A forensic read on Green Plains 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
0.7
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
-14.9%
ROE
-14.9%
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.
Green Plains Inc. earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 0.7, placing it in the Distress zone. 4 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
-4.5%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -4.5% in the latest fiscal year and steady across FY2023–FY2025, inside a 1.4-point range. After-tax operating profit was ($49M) in FY2023 and ($53M) in FY2025, with operating income at -1.9% of revenue in FY2023, -1.9% in FY2024 and -3.2% in FY2025. The capital base behind it went from $1.2B in FY2023 to $1.2B in FY2025 (-2%), while the revenue it carried went from $3.3B to $2.1B.
+7.1%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +15% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+7.1%/yr). The count is growing — 58.8M shares in FY2023, 67.5M in FY2025: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~7.1% 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 ~13%.
0.8% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 0.8% of revenue and 23% of free cash flow in FY2025 — about $0.25 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 7.1% a year across FY2023–FY2025, and the rate is falling. 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.
-87%
FY2024→FY2025
Dividend — cut.The payout was CUT ~87% in FY2025 (from FY2024). It still returns some cash, but it is NOT the dependable, rising dividend an unbroken streak implies.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$2.09B
Revenue Growth YoY-14.9%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)-20.3%
Net Margin-5.8%
Free Cash Flow$73.7M
Return on Equity-14.9%
Debt / Equity0.48x
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 Green Plains Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?