Forensic Analysis · Healthcare / Pharmaceuticals / Biotech · as of Sep 26, 2026
Ardelyx, Inc. (ARDX)
A forensic read on Ardelyx, 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
Distress
Financial health
-0.1
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
6
Forensic signals
-15.2
P / E (ttm)
-36.9%
ROE
$867M
Market cap
0.00%
Dividend yield
22.1%
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.
Ardelyx, Inc. earns an F (Poor — capital at risk) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads -0.1, placing it in the Distress zone. 6 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by inventory days.
What the filings flag
989d
FY2024→FY2025
Inventory days.Days inventory outstanding moved from 508 to 989 FY2024→FY2025 (against cost of goods sold; inventory +35% vs -22% in cost of sales). Inventory is outrunning what's being sold — a flag for softening demand or obsolescence risk ahead.
-9.4%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -9.4% in the latest fiscal year, against -22.1% in FY2023, having run between -22.1% and -7.5% across FY2023–FY2025 with no direction held. After-tax operating profit was ($50M) in FY2023 and ($32M) in FY2025, with operating income at -50.8% of revenue in FY2023, -8.4% in FY2024 and -10.1% in FY2025. The capital base behind it grew +53% across FY2023–FY2025, from $226M to $345M, and the return did not fall doing it, so the dollars added over that window earned at least the -22.1% the older base was already earning. $197M of the $345M base at FY2025 is short-term investments (57.0%) — securities held beside cash, which the base keeps because only cash is subtracted from it; they earn the balance sheet's yield, which is not in the operating profit above, so the loss on the operating capital is larger than this rate shows.
-$177.0M
FY2023–FY2025
Cash burn vs. reported loss.Over FY2023–FY2025, the company reported a cumulative net loss of $166.8M against operating cash flow of -$177.0M. Cash burn ran heavier than the reported loss — something outside net income (working capital, a cash item not in the P&L) is consuming cash faster than the loss alone implies.
+15.2%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +15.2% 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 inventory up +35% against -22% in cost of sales and receivables up +25% against revenue +22%. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 7% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 15.2%. 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$407.3M
Revenue Growth YoY+22.1%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+80.8%
Net Margin-15.1%
Free Cash Flow-$44.0M
Return on Equity-36.9%
Debt / Equity1.21x
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 Ardelyx, Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Sep 26, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.
Ardelyx, Inc. (ARDX) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
+4.8%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +10% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+4.8%/yr). The count is growing — 219.3M shares in FY2023, 241.0M in FY2025: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~4.8% 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 FY2023 has been diluted ~9%.
12% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 12% of revenue in FY2025 — about $0.20 per diluted share. No cash left the business to pay it, which is why operating cash flow adds it back. Net of repurchases the diluted count still rose about 4.8% a year across FY2023–FY2025, and the rate is falling. Stock compensation is one source of that issuance; acquisition consideration, equity raises, convertibles and other employee plans also net into the count, and these figures do not separate them.