Forensic Analysis · Industrials / Manufacturing / Defense · as of Aug 7, 2026
Rocket Lab Corp (RKLB)
A forensic read on Rocket Lab Corp 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
Safe
Financial health
13.4
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
-249.7
P / E (ttm)
-11.5%
ROE
$46.6B
Market cap
0.00%
Dividend yield
38.0%
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 (red flags, auditor quality, say on pay, board independence). 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.
Rocket Lab Corp earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 13.4, 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
+136.9%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +136.9% relative to their own average in FY2025 — scaled by NOA itself, not total assets (see the Forensic Screens card's differently-scaled Sloan Accrual Ratio for that read). Accruals are building sharply — a large slice of profit sits in operating assets, not cash; Richardson/Sloan link high accruals to weaker future returns as they reverse. The build is led by PP&E up +64% against revenue +38% and inventory up +33% against +23% in cost of sales. The cash-flow cross-check is more mixed: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 6% of net operating assets, diverging from the balance-sheet accrual read.
-15.6%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -15.6% in the latest fiscal year and rising from -18% — well below its ~9% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
+4.4%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +14% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (+4.4%/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 ~4.4% 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 FY2022 has been diluted ~12%.
12% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 12% of revenue in FY2025 — about $0.13 per diluted share. The cost of it is not in the cash flow — no cash left the business — it is in the count: holders gave up about 4.4% of the company a year, and that rate is not falling. That is the figure to weigh, not the share of free cash flow.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$601.8M
Revenue Growth YoY+38.0%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+41.8%
Net Margin-32.9%
Free Cash Flow-$321.8M
Return on Equity-11.5%
Debt / Equity0.00x
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 Rocket Lab Corp's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?