Forensic Analysis · Midstream Pipelines · as of Nov 9, 2026
NextDecade Corp (NEXT)
A forensic read on NextDecade Corp built from its complete SEC filings — financial-health screens, earnings quality, red flags and a price-aware rating. Reproducible math, not opinion.
F · Poor — capital at risk
Forensic grade
Distress
Financial health
-0.6
Distress distance
3
Forensic signals
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.
NextDecade Corp earns an F (Poor — capital at risk) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads -0.6, placing it in the Distress zone. 3 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by accruals ratio (% of NOA).
What the filings flag
+63.7%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +63.7% 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 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 PP&E up +111% on the year. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran in line with operating cash by 3% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 63.7%. 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.Accruals ratio: the year-over-year change in net operating assets, relative to their own average.NOA (net operating assets): the money tied up in running the business, operating assets minus operating liabilities.
+16.1%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +35% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+16.1%/yr). The count is growing — 194.6M shares in FY2023, 262.2M in FY2025: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~16.1% 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 ~26%.
FCF ($5.0B)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $17M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($5.0B) 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.
Key fundamentals
Free Cash Flow-$5.02B
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 NextDecade Corp's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?