Century Aluminum Co (CENX) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
Forensic Analysis · Materials / Mining & Chemicals · as of Sep 25, 2026
Century Aluminum Co (CENX)
A forensic read on Century Aluminum Co 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
Grey Zone
Financial health
2.4
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
3
Forensic signals
6.4
P / E (ttm)
5.2%
ROE
$3.8B
Market cap
13.9%
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, 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.
Century Aluminum Co earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 2.4, placing it in the Grey zone. 3 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by share-count dilution.
What the filings flag
+1.6%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +3% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+1.6%/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 ~1.6% 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 ~3%.
0.79×
FY2023–FY2025
Cash conversion.Over FY2023–FY2025, cumulative operating cash flow was 0.79× cumulative net income. Cash is lagging reported profit. The shortfall is profit tied up in working capital rather than collected — the accrual and receivables lines below show where.
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 1.7%. After-tax operating profit was $22M in FY2023 and $142M in FY2025, with operating income at 1.3% of revenue in FY2023, 4.9% in FY2024 and 6.3% in FY2025. The capital base behind it cannot be compared across FY2023–FY2025: short-term debt and long-term debt are 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.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$2.53B
Revenue Growth YoY+13.9%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+7.5%
Net Margin1.7%
Free Cash Flow$84.8M
Return on Equity5.2%
Debt / Equity0.68x
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 Century Aluminum Co's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?