Sweetgreen, Inc. (SG) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
Forensic Analysis · Retail / Consumer Discretionary · as of Aug 11, 2026
Sweetgreen, Inc. (SG)
A forensic read on Sweetgreen, Inc. built from its complete SEC filings — financial-health screens, earnings quality, red flags and a price-aware rating. Reproducible math, not opinion.
F · Poor — capital at risk
Forensic grade
Distress
Financial health
-3.7
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
38.2
P / E (ttm)
-37.6%
ROE
$655M
Market cap
0.4%
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.
Sweetgreen, Inc. earns an F (Poor — capital at risk) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads -3.7, placing it in the Distress zone. 4 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
-19.0%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -19.0% in the latest fiscal year and rising from -30% — well below its ~9% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
+2.3%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +7% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (+2.3%/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 ~2.3% 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 ~7%.
5% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 5% of revenue in FY2025 — about $0.31 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 2.3% of the company a year, and that rate is not falling. That is the figure to weigh, not the share of free cash flow.
+14.3%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +14.3% 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 faster than is comfortable — part of profit is sitting in the balance sheet rather than turning to cash. The build is led by inventory up +20% against +0% in revenue and PP&E up +10% against revenue +0%. The cash-flow cross-check is more mixed: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 49% of net operating assets, diverging from the balance-sheet accrual read.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$679.5M
Revenue Growth YoY+0.4%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+13.0%
Net Margin-19.7%
Free Cash Flow-$119.2M
Return on Equity-37.6%
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 Sweetgreen, Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?