Northwest Natural Holding Co (NWN) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
Forensic Analysis · Energy / Oil & Gas · as of Sep 24, 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
0.7
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
16.1
P / E (ttm)
7.7%
ROE
$2.0B
Market cap
5.35%
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, 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.
Northwest Natural Holding Co earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 0.7, 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 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 +19% against revenue +12%. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran in line with operating cash by 4% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 23.5%. 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.
4.1%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 4.1% in the latest fiscal year and steady across FY2023–FY2025, inside a 0.8-point range. The capital base behind it grew +27% across FY2023–FY2025, from $4.3B to $5.5B, and the return did not fall doing it, so the dollars added over that window earned at least the 3% the older base was already earning.
+6.3%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +13% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+6.3%/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 ~6.3% 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 ~11%.
FCF ($198M)
FY2025
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$1.29B
Revenue Growth YoY+11.8%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+3.8%
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?
Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Sep 24, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.
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.