Forensic Analysis · Energy / Oil & Gas · as of Oct 11, 2026
Diversified Energy Co (DEC)
A forensic read on Diversified Energy Co 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
Distress
Financial health
0.1
Distress distance
Watch
Earnings quality
5
Forensic signals
3.3
P / E (ttm)
34.7%
ROE
$1.1B
Market cap
19.50%
Dividend yield
141.5%
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). 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.
Diversified Energy Co earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 0.1, placing it in the Distress zone. 5 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by share-count dilution.
What the filings flag
+25.2%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +57% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+25.2%/yr). The count is growing — 47.5M shares in FY2023, 74.5M in FY2025: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~25.2% 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 FY2023 has been diluted ~36%.
0.6% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 0.6% of revenue and 4% of free cash flow in FY2025 — about $0.14 per diluted share. No cash left the business to pay it, which is why operating cash flow adds it back. Net of repurchases the diluted count still rose about 25.2% a year across FY2023–FY2025 and that rate is not falling, so total profit has to grow by that much annually before any of it reaches a share. Stock compensation is one source of that issuance; acquisition consideration, equity raises, convertibles and other employee plans also net into the count, and these figures do not separate them.
+59.9%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +59.9% 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, and much of it is accounted for. The build is led by inventory up +190% on the year and receivables up +74% against revenue +142%. That build tracks a +142% revenue year: net operating assets grew +86% and receivables +74%, so the balance sheet is carrying more volume rather than getting heavier per dollar of sales — the accrual build is funding demand the company is shipping, not earnings running ahead of collection. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran in line with operating cash by 4% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 59.9%. 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.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$1.83B
Revenue Growth YoY+141.5%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)-3.1%
Net Margin18.6%
Free Cash Flow$280.0M
Return on Equity34.7%
Debt / Equity3.00x
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 Diversified Energy Co's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Oct 11, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.
Diversified Energy Co (DEC) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
9.1%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 9.1% in the latest fiscal year, against 29.7% in FY2023, having run between -2.3% and 29.7% across FY2023–FY2025 with no direction held. After-tax operating profit was $841M in FY2023 and $482M in FY2025, with operating income at 56.9% of revenue in FY2023, -12.8% in FY2024 and 29.2% in FY2025. The capital base behind it cannot be compared across FY2023–FY2025: short-term debt 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.
-51%
FY2023→FY2024
Dividend — cut.The payout was CUT ~51% in FY2024 (from FY2023). It still returns some cash, but it is NOT the dependable, rising dividend an unbroken streak implies.