Forensic Analysis · Professional & Commercial Services · as of Aug 11, 2026
Costar Group, Inc. (CSGP)
A forensic read on Costar Group, 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
7.6
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
169.5
P / E (ttm)
0.1%
ROE
$12.6B
Market cap
18.7%
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.
Costar Group, Inc. earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 7.6, 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
+66.7%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +66.7% 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 build is led by PP&E up +30% against revenue +19% and receivables up +24% against revenue +19%. The cash-flow cross-check is more mixed: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 7% of net operating assets, diverging from the balance-sheet accrual read.
-0.6%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -0.6% in the latest fiscal year and slipping from 11% — well below its ~10% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
+1.9%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +6% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (+1.9%/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 ~1.9% 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 ~5%.
407% of FCF
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $500M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025 — 407% of free cash flow. More than free cash flow generated — and beyond operating cash too, so the extra is coming from debt or cash reserves, which isn't sustainable indefinitely. Counting the $194M of stock-based comp paid out in shares on top of that, the combined claim on free cash flow is 564%.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$3.25B
Revenue Growth YoY+18.7%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+14.2%
Net Margin0.2%
Free Cash Flow$123.0M
Return on Equity0.1%
Debt / Equity0.12x
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 Costar Group, Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?