Atmos Energy Corp (ATO) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
Forensic Analysis · Energy / Oil & Gas · as of Sep 24, 2026
Atmos Energy Corp (ATO)
A forensic read on Atmos Energy Corp built from its complete SEC filings — financial-health screens, earnings quality, red flags and a price-aware rating. Reproducible math, not opinion.
C · Mixed — selective
Forensic grade
Safe
Financial health
2.8
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
5
Forensic signals
19.3
P / E (ttm)
8.8%
ROE
$26.4B
Market cap
2.88%
Dividend yield
12.9%
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, 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.
Atmos Energy Corp earns a C (Mixed — selective) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 2.8, placing it in the Safe zone. 5 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
4.7%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 4.7% in the latest fiscal year and steady across FY2023–FY2025, inside a 0.4-point range. The capital base behind it grew +25% across FY2023–FY2025, from $21.4B to $26.7B, and the return did not fall doing it, so the dollars added over that window earned at least the 4% the older base was already earning.
+5.2%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +11% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+5.2%/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 ~5.2% 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 ~10%.
0.3% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 0.3% of revenue in FY2025 — about $0.08 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 5.2% a year and that rate is not falling, so total profit has to grow by that much annually before any of it reaches a share. 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.
FCF ($1.5B)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $554M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($1.5B) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, though operating cash flow alone was $2.0B — 27% 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.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$4.70B
Revenue Growth YoY+12.9%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+4.9%
Net Margin25.5%
Free Cash Flow-$1.51B
Return on Equity8.8%
Debt / Equity0.66x
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 Atmos Energy 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.
+12.6%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +12.6% 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. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran in line with operating cash by 4% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 12.6%. 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.