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Forensic Analysis · Primary Metals & Steel · as of Nov 11, 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
Distress
Financial health
0.2
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
2
Forensic signals
5.6%
ROE
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 (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.

Century Aluminum Co earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 0.2, placing it in the Distress zone. 2 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by cash conversion.

What the filings flag

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.Cash conversion: operating cash flow divided by net income, the share of profit that arrived as cash.
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)+7.6%
Net Margin1.7%
Free Cash Flow$84.8M
Return on Equity5.6%
Debt / Equity0.68x

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

See a wrong number? Report an error with the filing it should match.