Acuity Inc. (De) (AYI) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
Forensic Analysis · Industrials / Manufacturing / Defense · as of Sep 24, 2026
Acuity Inc. (De) (AYI)
A forensic read on Acuity Inc. (De) 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
9.6
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
3
Forensic signals
19.2
P / E (ttm)
14.6%
ROE
$9.2B
Market cap
0.29%
Dividend yield
13.1%
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.
Acuity Inc. (De) earns a C (Mixed — selective) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 9.6, placing it in the Safe zone. 3 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by accruals ratio (% of noa).
What the filings flag
+44.8%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +44.8% 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 sharply — a large slice of profit sits in operating assets, not cash. An accrual is a claim that still has to be collected or written down, so the gap resolves in a later period whichever way it goes. The build is led by inventory up +36% against +10% in cost of sales. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 8% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 44.8%. 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.
74d
FY2024→FY2025
Inventory days.Days inventory outstanding moved from 67 to 74 FY2024→FY2025 (against cost of goods sold; inventory +36% vs +10% in cost of sales). Inventory is building a little faster than sales — watch for markdowns.
12.8%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 12.8% in the latest fiscal year, against 15% in FY2023, having run between 12.8% and 18.7% across FY2023–FY2025 with no direction held. The capital base behind it cannot be compared across FY2023–FY2025: short-term debt is tagged in one of those two fiscal years and not the other, and an untagged line enters this calculation as zero, so any change in the base would be a change in what the filer tagged.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$4.35B
Revenue Growth YoY+13.1%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+4.9%
Net Margin9.1%
Free Cash Flow$533.0M
Return on Equity14.6%
Debt / Equity0.33x
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 Acuity Inc. (De)'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?