National Fuel Gas Co (NFG) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
Forensic Analysis · Energy / Oil & Gas · as of Sep 24, 2026
National Fuel Gas Co (NFG)
A forensic read on National Fuel Gas Co 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
Grey Zone
Financial health
2.4
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
3
Forensic signals
11.4
P / E (ttm)
16.8%
ROE
$7.5B
Market cap
3.86%
Dividend yield
17.1%
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.
National Fuel Gas Co earns a C (Mixed — selective) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 2.4, placing it in the Grey zone. 3 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by accruals ratio (% of noa).
What the filings flag
+74.1%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +74.1% 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. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 14% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 74.1%. 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.
7.5%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 7.5% in the latest fiscal year, against 8% in FY2023, having run between 2.4% and 7.6% across FY2023–FY2025 with no direction held. The capital base behind it barely moved across FY2023–FY2025 ($7.4B to $8.1B, +9%), so there has been little new capital for that return to be earned on.
130% of FCF
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $243M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025 — 130% of free cash flow, but 22% of operating cash flow. Returns run ahead of free cash flow, with the gap funded by debt or cash reserves rather than the cash the business itself throws off; the payout itself is still covered by operating cash. Counting the $20M of stock-based comp paid out in shares on top of that, the combined claim on free cash flow is 140%.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$2.28B
Revenue Growth YoY+17.1%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+2.4%
Net Margin22.8%
Free Cash Flow$187.2M
Return on Equity16.8%
Debt / Equity0.87x
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 National Fuel Gas Co's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?