Alto Ingredients, Inc. (ALTO) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
Forensic Analysis · Materials / Mining & Chemicals · as of Aug 10, 2026
Alto Ingredients, Inc. (ALTO)
A forensic read on Alto Ingredients, 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
-2.6
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
11.6
P / E (ttm)
5.4%
ROE
$328M
Market cap
0.37%
Dividend yield
-4.9%
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.
Alto Ingredients, Inc. earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads -2.6, placing it in the Distress zone. 4 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
2.1%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 2.1% in the latest fiscal year and rising from -13% — well below its ~8% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
+1.7%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +5% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (+1.7%/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 ~1.7% 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 FY2022 has been diluted ~5%.
FCF ($8M)
FY2023
Shareholder returns.Returned $4M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2023, but free cash flow was ($8M) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, though operating cash flow alone was $22M — 17% 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.
$6M
FY2023–FY2023
Goodwill impairments.Took $6M of goodwill writedowns across 1 year (FY2023 ($6M)). Writedowns mean past acquisitions underperformed what was paid for them.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$917.9M
Revenue Growth YoY-4.9%
Net Margin1.5%
Free Cash Flow$8.6M
Return on Equity5.4%
Debt / Equity0.32x
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 Alto Ingredients, Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?