Forensic Analysis · Freight Forwarding & Arrangement · as of Nov 11, 2026
Forward Air Corp (FWRD)
A forensic read on Forward Air 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
Distress
Financial health
-0.2
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
6
Forensic signals
-68.4%
ROE
0.8%
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 (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.
Forward Air Corp earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads -0.2, placing it in the Distress zone. 6 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by cash conversion.
What the filings flag
0.64×
FY2023–FY2025
Cash conversion.Over FY2023–FY2025, cumulative operating cash flow was 0.64× cumulative net income before $1.0B of non-cash goodwill impairment. Reported profit is not turning into cash. The shortfall is profit tied up in working capital rather than collected — the accrual and receivables lines below show where.Cash conversion: operating cash flow divided by net income, the share of profit that arrived as cash.
1.3%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 1.3% in the latest fiscal year, against 2.5% in FY2023, having run between -33.9% and 2.5% across FY2023–FY2025 with no direction held. After-tax operating profit was $67M in FY2023 and $29M in FY2025, with operating income at 6.4% of revenue in FY2023, -43.0% in FY2024 and 1.5% 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. FY2024's operating profit carried a $1.0B goodwill write-off that alone took about 32.8 points off that year's return; FY2024 sits between the two ends of FY2023–FY2025, so the charge shapes the path between them without moving the change across it. A non-cash write-down lowers the reported return in the year it lands.
+8.7%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +18% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+8.7%/yr). The count is growing — 26.0M shares in FY2023, 30.7M in FY2025: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~8.7% 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 FY2023 has been diluted ~15%.
0.5% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 0.5% of revenue and 88% of free cash flow in FY2025 — about $0.44 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 8.7% 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.
stopped
FY2023→FY2025
Shareholder returns — halted.Capital returns have STOPPED — $119M of buybacks + dividends in FY2023, but ~$0 in FY2025. A halt usually means the company is conserving cash.
$1.0B
FY2024
Goodwill impairments.Took $1.0B of goodwill writedowns across 1 year (FY2024 ($1.0B)). Writedowns mean past acquisitions underperformed what was paid for them.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$2.50B
Revenue Growth YoY+0.8%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+34.9%
Net Margin-4.3%
Free Cash Flow$15.3M
Return on Equity-68.4%
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 Forward Air Corp's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?