Forensic Analysis · Consumer Staples / Food & Beverage · as of Sep 18, 2026
Pepsico Inc (PEP)
A forensic read on Pepsico 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
4.8
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
16.9
P / E (ttm)
40.4%
ROE
$176.9B
Market cap
2.99%
Dividend yield
2.3%
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.
Pepsico Inc earns a C (Mixed — selective) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 4.8, placing it in the Safe zone. 4 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by accruals ratio (% of noa).
What the filings flag
+11.5%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +11.5% 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 faster than is comfortable — part of profit is sitting in the balance sheet rather than turning to cash. The build is led by inventory up +10% against +3% in cost of sales. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 7% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 11.5%. 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.
12.9%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 12.9% in the latest fiscal year, against 13% in FY2021, having run between 12.9% and 15.6% across FY2021–FY2025 with no direction held — a modest positive spread over the ~8% cost of capital we hold this sector to — the capital already deployed adds value, though not dramatically. The capital base behind it grew +12% across FY2021–FY2025, from $64.9B to $72.3B, while the return fell 0.6 points, so the dollars added over that window earned less than the 13% the older base was already earning.
-0.3%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Share count.Diluted share count changed -1% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (-0.3%/yr). Roughly flat — buybacks ($1.0B) are about offsetting stock comp ($288M), not shrinking the count. Per-share value isn't being meaningfully helped or hurt by the count.
113% of FCF
FY2025
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$93.92B
Revenue Growth YoY+2.3%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+2.8%
Net Margin8.8%
Free Cash Flow$7.67B
Return on Equity40.4%
Debt / Equity2.41x
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 Pepsico Inc's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Sep 18, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.
Shareholder returns.
Returned $8.6B to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025 — 113% of free cash flow, but 71% 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 $288M of stock-based comp paid out in shares on top of that, the combined claim on free cash flow is 116%.