Air Products & Chemicals, Inc. (APD) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
Forensic Analysis · Materials / Mining & Chemicals · as of Sep 24, 2026
Air Products & Chemicals, Inc. (APD)
A forensic read on Air Products & Chemicals, 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
Safe
Financial health
4.3
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
-1366.3
P / E (ttm)
-2.6%
ROE
$63.9B
Market cap
2.55%
Dividend yield
-0.5%
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.
Air Products & Chemicals, Inc. earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 4.3, placing it in the Safe zone. 4 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
-2.0%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -2.0% in the latest fiscal year, against 9% in FY2021, having run between -2.0% and 11.0% across FY2021–FY2025 with no direction held — below the ~8% cost of capital we hold this sector to. If that gap persists through the cycle, incremental reinvestment reduces rather than creates value per share. The capital base behind it grew +79% across FY2021–FY2025, from $19.6B to $35.0B, while the return fell 11.5 points, so the dollars added over that window earned less than the 9% the older base was already earning.
FCF ($3.8B)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $1.6B to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($3.8B) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, though operating cash flow alone was $3.3B — 49% 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.
+10.2%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +10.2% 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 PP&E up +8% against revenue -1%. This is the third straight fiscal year of building accruals — a multi-year streak is a materially stronger tell than a single year's move. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 12% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 10.2%. 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.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$12.04B
Revenue Growth YoY-0.5%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)-1.8%
Net Margin-3.3%
Free Cash Flow-$3.77B
Return on Equity-2.6%
Debt / Equity1.18x
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 Air Products & Chemicals, 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.
0.0%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Share count.Diluted share count changed 0% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (0.0%/yr). Roughly flat — the count is neither shrinking nor growing meaningfully. Per-share value isn't being meaningfully helped or hurt by the count.