Forensic Analysis · Energy / Oil & Gas · as of Sep 24, 2026
Chevron Corp (CVX)
A forensic read on Chevron Corp 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
5.8
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
3
Forensic signals
20.1
P / E (ttm)
6.6%
ROE
$406.0B
Market cap
4.17%
Dividend yield
-6.8%
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.
Chevron Corp earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 5.8, placing it in the Safe zone. 3 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by accruals ratio (% of noa).
What the filings flag
+27.7%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +27.7% 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. The build is led by payables paid down 13% against -9% in cost of sales. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 11% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 27.7%. 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.
4.7%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 4.7% in the latest fiscal year and slipping across FY2023–FY2025 from 10%. The capital base behind it cannot be compared across FY2023–FY2025: cash is tagged in one of those two fiscal years and not the other, and an untagged line enters this calculation as zero, so any change in the base would be a change in what the filer tagged.
150% of FCF
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $24.8B to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025 — 150% of free cash flow, but 73% of operating cash flow. Returns run ahead of free cash flow, with the gap funded by debt or cash reserves rather than the cash the business itself throws off; the payout itself is still covered by operating cash.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$189.03B
Revenue Growth YoY-6.8%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)-3.0%
Net Margin6.5%
Free Cash Flow$16.59B
Return on Equity6.6%
Debt / Equity0.21x
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 Chevron Corp's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?