Forensic Analysis · Industrials / Manufacturing / Defense · as of Aug 11, 2026
Aerovironment Inc (AVAV)
A forensic read on Aerovironment 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
8.9
Distress distance
Watch
Earnings quality
6
Forensic signals
-40.1
P / E (ttm)
-6.0%
ROE
$9.5B
Market cap
0.00%
Dividend yield
140.9%
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.
Aerovironment Inc earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 8.9, placing it in the Safe zone. 6 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by accruals ratio (% of noa).
What the filings flag
+137.8%
FY2025→FY2026
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +137.8% relative to their own average in FY2026 — scaled by NOA itself, not total assets (see the Forensic Screens card's differently-scaled Sloan Accrual Ratio for that read). Accruals are building sharply — a large slice of profit sits in operating assets, not cash; Richardson/Sloan link high accruals to weaker future returns as they reverse. The build is led by receivables up +210% against revenue +141% and inventory up +117% against +194% in cost of sales. 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. The cash-flow cross-check is more mixed: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 7% of net operating assets, diverging from the balance-sheet accrual read.
-5.0%
FY2026
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -5.0% in the latest fiscal year and rising from -24% — well below its ~9% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
FCF ($17M)
FY2016
Shareholder returns.Returned $4M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2016, but free cash flow was ($17M) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, and operating cash flow itself was negative or zero that year too. 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.
n/m (stock split)
FY2023–FY2026
Share count (stock split).Diluted share count changed +96% over the last 3 years to FY2026, but that includes a large one-time change around FY2026 consistent with a stock split or reverse split, not gradual buybacks or issuance — a split changes the count with NO effect on any holder's proportional ownership, so the raw +25.1%/yr figure isn't a real buyback/dilution read here.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$1.98B
Revenue Growth YoY+140.9%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+54.1%
Net Margin-13.4%
Free Cash Flow-$140.9M
Return on Equity-6.0%
Debt / Equity0.17x
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 Aerovironment Inc's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Aug 11, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.
1.9% of rev
FY2026
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 1.9% of revenue in FY2026 — about $0.78 per diluted share. The cost of it is not in the cash flow — no cash left the business — it is in the count, and there it has run at about 4.6% a year and is falling.
$571M
FY2023–FY2026
Goodwill impairments.Took $571M of goodwill writedowns across 4 years (FY2024 ($156M), FY2025 ($18M), FY2026 ($241M)). Writedowns mean past acquisitions underperformed what was paid for them.