Forensic Analysis · General / Diversified · as of Sep 25, 2026
Steven Madden, Ltd. (SHOO)
A forensic read on Steven Madden, Ltd. 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
Safe
Financial health
8.2
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
3
Forensic signals
21.5
P / E (ttm)
5.2%
ROE
$3.2B
Market cap
2.25%
Dividend yield
11.0%
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, 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.
Steven Madden, Ltd. earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 8.2, placing it in the Safe zone. 3 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by accruals ratio (% of noa).
What the filings flag
+39.7%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +39.7% 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 sharply — a large slice of profit sits in operating assets, not cash. An accrual is a claim that still has to be collected or written down, so the gap resolves in a later period whichever way it goes. The build is led by inventory up +62% against +10% in cost of sales. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 14% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 39.7%. 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.
83d
FY2024→FY2025
Inventory days.Days inventory outstanding moved from 66 to 83 FY2024→FY2025 (against cost of goods sold; inventory +62% vs +10% in cost of sales). Inventory is outrunning what's being sold — a flag for softening demand or obsolescence risk ahead.
4.1%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 4.1% in the latest fiscal year and slipping across FY2023–FY2025 from 22.0%. After-tax operating profit was $168M in FY2023 and $53M in FY2025, with operating income at 10.8% of revenue in FY2023, 9.9% in FY2024 and 3.2% in FY2025. The capital base behind it cannot be compared across FY2023–FY2025: short-term debt and long-term debt are tagged in one of those two fiscal years and not the other, and an untagged line enters this calculation as zero, so any change in the base would be a change in what the filer tagged.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$2.53B
Revenue Growth YoY+11.0%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+13.1%
Net Margin1.8%
Free Cash Flow$119.5M
Return on Equity5.2%
Debt / Equity0.27x
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 Steven Madden, Ltd.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?