Forensic Analysis · Restaurants · as of Nov 11, 2026
Portillo's Inc. (PTLO)
A forensic read on Portillo's Inc. 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
0.2
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
3
Forensic signals
4.5%
ROE
3.0%
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 (auditor quality, say on pay, board independence, going concern). 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.
Portillo's Inc. earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 0.2, placing it in the Distress zone. 3 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
2.8%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 2.8% in the latest fiscal year and steady across FY2023–FY2025, inside a 1.1-point range. After-tax operating profit was $49M in FY2023 and $38M in FY2025, with operating income at 8.2% of revenue in FY2023, 8.2% in FY2024 and 6.0% in FY2025. The capital base behind it went from $1.3B in FY2023 to $1.4B in FY2025 (+8%), while the revenue it carried went from $680M to $732M.
+11.4%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +24% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+11.4%/yr). The count is growing — 57.3M shares in FY2023, 71.1M in FY2025: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~11.4% 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 FY2023 has been diluted ~19%.
0.9% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 0.9% of revenue in FY2025 — about $0.09 per diluted share. No cash left the business to pay it, which is why operating cash flow adds it back. Net of repurchases the diluted count still rose about 11.4% a year across FY2023–FY2025, and the rate is falling. Stock compensation is one source of that issuance; acquisition consideration, equity raises, convertibles and other employee plans also net into the count, and these figures do not separate them.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$732.1M
Revenue Growth YoY+3.0%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+3.8%
Net Margin2.6%
Free Cash Flow-$18.5M
Return on Equity4.5%
Debt / Equity0.52x
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 Portillo's Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?