash Flow-$1.62B
Return on Equity22.4%
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 Aes Corp'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.
FY2023–FY2025
Share count.Diluted share count changed 0% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+0.1%/yr). Roughly flat — the count is neither shrinking nor growing meaningfully. Per-share value isn't being meaningfully helped or hurt by the count.
$12M
FY2023–FY2023
Goodwill impairments.Took $12M of goodwill writedowns across 1 year (FY2023 ($12M)) — about 5% of net income over the span. Writedowns mean past acquisitions underperformed what was paid for them.