Forensic Analysis · Professional & Commercial Services · as of Sep 25, 2026
Quinstreet, Inc (QNST)
A forensic read on Quinstreet, 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
2.8
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
12.3
P / E (ttm)
25.1%
ROE
$817M
Market cap
18.3%
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.
Quinstreet, Inc earns a C (Mixed — selective) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 2.8, 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
+59.7%
FY2025→FY2026
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +59.7% relative to their own average in FY2026 — 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 receivables up +33% against revenue +18%. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 25% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 59.7%. 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.
+2.9%/yr
FY2024–FY2026
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +6% over the last 2 years to FY2026 (+2.9%/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 ~2.9% 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 FY2024 has been diluted ~6%.
9.6%
FY2026
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 9.6% in the latest fiscal year and rising across FY2024–FY2026 from -11.6%. After-tax operating profit was ($22M) in FY2024 and $32M in FY2026, with operating income at -4.6% of revenue in FY2024, 0.6% in FY2025 and 2.7% in FY2026. The capital base behind it cannot be compared across FY2024–FY2026: long-term debt is tagged in one of those two fiscal years and not the other, and an untagged line enters this calculation as zero, so any change in the base would be a change in what the filer tagged.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$1.29B
Revenue Growth YoY+18.3%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+45.3%
Net Margin6.3%
Free Cash Flow$117.0M
Return on Equity25.1%
Debt / Equity0.22x
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 Quinstreet, Inc's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 3% of revenue and 32% of free cash flow in FY2026 — about $0.64 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 3.0% a year, 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.