Granite Construction Inc (GVA) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
Forensic Analysis · Industrials / Manufacturing / Defense · as of Sep 24, 2026
Granite Construction Inc (GVA)
A forensic read on Granite Construction 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
Safe
Financial health
3.5
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
-30.8
P / E (ttm)
16.4%
ROE
$4.9B
Market cap
1.13%
Dividend yield
10.4%
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, valuation). 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.
Granite Construction Inc earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 3.5, placing it in the Safe zone. 4 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by accruals ratio (% of noa).
What the filings flag
+51.4%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +51.4% 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 — a large slice of profit sits in operating assets, not cash. An accrual is a claim that still has to be collected or written down, so the gap resolves in a later period whichever way it goes. The build is led by inventory up +32% against +8% in cost of sales and receivables up +23% against revenue +10%. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 17% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 51.4%. 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.
9.0%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 9.0% in the latest fiscal year, against 2% in FY2021, having run between 1.5% and 10.5% across FY2021–FY2025 with no direction held — within 0.0 points of the ~9% cost of capital we hold this sector to, so the capital deployed to date has been roughly value-neutral. The capital base behind it grew +131% across FY2021–FY2025, from $1.0B to $2.4B, and the return did not fall doing it, so the dollars added over that window earned at least the 2% the older base was already earning.
+0.5%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Share count.Diluted share count changed +2% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (+0.5%/yr). Roughly flat — buybacks ($48M) are about offsetting stock comp ($39M), not shrinking the count. Per-share value isn't being meaningfully helped or hurt by the count.
$147M
FY2020–FY2020
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$4.42B
Revenue Growth YoY+10.4%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+10.3%
Net Margin4.4%
Free Cash Flow$330.6M
Return on Equity16.4%
Debt / Equity1.14x
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 Granite Construction Inc's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Sep 24, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.
Goodwill impairments.Took $147M of goodwill writedowns across 1 year (FY2020 ($147M)). Writedowns mean past acquisitions underperformed what was paid for them.