Forensic Analysis · Industrials / Manufacturing / Defense · as of Aug 11, 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
9.0
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
-63.6
P / E (ttm)
-9.5%
ROE
$2.4B
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). 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 9.0, placing it in the Safe zone. 4 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 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 is more mixed: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 14% of net operating assets, diverging from the balance-sheet accrual read.
-6.0%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -6.0% in the latest fiscal year and slipping from 12% — well below its ~9% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
suspended
FY2020→FY2022
Dividend — suspended.The dividend has been SUSPENDED — $5M paid in FY2020, then $0 in FY2022. A suspension is a major signal the board is conserving cash; the prior payment history doesn't offset it.
$715,000
FY2019–FY2019
Goodwill impairments.Took $715,000 of goodwill writedowns across 1 year (FY2019 ($715,000)). Writedowns mean past acquisitions underperformed what was paid for them.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$453.0M
Revenue Growth YoY+12.7%
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?