Forensic Analysis · Retail / Consumer Discretionary · as of Aug 11, 2026
First Watch Restaurant Group, Inc. (FWRG)
A forensic read on First Watch Restaurant 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
Distress
Financial health
0.3
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
3
Forensic signals
43.0
P / E (ttm)
3.1%
ROE
$736M
Market cap
20.3%
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.
First Watch Restaurant Group, Inc. earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 0.3, placing it in the Distress zone. 3 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
1.6%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 1.6% in the latest fiscal year and steady — well below its ~9% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
+1.5%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +4% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (+1.5%/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 ~1.5% 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 ~4%.
+15.4%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +15.4% 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 faster than is comfortable — part of profit is sitting in the balance sheet rather than turning to cash. The build is led by inventory up +17% against +20% in revenue. This is the third straight fiscal year of building accruals — a multi-year streak is a materially stronger tell than a single year's move. The cash-flow cross-check is more mixed: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 13% of net operating assets, diverging from the balance-sheet accrual read.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$1.22B
Revenue Growth YoY+20.3%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+18.7%
Net Margin1.6%
Free Cash Flow-$31.0M
Return on Equity3.1%
Debt / Equity0.45x
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 First Watch Restaurant Group, Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?