Forensic Analysis · Industrials / Manufacturing / Defense · as of Sep 25, 2026
Cohu Inc (COHU)
A forensic read on Cohu 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
Safe
Financial health
10.5
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
2
Forensic signals
-69.5
P / E (ttm)
-9.5%
ROE
$3.1B
Market cap
0.00%
Dividend yield
12.7%
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, 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.
Cohu Inc earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 10.5, placing it in the Safe zone. 2 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by accruals ratio (% of noa).
What the filings flag
+25.8%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +25.8% relative to their own average in FY2025 — 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. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 14% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 25.8%. 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.
-6.0%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -6.0% in the latest fiscal year, against 3.5% in FY2023, having run between -8.0% and 3.5% across FY2023–FY2025 with no direction held. After-tax operating profit was $28M in FY2023 and ($55M) in FY2025, with operating income at 6.8% of revenue in FY2023, -17.8% in FY2024 and -15.4% in FY2025. The capital base behind it grew +14% across FY2023–FY2025, from $808M to $918M, while the return fell 9.5 points, so the dollars added over that window earned less than the 3.5% the older base was already earning.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$453.0M
Revenue Growth YoY+12.7%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)-15.7%
Net Margin-16.4%
Free Cash Flow$10.7M
Return on Equity-9.5%
Debt / Equity0.38x
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 Cohu Inc's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?