Forensic Analysis · Retail / Consumer Discretionary · as of Oct 23, 2026
Rent The Runway, Inc. (RENT)
A forensic read on Rent The Runway, 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
-18.0
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
3
Forensic signals
7.7%
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). 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.
Rent The Runway, Inc. earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads -18.0, 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
-46.5%
FY2026
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -46.5% in the latest fiscal year, against -43.2% in FY2024, having run between -46.5% and -28.7% across FY2024–FY2026 with no direction held. After-tax operating profit was ($63M) in FY2024 and ($52M) in FY2026, with operating income at -26.8% of revenue in FY2024, -15.5% in FY2025 and -17.4% in FY2026. The capital base behind it came down -24% across FY2024–FY2026, from $146M to $111M, so this return is struck on a smaller base than it started on. Across FY2025–FY2026, $125M went into capital expenditure against $19M of depreciation excluding $4M of intangible-asset amortisation. The base is struck net of amortisation, write-downs and the current liabilities that fund it, so it moved by less than that spending net of the wear, and this row does not say which of those absorbed the difference.
+82.8%/yr
FY2024–FY2026
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +234% over the last 2 years to FY2026 (+82.8%/yr). The count is growing — 3.6M shares in FY2024, 12.0M in FY2026: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~82.8% 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 ~70%.
1.3% of rev
FY2026
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 1.3% of revenue in FY2026 — about $0.35 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 82.8% a year across FY2024–FY2026 and that rate is not falling, so total profit has to grow by that much annually before any of it reaches a share. 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$329.8M
Revenue Growth YoY+7.7%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+5.2%
Net Margin6.9%
Free Cash Flow-$72.4M
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 Rent The Runway, Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?