Forensic Analysis · Utilities · as of Aug 12, 2026
Cadiz Inc (CDZI)
A forensic read on Cadiz 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
-14.4
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
5
Forensic signals
-7.5
P / E (ttm)
-146.8%
ROE
$299M
Market cap
1.81%
Dividend yield
69.8%
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.
Cadiz Inc earns an F (Poor — capital at risk) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads -14.4, placing it in the Distress zone. 5 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
-17.0%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -17.0% in the latest fiscal year and slipping from -14% — well below its ~6% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
32% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 32% of revenue in FY2025. The cost of it is not in the cash flow — no cash left the business — it is in the count: holders gave up about 18.6% of the company a year, and that rate is not falling. That is the figure to weigh, not the share of free cash flow.
FCF ($27M)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $5M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($27M) 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.
114d DSO
FY2024→FY2025
Receivables vs revenue.Days sales outstanding moved from 104 to 114 days FY2024→FY2025 (receivables +22% vs revenue +70%). Receivables are creeping up relative to sales. Across FY2021–FY2025 the day count ran 105 → 88 → 124 → 104 → 114 days, so the latest reading sits on top of a record that was flat or falling before it — one year's move, not a direction the business has been travelling in. Deferred revenue was roughly flat (-75%) over the same period, which doesn't corroborate a benign upfront-billing explanation for the receivables build.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$16.3M
Revenue Growth YoY+69.8%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+121.5%
Net Margin-209.3%
Free Cash Flow-$26.5M
Return on Equity-146.8%
Debt / Equity3.13x
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 Cadiz Inc's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Share count (stock split).Diluted share count changed -100% over the last 3 years to FY2020, but that includes a large one-time change around FY2019 consistent with a stock split or reverse split, not gradual buybacks or issuance — a split changes the count with NO effect on any holder's proportional ownership, so the raw -88.5%/yr figure isn't a real buyback/dilution read here.