Forensic Analysis · Utilities · as of Sep 25, 2026
York Water Co (YORW)
A forensic read on York Water Co built from its complete SEC filings — financial-health screens, earnings quality, red flags and a price-aware rating. Reproducible math, not opinion.
C · Mixed — selective
Forensic grade
Grey Zone
Financial health
1.9
Distress distance
Clean
Earnings quality
3
Forensic signals
22.3
P / E (ttm)
8.3%
ROE
$502M
Market cap
2.88%
Dividend yield
3.4%
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.
York Water Co earns a C (Mixed — selective) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads 1.9, placing it in the Grey zone. 3 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by return on invested capital.
What the filings flag
3.8%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is 3.8% in the latest fiscal year and steady across FY2023–FY2025, inside a 0.8-point range. After-tax operating profit was $27M in FY2023 and $25M in FY2025, with operating income at 41.6% of revenue in FY2023, 37.4% in FY2024 and 35.8% in FY2025. The capital base behind it cannot be compared across FY2023–FY2025: short-term debt is tagged in one of those two fiscal years and not the other, and an untagged line enters this calculation as zero, so any change in the base would be a change in what the filer tagged.
FCF ($19M)
FY2025
Shareholder returns.Returned $13M to shareholders (buybacks + dividends) in FY2025, but free cash flow was ($19M) after capex — there was no free cash flow to fund the payout from at all, though operating cash flow alone was $30M — 42% 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.
+0.4%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share count.Diluted share count changed +1% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+0.4%/yr). Roughly flat — the count is neither shrinking nor growing meaningfully. Per-share value isn't being meaningfully helped or hurt by the count.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$77.5M
Revenue Growth YoY+3.4%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+4.4%
Net Margin25.9%
Free Cash Flow-$18.9M
Return on Equity8.3%
Debt / Equity0.92x
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 York Water Co's actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?