Forensic Analysis · Restaurants · as of Nov 9, 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
-4.4
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
-33.4%
ROE
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 (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.
Sweetgreen, Inc. earns an F (Poor — capital at risk) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads -4.4, 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
-19.9%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -19.9% in the latest fiscal year, against -19.0% in FY2023, having run between -19.9% and -14.6% across FY2023–FY2025 with no direction held. After-tax operating profit was ($97M) in FY2023 and ($110M) in FY2025, with operating income at -20.9% of revenue in FY2023, -14.1% in FY2024 and -20.5% in FY2025. The capital base behind it went from $508M in FY2023 to $553M in FY2025 (+9%), while the revenue it carried went from $584M to $679M. Across FY2024–FY2025, $207M went into capital expenditure and purchases of intangible assets against $137M of depreciation excluding $2M 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.
+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 by total assets, which is what the Forensic Screens card's own accrual row divides by. 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%. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 49% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 14.3%. The two are computed differently: the accruals ratio is the change in net operating assets over average net operating assets, while the cash-flow figure is net income less operating cash flow over that same average. Read them as two results, not one.Accruals ratio: the year-over-year change in net operating assets, relative to their own average.NOA (net operating assets): the money tied up in running the business, operating assets minus operating liabilities.
+2.7%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +5% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+2.7%/yr). The count is growing — 111.9M shares in FY2023, 118.0M in FY2025: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~2.7% 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%.
5% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 5% of revenue in FY2025 — about $0.31 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 2.7% a year across FY2023–FY2025 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$679.5M
Revenue Growth YoY+0.4%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+7.9%
Net Margin-19.7%
Free Cash Flow-$119.2M
Return on Equity-33.4%
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?