Forensic Analysis · Energy / Oil & Gas · as of Aug 11, 2026
Select Water Solutions, Inc. (WTTR)
A forensic read on Select Water Solutions, 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
Safe
Financial health
4.8
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
4
Forensic signals
118.4
P / E (ttm)
2.6%
ROE
$2.9B
Market cap
1.87%
Dividend yield
-3.1%
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.
Select Water Solutions, Inc. earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 4.8, placing it in the Safe zone. 4 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by accruals ratio (% of noa).
What the filings flag
+22.2%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +22.2% 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 PP&E up +26% against revenue -3%. The cash-flow cross-check is more mixed: reported earnings ran behind operating cash by 18% of net operating assets, diverging from the balance-sheet accrual read.
1.9%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 1.9% in the latest fiscal year and slipping from 4% — well below its ~8% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
FCF ($80M)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $41M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($80M) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, though operating cash flow alone was $215M — 19% 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.
$271M
FY2019–FY2020
Goodwill impairments.Took $271M of goodwill writedowns across 2 years (FY2019 ($4M), FY2020 ($267M)). Writedowns mean past acquisitions underperformed what was paid for them.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$1.41B
Revenue Growth YoY-3.1%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+0.5%
Net Margin1.5%
Free Cash Flow-$79.9M
Return on Equity2.6%
Debt / Equity0.39x
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 Select Water Solutions, Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?