Forensic Analysis · Professional & Commercial Services · as of Aug 11, 2026
Herc Holdings Inc (HRI)
A forensic read on Herc Holdings 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
113.9
P / E (ttm)
0.1%
ROE
$5.7B
Market cap
1.67%
Dividend yield
22.6%
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.
Herc Holdings 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 accruals ratio (% of noa).
What the filings flag
+59.2%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +59.2% 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 sharply — a large slice of profit sits in operating assets, not cash; Richardson/Sloan link high accruals to weaker future returns as they reverse. The build is led by receivables up +31% against revenue +23%. The cash-flow cross-check is more mixed: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 14% of net operating assets, diverging from the balance-sheet accrual read.
221d
FY2016→FY2017
Inventory days.Days inventory outstanding moved from 160 to 221 FY2016→FY2017 (against cost of goods sold; inventory -2% vs -25% in cost of sales). Inventory is outrunning what's being sold — a flag for softening demand or obsolescence risk ahead.
0.0%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 0.0% in the latest fiscal year and slipping from 8% — well below its ~10% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
+1.3%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +4% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (+1.3%/yr). The count is growing: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. Note: the share count shows a large one-time jump around FY2014, consistent with a reverse split or bankruptcy reorg rather than gradual buybacks, so the earlier shrinkage doesn't reflect real repurchase discipline. That's ~1.3% 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%.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$4.38B
Revenue Growth YoY+22.6%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+16.9%
Net Margin0.0%
Free Cash Flow$928.0M
Return on Equity0.1%
Debt / Equity4.13x
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 Herc Holdings Inc's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?