Forensic Analysis · Utilities · as of Sep 27, 2026
Global Water Resources, Inc. (GWRS)
A forensic read on Global Water Resources, 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
5
Forensic signals
79.8
P / E (ttm)
3.4%
ROE
$252M
Market cap
2.50%
Dividend yield
5.8%
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 (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.
Global Water Resources, 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. 5 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by accruals ratio (% of noa).
What the filings flag
+29.3%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +29.3% 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 receivables up +16% against revenue +6%. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 9% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 29.3%. 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.
1.1%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 1.1% in the latest fiscal year and steady across FY2023–FY2025, inside a 1.5-point range. After-tax operating profit was $9M in FY2023 and $5M in FY2025, with operating income at 23.2% of revenue in FY2023, 17.8% in FY2024 and 12.8% in FY2025. The capital base behind it grew +33% across FY2023–FY2025, from $348M to $464M, while the return fell 1.5 points, so the dollars added over that window earned less than the 2.6% the older base was already earning.
+5.9%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +12% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+5.9%/yr). The count is growing — 24.1M shares in FY2023, 27.1M in FY2025: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~5.9% 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 ~11%.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$55.8M
Revenue Growth YoY+5.8%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+2.5%
Net Margin5.3%
Free Cash Flow-$47.2M
Return on Equity3.4%
Debt / Equity1.54x
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 Global Water Resources, Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Sep 27, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.
Global Water Resources, Inc. (GWRS) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
1.5% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 1.5% of revenue in FY2025 — about $0.03 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 5.9% 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.
FCF ($47M)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $8M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($47M) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, though operating cash flow alone was $20M — 41% of that. 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.