Forensic Analysis · Communication Services / Telecom · as of Aug 11, 2026
Viasat Inc (VSAT)
A forensic read on Viasat 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
Grey Zone
Financial health
1.9
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
5
Forensic signals
-306.3
P / E (ttm)
-0.7%
ROE
$11.7B
Market cap
0.00%
Dividend yield
2.7%
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.
Viasat Inc earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 1.9, placing it in the Grey zone. 5 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
0.6%
FY2026
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 0.6% in the latest fiscal year and rising from -2% — well below its ~8% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
+21.1%/yr
FY2023–FY2026
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +77% over the last 3 years to FY2026 (+21.1%/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 ~21.1% 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 ~44%.
FCF ($64M)
FY2011
Shareholder returns.Returned $7M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2011, but free cash flow was ($64M) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, though operating cash flow alone was $141M — 5% 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.
129d
FY2017→FY2018
Inventory days.Days inventory outstanding moved from 114 to 129 FY2017→FY2018 (against cost of goods sold; inventory +20% vs +6% in cost of sales). Inventory is building a little faster than sales — watch for markdowns. There's no FY2016 figure on file for inventory, so FY2017 has no opening balance to average against — both figures are measured on period-end balances rather than the beginning-plus-ending average, since averaging only the current year would make the move track balance-sheet growth rather than the business.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$4.64B
Revenue Growth YoY+2.7%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+22.0%
Net Margin-0.7%
Return on Equity-0.7%
Debt / Equity1.41x
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 Viasat Inc's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Aug 11, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.
1.7% of rev
FY2026
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 1.7% of revenue in FY2026 — about $0.60 per diluted share. The cost of it is not in the cash flow — no cash left the business — it is in the count, and there it has run at about 23.0% a year and is falling.