Kenvue Inc. (KVUE) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
Forensic Analysis · Consumer Staples / Food & Beverage · as of Sep 25, 2026
Kenvue Inc. (KVUE)
A forensic read on Kenvue 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
2.7
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
20.6
P / E (ttm)
13.7%
ROE
$33.9B
Market cap
4.65%
Dividend yield
-2.1%
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.
Kenvue Inc. earns a C (Mixed — selective) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 2.7, placing it in the Safe zone. 4 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by share-count dilution.
What the filings flag
+2.0%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +4% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+2.0%/yr). The count is growing: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~2.0% 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 ~4%.
+11.2%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +11.2% 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 faster than is comfortable — part of profit is sitting in the balance sheet rather than turning to cash. The build is led by PP&E up +20% against revenue -2% and receivables up +10% against revenue -2%. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 7% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 11.2%. 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. Read them as two results, not one.
8.5%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 8.5% in the latest fiscal year, against 9.1% in FY2023, having run between 6.9% and 9.1% across FY2023–FY2025 with no direction held. After-tax operating profit was $1.9B in FY2023 and $1.8B in FY2025, with operating income at 16.3% of revenue in FY2023, 11.9% in FY2024 and 16.0% in FY2025. The capital base behind it cannot be compared across FY2023–FY2025: long-term debt is tagged in one of those two fiscal years and not the other, and an untagged line enters this calculation as zero, so any change in the base would be a change in what the filer tagged. FY2024's operating profit carried a $578M asset write-down and a $185M restructuring charge that alone took about 2.8 points off that year's return; FY2024 sits between the two ends of FY2023–FY2025, so the charge shapes the path between them without moving the change across it.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$15.12B
Revenue Growth YoY-2.1%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)-1.0%
Net Margin9.7%
Free Cash Flow$1.72B
Return on Equity13.7%
Debt / Equity0.79x
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 Kenvue Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Sep 25, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.
103% of FCF
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $1.8B to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025 — 103% of free cash flow. That is $56M (3%) more than free cash flow covered. It came out of the balance sheet's own liquid holdings, not new debt: cash fell $8M over FY2025, while total debt fell $83M — $8M of the $56M, with the rest met from lines this read does not cover. That ratio has been CLIMBING past free cash flow — 29% of free cash flow two years back — not just sitting there. Counting the $136M of stock-based comp paid out in shares on top of that, the combined claim on free cash flow is 111%.