Northwest Natural Holding Co (NWN) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
Forensic Analysis · Energy / Oil & Gas · as of Aug 11, 2026
Northwest Natural Holding Co (NWN)
A forensic read on Northwest Natural Holding Co 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
Distress
Financial health
0.8
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
17.4
P / E (ttm)
7.7%
ROE
$2.1B
Market cap
3.88%
Dividend yield
11.8%
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.
Northwest Natural Holding Co earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 0.8, placing it in the Distress zone. 4 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by accruals ratio (% of noa).
What the filings flag
+23.5%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +23.5% relative to their own average in FY2025 — scaled by NOA itself, not total assets (see the Forensic Screens card's differently-scaled Sloan Accrual Ratio for that read). Accruals are building sharply — a large slice of profit sits in operating assets, not cash; Richardson/Sloan link high accruals to weaker future returns as they reverse. The build is led by PP&E up +19% against revenue +12%. The cash-flow cross-check is more mixed: reported earnings ran in line with operating cash by 4% of net operating assets, diverging from the balance-sheet accrual read.
4.1%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 4.1% in the latest fiscal year and steady — well below its ~8% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
+6.4%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +21% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (+6.4%/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 ~6.4% 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 ~17%.
FCF ($198M)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $77M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($198M) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, though operating cash flow alone was $269M — 29% 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.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$1.29B
Revenue Growth YoY+11.8%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+7.5%
Net Margin8.8%
Free Cash Flow-$197.8M
Return on Equity7.7%
Debt / Equity1.65x
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 Northwest Natural Holding Co's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?