Forensic Analysis · Industrials / Manufacturing / Defense · as of Sep 25, 2026
Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises, Inc. (BW)
A forensic read on Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises, Inc. built from its complete SEC filings — financial-health screens, earnings quality, red flags and a price-aware rating. Reproducible math, not opinion.
F · Poor — capital at risk
Forensic grade
Distress
Financial health
-6.0
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
6
Forensic signals
-8.5
P / E (ttm)
$989M
Market cap
1.69%
Dividend yield
1.1%
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.
Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises, Inc. earns an F (Poor — capital at risk) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads -6.0, placing it in the Distress zone. 6 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by share-count dilution.
What the filings flag
+8.8%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +18% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+8.8%/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 ~8.8% 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 ~16%.
FCF ($86M)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $386,000 to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($86M) 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 (sign flip)
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets flipped from positive to negative FY2024→FY2025 (FY2024 $+30.2M to FY2025 $-221.0M) — the standard accruals ratio divides by the average of the two, which collapses toward zero right as the sign changes, so the resulting percentage is a denominator artifact, not a real accrual measurement. Treat this as a structural balance-sheet shift to understand on its own terms rather than a clean or dirty accruals read.
74d DSO
FY2024→FY2025
Receivables vs revenue.Days sales outstanding moved from 58 to 74 days FY2024→FY2025 (receivables +29% vs revenue +1%). Across FY2023–FY2025 the day count ran 48 → 58 → 74 days — the latest step continues a climb that was already under way, which is the persistence that separates a collection problem from a busy quarter. Receivables grew, but deferred revenue grew +99% over the same period too — rising alongside rising unearned revenue reads as upfront billing on multi-period contracts, not slipping collections. Both figures are measured on period-end balances rather than the beginning-plus-ending average, because averaging needs the balance a year before every reading — FY2024's opening balance is on file, but across the 3 fiscal years read here (FY2023–FY2025) the average yields only 2 day counts (1 step), too few to tell a climb from one year's move.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$587.7M
Revenue Growth YoY+1.1%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+0.0%
Net Margin-6.2%
Free Cash Flow-$85.7M
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 Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises, Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Sep 25, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.
Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises, Inc. (BW) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
8.8%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 8.8% in the latest fiscal year and rising across FY2023–FY2025 from -4.4%. After-tax operating profit was ($16M) in FY2023 and $16M in FY2025, with operating income at -3.4% of revenue in FY2023, -1.1% in FY2024 and 3.5% in FY2025. The capital base behind it cannot be compared across FY2023–FY2025: long-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. FY2023's operating profit carried a $57M asset write-down, a $57M goodwill write-off and a $3M restructuring charge that took about 25.4 points off that year's return, and FY2025's carried a $10M asset write-down that took about 4.2 points off the latest; so, net of each other, the two charges add about 21.2 points to the +13.2-point change across FY2023–FY2025.
$57M
FY2023–FY2023
Goodwill impairments.Took $57M of goodwill writedowns across 1 year (FY2023 ($57M)). Writedowns mean past acquisitions underperformed what was paid for them.