Natural Gas Services Group Inc (NGS) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
Forensic Analysis · Energy / Oil & Gas · as of Aug 11, 2026
Natural Gas Services Group Inc (NGS)
A forensic read on Natural Gas Services Group 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
3.3
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
21.7
P / E (ttm)
7.3%
ROE
$468M
Market cap
1.65%
Dividend yield
9.9%
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.
Natural Gas Services Group Inc earns a C (Mixed — selective) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 3.3, placing it in the Safe zone. 4 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
5.0%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 5.0% in the latest fiscal year and rising from 0% — well below its ~8% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
+1.0%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +3% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (+1.0%/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 ~1.0% 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 FY2022 has been diluted ~3%.
FCF ($59M)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $3M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($59M) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, though operating cash flow alone was $63M — 4% of that. 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.
$10M
FY2019–FY2019
Goodwill impairments.Took $10M of goodwill writedowns across 1 year (FY2019 ($10M)). Writedowns mean past acquisitions underperformed what was paid for them.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$172.3M
Revenue Growth YoY+9.9%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+26.6%
Net Margin11.6%
Free Cash Flow-$58.6M
Return on Equity7.3%
Debt / Equity0.59x
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 Natural Gas Services Group Inc's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?