Forensic Analysis · Hospitality & Leisure · as of Sep 8, 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

Forensic signals

-30.5%

Revenue growth

The financial-health reading above compares this company's equity at BOOK value, not at what the market currently pays for it — this free snapshot doesn't pull live market data. Treat it as a rough read, not the final word.

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, 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.

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 (based on book value, not market value, since this free snapshot doesn't pull live market data — treat this zone as a rough read, not the final word). 6 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by cash conversion.

What the filings flag

0.12×

FY2023–FY2025

Cash conversion. Over FY2023–FY2025, cumulative operating cash flow was 0.12× cumulative net income. 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.

-208.3%

FY2025

Return on invested capital. Return on invested capital is -208.3% in the latest fiscal year and slipping from 12% — below its ~8% cost of capital. If that gap persists through the cycle, incremental reinvestment reduces rather than creates value per share.

+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: 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–FY2025

Key fundamentals

Latest Revenue$450.5M

Revenue Growth YoY-30.5%

Net Margin178.9%

Free Cash Flow-$93.8M

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Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Sep 8, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.