Forensic Analysis · Industrials / Manufacturing / Defense · as of Sep 26, 2026
Columbus McKinnon Corp (CMCO)
A forensic read on Columbus McKinnon Corp 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
0.9
Distress distance
Watch
Earnings quality
6
Forensic signals
-1.5
P / E (ttm)
-15.8%
ROE
$463M
Market cap
0.80%
Dividend yield
23.9%
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.
Columbus McKinnon Corp earns an F (Poor — capital at risk) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 0.9, placing it in the Distress zone. 6 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by accruals ratio (% of noa).
What the filings flag
+97.5%
FY2025→FY2026
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +97.5% relative to their own average in FY2026 — scaled by NOA itself, not by total assets, which is what the Forensic Screens card's own accrual row divides by. Accruals are building sharply — a large slice of profit sits in operating assets, not cash. An accrual is a claim that still has to be collected or written down, so the gap resolves in a later period whichever way it goes. The build is led by PP&E up +285% against revenue +24% and inventory up +207% against +31% in cost of sales. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran in line with operating cash by 3% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 97.5%. The two are computed differently: the accruals ratio is the change in net operating assets over average net operating assets, while the cash-flow figure is net income less operating cash flow over that same average. Read them as two results, not one.
267d
FY2025→FY2026
Inventory days.Days inventory outstanding moved from 114 to 267 FY2025→FY2026 (against cost of goods sold; inventory +207% vs +31% in cost of sales). Inventory is outrunning what's being sold — a flag for softening demand or obsolescence risk ahead. There's no FY2024 figure on file for inventory, so FY2025 has no opening balance to average against — both figures are measured on period-end balances rather than the beginning-plus-ending average, since averaging only the current year would make the move track balance-sheet growth rather than the business.
-2.2%
FY2026
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -2.2% in the latest fiscal year, against 2.9% in FY2025. After-tax operating profit was $43M in FY2025 and ($94M) in FY2026, with operating income at 5.7% of revenue in FY2025 and -10.0% in FY2026. The capital base behind it grew +189% across FY2025–FY2026, from $1.5B to $4.3B, while the return fell 5.1 points, so the dollars added over that window earned less than the 2.9% the older base was already earning. FY2026's operating profit carried a $200M goodwill write-off that alone took about 3.7 points off that year's return, so about 3.7 of the 5.1-point fall across FY2025–FY2026 is that charge landing in the latest year rather than the capital earning less.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$1.19B
Revenue Growth YoY+23.9%
Net Margin-19.2%
Free Cash Flow-$164.1M
Return on Equity-15.8%
Debt / Equity1.64x
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 Columbus McKinnon Corp's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Shareholder returns.Returned $8M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2026, but free cash flow was ($164M) 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.
116d DSO
FY2025→FY2026
Receivables vs revenue.Days sales outstanding moved from 63 to 116 days FY2025→FY2026 (receivables +130% vs revenue +24%). Receivables grew, but deferred revenue grew +60% over the same period too — rising alongside rising unearned revenue reads as upfront billing on multi-period contracts, not slipping collections. There's no FY2024 figure on file for receivables, so FY2025 has no opening balance to average against — both figures are measured on period-end balances rather than the beginning-plus-ending average, since averaging only the current year would make the move track balance-sheet growth rather than the business.
$200M
FY2026–FY2026
Goodwill impairments.Took $200M of goodwill writedowns across 1 year (FY2026 ($200M)). Writedowns mean past acquisitions underperformed what was paid for them.