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Forensic Analysis · Restaurants · as of Nov 9, 2026

Cheesecake Factory Inc (CAKE)

A forensic read on Cheesecake Factory Inc 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
1.3
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
2
Forensic signals
33.7%
ROE
4.7%
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 (auditor quality, say on pay, board independence, going concern). 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.

Cheesecake Factory Inc earns a C (Mixed — selective) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 1.3, placing it in the Grey zone. 2 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.

What the filings flag

7.4%
FY2025
Return on invested capital. Return on invested capital is 7.4% in the latest fiscal year and rising across FY2023–FY2025 from 4.6%. After-tax operating profit was $98M in FY2023 and $169M in FY2025, with operating income at 3.2% of revenue in FY2023, 5.0% in FY2024 and 5.0% in FY2025. 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.
133% of FCF
FY2025
Shareholder returns. Returned $206M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025 — 133% of free cash flow, but 68% of operating cash flow. Returns run ahead of free cash flow, with the gap funded by debt or cash reserves rather than the cash the business itself throws off; the payout itself is still covered by operating cash. Counting the $27M of stock-based comp paid out in shares on top of that, the combined claim on free cash flow is 150%.

Key fundamentals

Latest Revenue$3.75B
Revenue Growth YoY+4.7%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+4.4%
Net Margin4.0%
Free Cash Flow$155.1M
Return on Equity33.7%
Debt / Equity1.44x

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Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Nov 9, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.

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