Forensic Analysis · Hospitality & Leisure · as of Oct 24, 2026
Vivid Seats Inc. (SEAT)
A forensic read on Vivid Seats 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
-15.3
Distress distance
Watch
Earnings quality
6
Forensic signals
916.1%
ROE
-30.5%
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.
Vivid Seats Inc. earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads -15.2, placing it in the Distress zone. 6 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by cash conversion.
What the filings flag
0.07×
FY2023–FY2025
Cash conversion.Over FY2023–FY2025, cumulative operating cash flow was 0.07× cumulative net income before $660.7M of non-cash goodwill impairment. Reported profit is not turning into cash. The shortfall is profit tied up in working capital rather than collected — the accrual and receivables lines below show where.
-83.6%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -83.6% in the latest fiscal year and slipping across FY2023–FY2025 from 6.7%. After-tax operating profit was $64M in FY2023 and ($515M) in FY2025. The capital base behind it came down -35% across FY2023–FY2025, from $953M to $616M, so this return is struck on a smaller base than it started on. FY2025's operating profit carried a $723M asset write-down and a $661M goodwill write-off that alone took about 177.3 points off that year's return, so more than the whole 90.3-point fall across FY2023–FY2025 is that charge landing in the latest year rather than the capital earning less.
+5.2%/yr
FY2023–FY2024
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +5% over the last 1 year to FY2024 (+5.2%/yr). The count is growing — 9.9M shares in FY2023, 10.5M in FY2024: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~5.2% 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 ~5%.
FCF ($94M)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $18M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($94M) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, and operating cash flow itself was negative or zero that year too. The entire return is coming from debt or cash reserves, not cash the business itself generated — a harder case than returns merely running ahead of free cash flow, since here there was none to run ahead of.
$661M
FY2025
Goodwill impairments.Took $661M of goodwill writedowns across 1 year (FY2025 ($661M)) — about 82% of net income over the span. A large writedown means an acquisition turned out worth far less than was paid — a real mark against M&A discipline.
n/m (sign flip)
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets flipped from positive to negative FY2024→FY2025 (FY2024 $+408.0M to FY2025 $-154.9M) — the standard accruals ratio divides by the average of the two, which collapses toward zero right as the sign changes, so the resulting percentage is a denominator artifact, not a real accrual measurement. Treat this as a structural balance-sheet shift to understand on its own terms rather than a clean or dirty accruals read.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$450.5M
Revenue Growth YoY-30.5%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)-13.2%
Net Margin178.9%
Free Cash Flow-$93.8M
Return on Equity916.1%
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 Vivid Seats Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?