Black Hills Corp /Sd/ (BKH) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
Forensic Analysis · Utilities · as of Sep 24, 2026
Black Hills Corp /Sd/ (BKH)
A forensic read on Black Hills Corp /Sd/ 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
Grey Zone
Financial health
1.7
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
18.0
P / E (ttm)
7.6%
ROE
$5.4B
Market cap
4.88%
Dividend yield
8.6%
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.
Black Hills Corp /Sd/ earns a C (Mixed — selective) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 1.7, placing it in the Grey zone. 4 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by inventory days.
What the filings flag
70d
FY2011→FY2012
Inventory days.Measured to FY2012 — 13 years behind FY2025, the most recent year this filer has reported, because its filings carry no cost of sales figure after FY2012. What follows is the last reading these filings support on this line, not a read on the business as it files today. Days inventory outstanding moved from 53 to 70 FY2011→FY2012 (against cost of goods sold; inventory -8% vs -29% in cost of sales). Inventory is outrunning what's being sold — a flag for softening demand or obsolescence risk ahead. There's no FY2010 figure on file for inventory, so FY2011 has no opening balance to average against — both figures are measured on period-end balances rather than the beginning-plus-ending average, since averaging only the current year would make the move track balance-sheet growth rather than the business.
FCF ($146M)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $198M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($146M) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, though operating cash flow alone was $673M — 29% 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.
4.7%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 4.7% in the latest fiscal year and steady across FY2021–FY2025, inside a 0.4-point range — slightly below the ~6% cost of capital we hold this sector to — reinvestment to date is roughly a wash. The capital base behind it grew +21% across FY2021–FY2025, from $8.2B to $9.9B, 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.
0.0%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$2.31B
Revenue Growth YoY+8.6%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)-3.3%
Net Margin12.6%
Free Cash Flow-$146.4M
Return on Equity7.6%
Debt / Equity1.23x
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 Black Hills Corp /Sd/'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.
Share count.Diluted share count changed 0% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (0.0%/yr). Roughly flat — the count is neither shrinking nor growing meaningfully. Per-share value isn't being meaningfully helped or hurt by the count.