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Forensic Analysis · Packaged Foods · as of Nov 9, 2026

Hershey Co (HSY)

A forensic read on Hershey Co built from its complete SEC filings — financial-health screens, earnings quality, red flags and a price-aware rating. Reproducible math, not opinion.

A · High-quality, not compounding
Forensic grade
Safe
Financial health
2.8
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
2
Forensic signals
18.9%
ROE
4.4%
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 (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.

Hershey Co earns an A (High-quality, not compounding) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 2.8, placing it in the Safe zone. 2 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.

What the filings flag

10.7%
FY2025
Return on invested capital. Return on invested capital is 10.7% in the latest fiscal year, against 23.8% in FY2023, having run between 10.7% and 27.7% across FY2023–FY2025 with no direction held. After-tax operating profit was $2.2B in FY2023 and $1.0B in FY2025, with operating income at 22.9% of revenue in FY2023, 25.9% in FY2024 and 12.3% in FY2025. The capital base behind it went from $9.2B in FY2023 to $9.8B in FY2025 (+6%), while the revenue it carried went from $11.2B to $11.7B. Across FY2024–FY2025, $2.3B went into capital expenditure, purchases of intangible assets, acquisitions and equity-method investments against $789M of depreciation excluding $170M of intangible-asset amortisation. The base is struck net of amortisation, write-downs and the current liabilities that fund it, so it moved by less than that spending net of the wear, and this row does not say which of those absorbed the difference.
$6M
FY2025
Goodwill impairments. Took $6M of goodwill writedowns across 1 year (FY2025 ($6M)) — about 1% of net income over the span. Writedowns mean past acquisitions underperformed what was paid for them.

Key fundamentals

Latest Revenue$11.69B
Revenue Growth YoY+4.4%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+2.3%
Net Margin7.6%
Free Cash Flow$1.82B
Return on Equity18.9%
Debt / Equity1.06x

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Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Nov 9, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.

See a wrong number? Report an error with the filing it should match.