Forensic Analysis · Utilities · as of Sep 24, 2026
Avista Corp (AVA)
A forensic read on Avista 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
1.1
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
5
Forensic signals
13.4
P / E (ttm)
7.1%
ROE
$3.0B
Market cap
5.30%
Dividend yield
1.3%
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.
Avista Corp earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 1.1, placing it in the Distress zone. 5 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by share-count dilution.
What the filings flag
+2.9%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +6% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+2.9%/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 ~2.9% 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 ~6%.
0.5% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 0.5% of revenue in FY2025 — about $0.11 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 2.9% 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 ($101M)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $159M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($101M) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, though operating cash flow alone was $469M — 34% 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.
+18.3%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +18.3% 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 +22% against +1% in revenue. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 10% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 18.3%. 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$1.96B
Revenue Growth YoY+1.3%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+5.9%
Net Margin9.8%
Free Cash Flow-$101.0M
Return on Equity7.1%
Debt / Equity0.14x
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 Avista 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.
4.0%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 4.0% in the latest fiscal year and steady across FY2023–FY2025, inside a 0.6-point range. The capital base behind it grew +14% across FY2023–FY2025, from $6.9B to $7.8B, 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.