Forensic Analysis · Industrials / Manufacturing / Defense · as of Sep 24, 2026
Kennametal Inc (KMT)
A forensic read on Kennametal Inc built from its complete SEC filings — financial-health screens, earnings quality, red flags and a price-aware rating. Reproducible math, not opinion.
C · Mixed — selective
Forensic grade
Safe
Financial health
6.3
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
6.6
P / E (ttm)
21.8%
ROE
$2.3B
Market cap
3.45%
Dividend yield
19.8%
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.
Kennametal Inc earns a C (Mixed — selective) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 6.3, 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
+21.2%
FY2025→FY2026
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +21.2% relative to their own average in FY2026 — 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 +106% against +1% in cost of sales and receivables up +38% against revenue +20%. A cash-flow measure on the same base agrees: reported earnings ran ahead of operating cash by 17% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 21.2%. 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.
217d
FY2025→FY2026
Inventory days.Days inventory outstanding moved from 140 to 217 FY2025→FY2026 (against cost of goods sold; inventory +106% vs +1% in cost of sales). Inventory is outrunning what's being sold — a flag for softening demand or obsolescence risk ahead.
FCF ($81M)
FY2026
Shareholder returns.Returned $71M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2026, but free cash flow was ($81M) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, and operating cash flow itself was negative or zero that year too. 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.
0.88×
FY2024–FY2026
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$2.36B
Revenue Growth YoY+19.8%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+7.3%
Net Margin14.5%
Free Cash Flow-$80.9M
Return on Equity21.8%
Debt / Equity0.38x
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 Kennametal 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.
Cash conversion.
Over FY2024–FY2026, cumulative operating cash flow was 0.88× cumulative net income. Cash is lagging reported profit. The shortfall is profit tied up in working capital rather than collected — the accrual and receivables lines below show where.