Forensic Analysis · Energy / Oil & Gas · as of Sep 24, 2026
Spire Inc (SR)
A forensic read on Spire 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
0.2
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
8.5
P / E (ttm)
8.0%
ROE
$4.6B
Market cap
4.97%
Dividend yield
-4.5%
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.
Spire Inc earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 0.2, 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
4.5%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 4.5% in the latest fiscal year and steady across FY2023–FY2025, inside a 0.4-point range. The capital base behind it barely moved across FY2023–FY2025 ($8.7B to $9.5B, +9%), so there has been little new capital for that return to be earned on.
+5.6%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +12% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+5.6%/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 ~5.6% 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 ~10%.
FCF ($344M)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $182M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($344M) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, though operating cash flow alone was $578M — 32% 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.
0.3% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 0.3% of revenue in FY2025. 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 5.6% a year, and the rate is falling. 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$2.48B
Revenue Growth YoY-4.5%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)-3.6%
Net Margin11.0%
Free Cash Flow-$344.4M
Return on Equity8.0%
Debt / Equity1.14x
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 Spire Inc's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?