Forensic Analysis · Technology / Software · as of Sep 26, 2026
Sprout Social, Inc. (SPT)
A forensic read on Sprout Social, 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
-1.3
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
-20.3
P / E (ttm)
-21.3%
ROE
$603M
Market cap
0.00%
Dividend yield
12.7%
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.
Sprout Social, Inc. earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads -1.3, placing it in the Distress zone. 4 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by accruals ratio (% of noa).
What the filings flag
+33.9%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +33.9% 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 receivables up +20% against revenue +13%. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 68% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 33.9%. 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.
-20.0%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -20.0% in the latest fiscal year, against -33.0% in FY2023, having run between -39.4% and -20.0% across FY2023–FY2025 with no direction held. After-tax operating profit was ($55M) in FY2023 and ($34M) in FY2025, with operating income at -20.8% of revenue in FY2023, -14.9% in FY2024 and -9.5% in FY2025. The capital base behind it went from $166M in FY2023 to $172M in FY2025 (+3%), while the revenue it carried went from $334M to $458M. Across FY2024–FY2025, $60M went into capital expenditure and acquisitions against $8M of depreciation. 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.
+2.6%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +5% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+2.6%/yr). The count is growing — 55.7M shares in FY2023, 58.6M in FY2025: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~2.6% 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%.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$457.5M
Revenue Growth YoY+12.7%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+17.1%
Net Margin-9.5%
Free Cash Flow$39.3M
Return on Equity-21.3%
Debt / Equity0.20x
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 Sprout Social, Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Sep 26, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.
Sprout Social, Inc. (SPT) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
17% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 17% of revenue and 200% of free cash flow in FY2025 — about $1.34 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 2.6% 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.