Forensic Analysis · Communication Services / Telecom · as of Aug 14, 2026
Echostar Corp (ECHO)
A forensic read on Echostar Corp built from its complete SEC filings — financial-health screens, earnings quality, red flags and a price-aware rating. Reproducible math, not opinion.
F · Poor — capital at risk
Forensic grade
Distress
Financial health
-3.3
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
-4.6
P / E (ttm)
-251.4%
ROE
$26.9B
Market cap
0.00%
Dividend yield
-5.2%
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.
Echostar Corp earns an F (Poor — capital at risk) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads -3.3, placing it in the Distress zone. 4 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by inventory days.
What the filings flag
126d
FY2016→FY2017
Inventory days.Days inventory outstanding moved from 116 to 126 FY2016→FY2017 (against cost of goods sold; inventory +33% vs +4% in cost of sales). Inventory is outrunning what's being sold — a flag for softening demand or obsolescence risk ahead.
-38.8%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -38.8% in the latest fiscal year and slipping from 3% — well below its ~8% cost of capital, and it has been across FY2022–FY2025, so reinvested dollars have not been earning their keep.
FCF ($1.1B)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $49M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($1.1B) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, and operating cash flow itself was negative or zero that year too. 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.
$758M
FY2023–FY2023
Goodwill impairments.Took $758M of goodwill writedowns across 1 year (FY2023 ($758M)). Writedowns mean past acquisitions underperformed what was paid for them.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$15.00B
Revenue Growth YoY-5.2%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)-7.0%
Net Margin-96.6%
Free Cash Flow-$1.07B
Return on Equity-251.4%
Debt / Equity4.51x
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 Echostar Corp's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?