Upbound Group, Inc. (UPBD) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
Forensic Analysis · Professional & Commercial Services · as of Sep 25, 2026
Upbound Group, Inc. (UPBD)
A forensic read on Upbound Group, 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
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
11.1
P / E (ttm)
10.5%
ROE
$932M
Market cap
4.63%
Dividend yield
8.7%
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.
Upbound Group, Inc. earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade. 4 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by share-count dilution.
What the filings flag
+3.3%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +7% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+3.3%/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 ~3.3% 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 ~6%.
1.0% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 1.0% of revenue and 19% of free cash flow in FY2025 — about $0.77 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 3.3% a year 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.
+16.9%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +16.9% 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 faster than is comfortable — part of profit is sitting in the balance sheet rather than turning to cash. The build is led by receivables up +30% against revenue +9%. A cash-flow measure on the same base disagrees: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 15% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 16.9%. 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.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$4.70B
Revenue Growth YoY+8.7%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+8.4%
Net Margin1.6%
Free Cash Flow$238.7M
Return on Equity10.5%
Debt / Equity1.63x
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 Upbound Group, Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Sep 25, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.
8.8%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 8.8% in the latest fiscal year, against 7.9% in FY2023, having run between 7.9% and 14.0% across FY2023–FY2025 with no direction held. After-tax operating profit was $106M in FY2023 and $151M in FY2025, with operating income at 4.1% of revenue in FY2023, 6.7% in FY2024 and 4.8% in FY2025. The capital base behind it grew +27% across FY2023–FY2025, from $1.3B to $1.7B, and the return did not fall doing it, so the dollars added over that window earned at least the 7.9% the older base was already earning.