Forensic Analysis · Energy / Oil & Gas · as of Aug 11, 2026
Murphy Oil Corp (MUR)
A forensic read on Murphy Oil Corp 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
3.4
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
57.8
P / E (ttm)
2.0%
ROE
$5.1B
Market cap
4.24%
Dividend yield
-10.2%
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). 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.
Murphy Oil Corp earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 3.4, placing it in the Safe zone. 4 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by inventory days.
What the filings flag
6339d
FY2023→FY2024
Inventory days.Days inventory outstanding moved from 385 to 6339 FY2023→FY2024 (against cost of goods sold; inventory +1% vs -94% in cost of sales). Inventory is outrunning what's being sold — a flag for softening demand or obsolescence risk ahead.
2.7%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 2.7% in the latest fiscal year and slipping from 15% — well below its ~8% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
127% of FCF
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $289M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025 — 127% of free cash flow, but 23% of operating cash flow. Returns run ahead of free cash flow because the business is also funding heavy growth capex (usually debt-financed); the payout itself is covered by operating cash — sustainable as long as that spending is genuine expansion, not upkeep. Counting the $50M of stock-based comp paid out in shares on top of that, the combined claim on free cash flow is 149%.
-66%
FY2012→FY2013
Dividend — cut.The payout was CUT ~66% in FY2013 (from FY2012) and hasn't been restored since. It still returns some cash, but it is NOT the dependable, rising dividend an unbroken streak implies.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$2.72B
Revenue Growth YoY-10.2%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)-11.6%
Net Margin3.8%
Free Cash Flow$227.2M
Return on Equity2.0%
Debt / Equity0.27x
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 Murphy Oil Corp's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?