Forensic Analysis · Energy / Oil & Gas · as of Aug 9, 2026
Chesapeake Utilities Corp (CPK)
A forensic read on Chesapeake Utilities Corp built from its complete SEC filings — financial-health screens, earnings quality, red flags and a price-aware rating. Reproducible math, not opinion.
C · Mixed — selective
Forensic grade
Grey Zone
Financial health
1.9
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
5
Forensic signals
21.2
P / E (ttm)
8.8%
ROE
$3.2B
Market cap
2.20%
Dividend yield
18.1%
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.
Chesapeake Utilities Corp earns a C (Mixed — selective) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 1.9, placing it in the Grey zone. 5 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
5.2%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 5.2% in the latest fiscal year and steady — well below its ~8% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
+9.7%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +32% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (+9.7%/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 ~9.7% 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 ~24%.
FCF ($215M)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $61M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($215M) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, though operating cash flow alone was $234M — 26% of that. 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.
+13.6%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +13.6% 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 faster than is comfortable — part of profit is sitting in the balance sheet rather than turning to cash. The build is led by receivables up +32% against revenue +18% and PP&E up +14% against revenue +18%. The cash-flow cross-check is more mixed: reported earnings ran in line with operating cash by 3% of net operating assets, diverging from the balance-sheet accrual read.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$930.0M
Revenue Growth YoY+18.1%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+11.0%
Net Margin15.1%
Free Cash Flow-$214.9M
Return on Equity8.8%
Debt / Equity0.91x
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 Chesapeake Utilities Corp's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Aug 9, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.
0.9% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 0.9% of revenue in FY2025 — about $0.36 per diluted share. The cost of it is not in the cash flow — no cash left the business — it is in the count, and there it has run at about 10.0% a year and is falling.