Forensic Analysis · General / Diversified · as of Aug 11, 2026
Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc. (CGBD)
A forensic read on Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc. 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
Clean
Earnings quality
5
Forensic signals
14.9
P / E (ttm)
6.0%
ROE
$766M
Market cap
13.13%
Dividend yield
-13.7%
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 (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.
Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc. earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade. 5 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by cash conversion.
What the filings flag
0.52×
FY2023–FY2025
Cash conversion.Over FY2023–FY2025, operating cash flow was 0.52× cumulative net income. Reported profit is not turning into cash. The shortfall is profit tied up in working capital rather than collected — the accrual and receivables lines below show where.
+36.5%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +36.5% relative to their own average in FY2025 — scaled by NOA itself, not total assets (see the Forensic Screens card's differently-scaled Sloan Accrual Ratio for that read). Accruals are building sharply — a large slice of profit sits in operating assets, not cash; Richardson/Sloan link high accruals to weaker future returns as they reverse. The cash-flow cross-check agrees: reported earnings ran ahead of operating cash by 12% of net operating assets.
+6.3%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +20% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (+6.3%/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 ~6.3% 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 FY2022 has been diluted ~17%.
OCF ($205M)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $118M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, while operating cash flow itself was ($205M) — zero or negative. Capex isn't disclosed for FY2025, but free cash flow can't have been positive when operating cash flow already isn't, so the entire return is coming from debt or cash reserves, not cash the business generated.
Key fundamentals
Return on Equity6.0%
Debt / Equity1.31x
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 Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Aug 11, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.
Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc. (CGBD) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
-18%
FY2020→FY2021
Dividend — cut.The payout was CUT ~18% in FY2021 (from FY2020) and hasn't been restored since. It still returns some cash, but it is NOT the dependable, rising dividend an unbroken streak implies.