Sprout Social, Inc. (SPT) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
Forensic Analysis · Technology / Software · as of Aug 10, 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
-1.2
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
-20.7
P / E (ttm)
-21.3%
ROE
$621M
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). 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 -1.2, 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 total assets (see the Forensic Screens card's differently-scaled Sloan Accrual Ratio for that read). Accruals are building sharply — a large slice of profit sits in operating assets, not cash; Richardson/Sloan link high accruals to weaker future returns as they reverse. The build is led by receivables up +20% against revenue +13%. The cash-flow cross-check is more mixed: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 68% of net operating assets, diverging from the balance-sheet accrual read.
-20.0%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -20.0% in the latest fiscal year and rising from -50% — well below its ~10% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
+2.4%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +7% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (+2.4%/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 ~2.4% 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%.
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. The cost of it is not in the cash flow — no cash left the business — it is in the count: holders gave up about 2.4% of the company a year, and that rate is not falling. That is the figure to weigh, not the share of free cash flow.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$457.5M
Revenue Growth YoY+12.7%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+21.7%
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?