Forensic Analysis · Materials / Mining & Chemicals · as of Aug 11, 2026

Peabody Energy Corp (BTU)

A forensic read on Peabody Energy 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

Safe

Financial health

2.9

Distress distance

Clean

Earnings quality

Forensic signals

-15.7

P / E (ttm)

-1.5%

ROE

$3.0B

Market cap

1.28%

Dividend yield

-8.9%

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.

Peabody Energy Corp earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 2.9, placing it in the Safe zone. 3 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.

What the filings flag

-1.4%

FY2025

Return on invested capital. Return on invested capital is -1.4% in the latest fiscal year and slipping from 37% — well below its ~8% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.

FCF ($78M)

FY2025

Shareholder returns. Returned $36M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($78M) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, though operating cash flow alone was $334M — 11% 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.

-98%

FY2014→FY2015

Dividend — cut. The payout was CUT ~98% in FY2015 (from FY2014) and hasn't been restored since. It still returns some cash, but it is NOT the dependable, rising dividend an unbroken streak implies. Measured on total dividend dollars rather than per share: the reported share count steps sharply around FY2013, a stock-split seam between filing vintages rather than a change in the payout, and a split leaves the dollars paid untouched.

Key fundamentals

Latest Revenue$3.86B

Revenue Growth YoY-8.9%

Revenue CAGR (3yr)-8.1%

Net Margin-1.4%

Free Cash Flow-$77.7M

Return on Equity-1.5%

Debt / Equity0.10x

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Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Aug 11, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.