Forensic Analysis · Communication Services / Telecom · as of Aug 11, 2026
Shenandoah Telecommunications Co/Va/ (SHEN)
A forensic read on Shenandoah Telecommunications Co/Va/ 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
Grey Zone
Financial health
1.8
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
6
Forensic signals
-16.6
P / E (ttm)
-3.7%
ROE
$713M
Market cap
0.82%
Dividend yield
9.1%
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.
Shenandoah Telecommunications Co/Va/ earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 1.8, placing it in the Grey zone. 6 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
-1.0%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -1.0% in the latest fiscal year and steady — well below its ~8% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
+3.2%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +10% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (+3.2%/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 ~3.2% 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 FY2022 has been diluted ~9%.
FCF ($258M)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $6M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($258M) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, though operating cash flow alone was $101M — 6% of that. 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.
+13.9%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +13.9% 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 faster than is comfortable — part of profit is sitting in the balance sheet rather than turning to cash. The build is led by PP&E up +11% against revenue +9%. This is the fourth straight fiscal year of building accruals — an even longer streak than the 3-year mark that already signals a materially stronger tell. The cash-flow cross-check is more mixed: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 10% of net operating assets, diverging from the balance-sheet accrual read.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$357.9M
Revenue Growth YoY+9.1%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+12.9%
Net Margin-9.2%
Free Cash Flow-$257.9M
Return on Equity-3.7%
Debt / Equity0.71x
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 Shenandoah Telecommunications Co/Va/'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Aug 11, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.
3% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 3% of revenue in FY2025 — about $0.17 per diluted share. The cost of it is not in the cash flow — no cash left the business — it is in the count, and there it has run at about 3.2% a year and is falling.
-100%
FY2021→FY2022
Dividend — cut.The payout was CUT ~100% in FY2022 (from FY2021) and hasn't been restored since. It still returns some cash, but it is NOT the dependable, rising dividend an unbroken streak implies. Measured on total dividend dollars rather than per share: the reported share count steps sharply around FY2013, a stock-split seam between filing vintages rather than a change in the payout, and a split leaves the dollars paid untouched.