Forensic Analysis · Healthcare / Pharmaceuticals / Biotech · as of Oct 26, 2026
Lakeland Industries Inc (LAKE)
A forensic read on Lakeland Industries 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
Safe
Financial health
4.6
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
5
Forensic signals
-18.4%
ROE
15.2%
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). 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.
Lakeland Industries Inc earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 4.6, placing it in the Safe zone. 5 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
-7.6%
FY2026
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -7.6% in the latest fiscal year and slipping across FY2024–FY2026 from 3.5%. After-tax operating profit was $4M in FY2024 and ($12M) in FY2026, with operating income at 4.8% of revenue in FY2024, -5.5% in FY2025 and -8.1% in FY2026. The capital base behind it cannot be compared across FY2024–FY2026: 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. FY2026's operating profit carried a $4M asset write-down and a $3M goodwill write-off that alone took about 3.0 points off that year's return, so about 3.0 of the 11.1-point fall across FY2024–FY2026 is that charge landing in the latest year rather than the capital earning less. FY2025's operating profit carried a $11M goodwill write-off that alone took about 6.1 points off that year's return; FY2025 sits between the two ends of FY2024–FY2026, so the charge shapes the path between them without moving the change across it.
+13.0%/yr
FY2024–FY2026
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +28% over the last 2 years to FY2026 (+13.0%/yr). The count is growing — 7.5M shares in FY2024, 9.6M in FY2026: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~13.0% 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 FY2024 has been diluted ~22%.
1.8% of rev
FY2026
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 1.8% of revenue in FY2026 — about $0.35 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 13.0% a year across FY2024–FY2026 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 ($16M)
FY2026
Shareholder returns.Returned $1M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2026, but free cash flow was ($16M) 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.
$13M
FY2025–FY2026
Goodwill impairments.Took $13M of goodwill writedowns across 2 years (FY2025 ($11M), FY2026 ($3M)). Writedowns mean past acquisitions underperformed what was paid for them.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$192.6M
Revenue Growth YoY+15.2%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+24.3%
Net Margin-13.1%
Free Cash Flow-$16.4M
Return on Equity-18.4%
Debt / Equity0.25x
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 Lakeland Industries Inc's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?