Is AeroVironment Inc (AVAV) a good stock to buy?
Two or more of our tested checks point the wrong way. When the survival check is one of them, no price makes that acceptable.
What each rating means, in numbers
Can it survive? — Middling. Safer than 53% of the companies we cover, judged on the warning signs that came before companies that really did fail.
Business quality — Very weak. Passes 2 of the 9 health checks we can measure — things like making a profit, turning it into cash, and not piling on debt. Across 131,000 company-quarters the weakest scorers went on to fail at 5.4% against 1.4% for the strongest, in every era and all twelve sectors.
How wild is the price? — Very wild. The share price swings about 90% in a typical year, which puts it in the most volatile fifth. Out of every 100 companies that swung like this, about 8.6 went bankrupt within the year. Across the three periods we tested that ran from 3.7% to 11.5%.
What "tested" means here, and why there is no score out of 100
Tested means the read was measured against what actually happened afterwards, on a history that keeps the companies that were later delisted, using only figures that had been filed on the day they are used. Survival was ranked on companies that really did fail. What an owner keeps was tested across the universe from 2011 to 2025.
The full record of everything we have tested is on the research pages.
Which benchmark. Over the period we tested, the median listed company returned +5.8% a year while the S&P 500 returned about +13.9% — the index is weighted by size and was carried by a handful of enormous winners. So "beats the index" and "beats the other companies you could have bought" are different questions. Where a read says it picks better companies, it means the second one. None of these gets you an index fund's return, and we would rather say that than imply otherwise.
The quality read is the strongest thing we have tested: 131,000 company-quarters across 5,300 companies, where the weakest scorers went on to fail at 5.4% against 1.4% for the strongest, holding in every era and all twelve sectors. It still says less likely to break, not likely to beat the market — every band in that study lost to the index at the median, because the median listed company does.
Each read is shown on its own rather than merged into a single score, so you can see which part is strong and which is weak instead of taking an average on trust.
▾ What goes into the smart-money reading
Contributions (weight × component score) sum to the total. This near-term score now includes fundamental health (leverage, FCF trend, DCF applicability). See the Financial Health section for the full balance-sheet read.
Chance the S&P 500 falls 10% or more in the next three months.
Counted from every day since 2006. Says nothing about AVAV — see the board for how it is measured.
📍 Where to start on this page, and what to look at first
How to read AVAV (pre-profit growth)
This company is reinvesting instead of generating profit, so a standard DCF cannot price it. The useful question is whether the growth the market is paying for is achievable — and whether the company can fund itself until then.
-
1
Reverse-DCF — the growth the price demands ↓
It shows exactly how fast the business must grow to justify today's price. Compare that to what comparable companies have actually achieved.
-
2
Cash runway ↓
Can it reach profitability before it has to raise money and dilute shareholders?
-
3
Interactive calculator ↓
Set your own growth + margin assumptions and see what the business would be worth if you are right.
Is AeroVironment Inc (AVAV) overvalued?
Macro: Neutral / mid-cycleYes, by our measure: the price is about 19% above what we think the business is worth.
AVAV trades at $120.60 vs an estimated intrinsic value of $100.93 — a +19.5% premium to model IV.
Not investment advice. The model can be wrong. Verify the assumptions in the sections below and consider consulting a licensed advisor for significant decisions.
What return would AVAV pay as a bond?
Not measurable here. Pre-profit: the coupon is projected, not earned. An equity bond needs a coupon that exists today. See the cross-company ranking →
Who owns AVAV, and how it moves
From the SEC's own filings: every fund manager over $100M reports its holdings each quarter, and every officer and director reports theirs. Each point is what was public at the time.
611 institutions reported holding it at the latest quarter-end.
Safer than 53% of the stocks we cover
What this rating means, and what it does not
What this rank is — Middling. Safer than 53% of the companies we cover. Out of every 100 companies ranked here, about <0.1% went bankrupt within the year, against 0.6% for the average company we cover. The rank comes from a model trained on every US filing since 2012, including 823 companies that really did fail, and scored each year by a version that had not seen that year.
What it is not — Not a trade. We tested shorting these names and buying puts, spreads, straddles and condors on them at real option prices, 2010-2025. Every version lost money: the market already prices the distress and the survivors squeeze. A high rank is a reason to read the filings and to size for a total loss, not a reason to bet against the company. A low rank says the balance sheet is calm, not that the price is sensible.
▾ The numbers, the logic, and why not to trade on it
The logic. A model trained on every US filing since 2012 — including 823 companies that went bankrupt or stopped trading under a dollar — ranks each covered stock by its chance of failing in the next year, from its latest filing, price history and credit conditions. The rank is a position among peers; the table is a count of what happened to stocks in each position, scored each year by a model that had not seen that year.
| Rank band | went bankrupt within 12 months | fell 80% or more (or failed) within 12 months | fell 50% or more (or failed) within 6 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| All covered stocks (average) | 0.59% | 4.21% | 8.51% |
| Manufacturing (sector average) | 0.36% | 2.56% | 5.85% |
| riskiest 1% | 16.4% | 33.0% | 45.5% |
| next 2% (97-99) | 5.9% | 24.9% | 38.2% |
| next 2% (95-97) | 3.4% | 21.2% | 33.8% |
| next 5% (90-95) | 1.6% | 15.1% | 27.3% |
| next 15% (75-90) | 0.8% | 8.5% | 17.8% |
| next 25% (50-75) | 0.2% | 2.7% | 6.2% |
| safest half ← this stock | <0.1% | 0.5% | 2.1% |
Why not to trade on it. We tested shorting these names and buying puts, spreads, straddles and condors on them at real option prices, 2010–2025: every version lost money. The market already prices the distress, and the survivors squeeze. Use a high rank to read the filings and to size for a total loss — not to bet against the company. A low rank says the balance sheet is calm, not that the price is sensible.
Scored from the most recent SEC filing we had (dated 2026-06-30), which can be a quarterly report newer than the yearly figures used elsewhere on this page; scores last updated 2026-09-18. Within Manufacturing: rank 58 of 100. Rough one-year odds for this stock alone: bankruptcy 0.1%, an 80% fall 5.5% (the model overstates the middle of the range). On the same data, the Altman Z score caught 26% of bankruptcies in its riskiest 5%; this rank caught 59%.
▾ The logic, and why not to buy on it
The logic. Trained on 2,900 acquisitions since 2012, the model leans on size (small), age, retained earnings, asset growth, volatility and how many deals the sector has just seen. Announcement = the day the stock jumped, not the day the paperwork was filed.
| top 1% | 15.4% acquired within a year |
| next 2% (97-99) | 10.3% acquired within a year |
| next 2% (95-97) | 9.0% acquired within a year |
| next 5% (90-95) | 7.3% acquired within a year |
| next 15% (75-90) | 6.4% acquired within a year |
| next 25% (50-75) | 4.8% acquired within a year |
| bottom half ← this stock | 3.0% acquired within a year |
Why not to buy on it. A takeover paid a median +22% on the day — but even in the top band about 6 in 7 companies are not bought, and those lag. Buying the whole top list returned what the S&P 500 did (2012–2023), and adding "cheap" or "beaten-down" filters did not change that. Read it as context for a thesis you already have, never as the thesis.
What growth must the market believe? Reverse DCF — Instead of asking "what is this stock worth?", asks "what growth rate is the current market price already assuming?"
Why it matters: It crystallizes the bull thesis as a single number you can argue with. If the market expects 40% growth for 10 years and you do not believe that, the stock is overvalued.
Reference: 10–15% = sustainable for strong companies · 20–25% = exceptional · 30%+ = historically very rare
Traditional DCF asks "what is this stock worth?" Reverse DCF flips it: it treats today's price as correct and solves for the growth rate that justifies it. In plain terms — if our model is right about everything else, the company's cash flow would have to grow (or shrink) by this much every year for the next 5 years for today's price to make sense. If that required growth looks unrealistic, the price is stretched; if it looks easy to beat, the price may be cheap.
Why it matters: A company can show big profits on paper while burning through cash. FCF is what actually fills the bank account.
Reference: Healthy mature businesses convert 8–15% of revenue into FCF · Growth companies often negative
Full explanation → must grow at:
▾ Exactly how this 5-year figure is computed
Forecast length: 5 years at the solved rate, then a linear fade to terminal growth over years 6-10 — the same shape the DCF above uses
Terminal growth after the fade: 3.0%
Discount rate: 13.4% (the rate the model used)
Price used: $120.60 — the live price shown on this page (not frozen)
Method: solve for the constant annual growth rate that makes the discounted 10-year FCF stream + terminal value equal today's price.
Within range of what a quality mature business delivers over five years. Not demanding.
For reference: Reasonable — sustainable for a quality business over time.
▾ How we computed this · Reality check thresholds · Assumptions
- Starting FCF/share: $9.63 (projected from revenue × terminal margin)
- Discount RateDiscount Rate — The annual return you demand for taking single-stock risk instead of buying a safe Treasury or index fund.
Why it matters: Higher discount rate = stricter valuation (a stock has to produce more cash to be worth holding). Lower = more generous.
Reference: 8–12% is standard · 9–10% matches S&P 500 historical return · Below 7% is illogical for single-stock risk
Full explanation →: 13.4% — standard 8-12%; 9-10% matches S&P 500 historical return - Terminal Growth RateTerminal Growth Rate — The growth rate we assume the company holds forever, after the explicit 10-year forecast period ends.
Why it matters: It anchors the long-tail value. Cannot mathematically exceed long-term GDP growth or the company eventually becomes larger than the global economy.
Reference: 2–3% (matches long-term US GDP growth) · Above 4% is mathematically problematic
Full explanation →: 3.0% — matches long-term GDP growth - Forecast horizon: 10 years explicit + terminal perpetuity
| ≤ 0% | Priced for decline — likely undervalued OR dying business |
| 5-12% | Reasonable; sustainable for quality businesses |
| 12-18% | Demanding — strong execution required |
| 18-25% | Exceptional — few companies sustain for a decade |
| 25-35% | Heroic — historically very rare |
| 35%+ | Borderline impossible at scale |
Sustaining 30%+ cash-flow growth for a full decade at scale is exceedingly rare — the bar is brutally high.
Use the interactive calculator below to change the discount rate, growth and terminal-growth assumptions and watch the value move.
What this rating means
What the rating says — Methods disagree. Methods disagree: the price is BELOW 1 of 3 method ranges (Priced like 7 similar companies (their EV / Sales, p25→p75)), while remaining inside the If FCF grew -5%/yr → 51%/yr (flat 10-yr DCF sweep; model assumes 45.1%) and Our model's scenarios (conservative → optimistic; ◆ base, ● weighted 40/35/25) bands. That makes the read assumption-sensitive, not "fairly valued" — the verdict depends on which lens you trust.
What it does not say — Not a forecast. This shows where today's price sits against several different ways of valuing the business. Where the methods disagree, the spread itself is the useful part - it tells you how much the answer depends on which one you trust.
Football field: where does the price sit?
Different valuation methods produce different fair-value ranges depending on assumptions. Plotting them together lets you see at a glance whether the current price is reasonable across approaches, or only one specific lens.
Industry multiples sourced from: sector: Industrials. See the Peer Basket section below for the peer comparison and its limited-comparables caveat.
How does AVAV stack up against its closest peers?
We take the 7 same- or closely-related-industry companies closest in size to AVAV and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If AVAV is much more expensive on the same yardstick, that's a red flag — unless you have a specific reason it deserves a premium. For a leveraged business, EV/EBIT and FCF yield (both in the table) are usually more reliable than EV/Sales, because revenue multiples ignore differences in margins and debt.
▾ What's "EV / Sales" in plain English?
EV (Enterprise Value) = market cap + total debt − cash. It's "what you'd pay to buy the entire company outright" — you pay the market cap to shareholders and take over their debt, but you keep their cash. EV is fairer than market cap alone because it includes the debt the new owner inherits.
EV / Sales = EV ÷ annual revenue. So "2.5×" means investors pay $2.50 of enterprise value per $1 of yearly sales. Higher = market is paying more per dollar of sales (usually because they expect future growth or fat margins).
p25 / median / p75 are the 25th, 50th (middle), and 75th percentile of the peers' multiples. Half the peers fall between p25 and p75. The median (p50) is the typical peer — that's the benchmark we compare to.
| EV / SalesEV / Sales — For every $1 of yearly revenue, this is how many dollars investors pay to own the whole business (including debt). Why it matters: Works for pre-profit growth companies where P/E and FCF don't apply. The most apples-to-apples cross-company multiple because it ignores accounting choices. Reference: 1–3x for mature companies · 4–10x for software/SaaS · 10–20x for hypergrowth · >20x is rare and demanding Full explanation → |
13.6x / 14.8x / 16.2x |
Bold middle number = median peer. Half the peers trade above it, half below. Computed over 7 same-industry peers; implausible multiples excluded.
⚠️ Important caveat: peer multiples only work if the peers are genuinely comparable. Always check the peer list below — if the auto-picker grabbed micro-caps or unrelated businesses, the comparison is noise. A medical-device giant priced against tiny biotech startups won't produce a useful signal.
▾ View peer list (8)
| Ticker | Company | Industry | Mcap | EV/Sales | EV/GP | EV/EBIT | FCF Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JOBY | Joby Aviation, Inc. | Aircraft | $6.2B | 115.7x | — | — | — |
| ACHR | Archer Aviation Inc. | Aircraft | $4.4B | 14,872.5x | — | — | — |
| LOAR | Loar Holdings Inc. | Aerospace & Defense | $6.0B | 13.6x | 25.8x | 63.6x | 1,574.4% |
| RDW | Redwire Corp | Guided Missiles & Space Ve | $4.9B | 14.8x | 287.7x | — | 0.0% |
| FLY | Firefly Aerospace Inc. | Guided Missiles & Space Ve | $7.4B | 46.6x | 243.1x | — | 0.0% |
| AIR | AAR CORP | Aerospace & Defense | $4.6B | 1.7x | 8.9x | — | 9.9% |
| KRMN | Karman Holdings Inc. | Aerospace & Defense | $7.6B | 16.2x | 40.1x | 104.5x | 0.7% |
| BETA | BETA Technologies, Inc. | Aircraft ·fallback | $4.9B | 143.0x | 198.1x | — | 0.1% |
Bankruptcy + quality screens
Cheap stocks can be cheap for a reason. These screens warn when a low valuation comes paired with structural fragility.
What these health ratings mean, in numbers
Business quality — Very weak. Passes 2 of the 9 health checks we can measure — things like making a profit, turning it into cash, and not piling on debt. Across 131,000 company-quarters the weakest scorers went on to fail at 5.4% within a year against 1.4% for the strongest, and that held in every era and all twelve sectors. It says "less likely to break", not "likely to beat the market".
Bankruptcy score (Altman Z) — Safe. Altman Z is 3.17. It combines working capital, retained earnings, operating profit and market value against total assets into one bankruptcy score. Above 3.0 is the safe zone, 1.8 to 3.0 is grey, below 1.8 is the distress zone. It was calibrated on manufacturers in 1968, so it reads asset-light and heavily-financed businesses badly — which is why it is one input here and never the verdict.
Why it matters: Cheap-looking stocks (low P/E or P/B) often have low Z-scores because the market knows the company is dying. Z-score warns you before you fall into a value trap.
Reference: > 3.0 = safe zone · 1.81–3.0 = grey zone · < 1.81 = distress zone
Full explanation →
Safe zone under the classic Altman thresholds — companies scoring here have historically gone bankrupt only rarely within ~2 years. A screening signal, not a guarantee.
The classic Z-score was calibrated on manufacturers. It is less reliable for asset-light or non-manufacturing businesses (broadcasters, media, software, services) and not applicable to banks, REITs, or insurers — for those the coefficients and the asset-turnover term distort the result. Read it as one screening input, not a verdict.
Why it matters: High score = fundamentals improving. Low score = deteriorating. Especially powerful for filtering cheap stocks: cheap + high F-score historically outperforms; cheap + low F-score is often a value trap.
Reference: 7–9 = strong · 4–6 = mediocre · 0–3 = weak
Full explanation →
▾ The checks — what passed, what didn't (and what we couldn't measure)
-
✗ Positive net incomeNet income -$265.1M in FY2026.Why this matters: Does the company actually earn a profit? Sustained losses eventually force it to raise money — diluting you — or take on debt.
-
✗ Positive operating cash flowOperating cash flow -$78.4M (was -$1.3M the prior year).Why this matters: Profit can be an accounting figure; cash from running the business is harder to fake. Negative operating cash flow means the core business consumes cash and must be funded externally.
-
✓ Cash flow backs up reported profitOperating cash flow -$78.4M vs net income -$265.1M.
-
✗ Return on assets improvingReturn on assets -4.6% vs 3.9% a year ago.Why this matters: Is the company squeezing more profit out of each dollar of assets than last year? Rising = getting more efficient; falling = the opposite.
-
✗ Debt load (vs assets)Long-term debt is 12.8% of assets vs 2.7% a year ago ($729.0M of $5,716.7M assets).Why this matters: Rising debt relative to assets means more risk and more cash going to interest instead of shareholders. Falling debt is a sign of strengthening.
-
✓ Short-term liquidity (current ratio)Current ratio 4.30x vs 3.52x a year ago.
-
✗ Share count (dilution)Share count rose 75.2% (28.0M → 49.1M year-over-year).Why this matters: Issuing lots of new shares splits the pie into more pieces, shrinking your slice. Stable or falling share count protects existing owners.
-
✗ Pricing power (gross margin)Gross margin 25.3% vs 38.8% a year ago.Why this matters: Rising gross margin means stronger pricing power or lower input costs — a sign of competitive strength. Falling margin signals pressure.
-
✗ Sales per asset (asset turnover)Asset turnover 0.35x vs 0.73x a year ago.Why this matters: Asset turnover measures how much revenue each dollar of assets generates. Rising = more productive use of the asset base.
Missing data is never counted as a pass or a fail — it's shown as n/a and excluded from the denominator. Each check compares the company against its own prior year.
Plain English: the company holds about $377M in cash and is burning roughly $78M/year in operations. At that pace, the cash lasts 4.8 yrs before it must raise capital (diluting shareholders), take on debt, or cut spending.
Assumes constant burn and ignores financing/asset sales. For pre-profit biotech and growth companies, this matters more than a DCF — a great drug pipeline is worthless if they run out of money before approval.
What if you assume different inputs?
Here's where we land — and what happens if you change the assumptions. Drag the sliders to set your own Discount RateDiscount Rate — The annual return you demand for taking single-stock risk instead of buying a safe Treasury or index fund.
Why it matters: Higher discount rate = stricter valuation (a stock has to produce more cash to be worth holding). Lower = more generous.
Reference: 8–12% is standard · 9–10% matches S&P 500 historical return · Below 7% is illogical for single-stock risk
Full explanation → (the annual return you demand for single-stock risk) and terminal growth; the value updates live so you can see whether the stock looks cheaper or richer. The discount rate starts at 13.4%, the figure our model used for AVAV. Open Advanced to also change beta, growth and the rate path.
Note: the calculator opens at our published value of $100.93 — it is initialised to the same scenario-weighted result, so the two match exactly on load. The moment you move a slider, the value below becomes a single-path what-if at your assumptions (not the three-scenario weighting), which is why it can differ from the headline once you've touched it.
13.4% — beta-based (CAPM), from this stock's BetaBeta — How much the stock moves when the overall market moves. 1.0 = moves with the market; 1.5 = moves 50% more than the market.
Why it matters: Higher beta = more volatile = should demand higher discount rate. Low beta stocks (utilities, consumer staples) move less.
Reference: Most stocks 0.5–1.5 · Defensives ~0.3 · High-vol tech ~1.5–2.0
Full explanation → of 1.61. The safe Treasury rate plus a premium scaled by how much more (or less) volatile the stock is than the market.
10.5% — sector/quality tier. A simpler hurdle set by industry and business durability: lower for stable, wide-moat companies; higher for speculative or micro-caps.
The headline value and this calculator start at 13.4% — the beta-based rate. Drag the slider to the other rate to see the full range.
+19.5%
At the default assumptions the flat path lands near our published value of $100.93. Move any slider to recompute it with your own.
Move any slider above to recompute this against your own assumptions.
⚙ Advanced — tinker with every input (beta, growth, rate path, margin → full intrinsic value)
AeroVironment Inc (AVAV) is well above the model value, with the price at $140.82, which is 19.5% above intrinsic valueIntrinsic Value — Our DCF model's estimate of what each share is mathematically worth based on projected cash flows.
Why it matters: Compare to current price. Below IV = potentially undervalued. Above IV = priced for growth that must actually happen.
Reference: Model-derived; quality depends on data and assumptions.
Full explanation → (a 19.5% premium). The market appears to be paying up for the company's significant revenue growth, which has been 45.1% annually over the last four years. The biggest risk to our model's base assumptions is that operating cash flow, which was negative at -$78.4 million in the latest fiscal year, continues to decline rather than growing as modeled.
As of 12 days ago
Anatomy of a share
What you're buying per share. Bars are at the same scale so you can see the relative size of revenue, costs, cash flow, and debt — not just read them in a table.
What's free cash flow / what do these mean?
Revenue per share — how much the business earns from customers, divided by the number of shares outstanding. Top of the income statement.
Earnings per share — profit left after operating costs, interest, and taxes, per share. Two versions appear on this page and are not interchangeable: GAAP diluted EPS uses the company's weighted-average diluted share count during the reporting period (this is the "earnings" in "price-to-earnings"); net income per current share divides annual net income by today's share count. They differ whenever the share count has changed.
Owner-earnings free cash flow per share — the cash the business produces for shareholders. Savng's owner-earnings FCF subtracts capital expenditures and stock-based compensation from operating cash flow (SBC is a real dilution cost even though it's non-cash). This is deliberately more conservative than "standard" FCF, which subtracts only capital expenditures — so our figure is lower than the headline FCF you'll see elsewhere. FCF funds dividends, buybacks, debt repayment, and acquisitions; a company can report positive earnings yet negative FCF.
Debt per share — total interest-bearing borrowings divided by shares. High debt-per-share next to thin FCF-per-share is a fragility signal.
What you actually need to decide
Every stock price is a disagreement. Here's the single thing that must go right for the bulls, the single thing that breaks the thesis, and the concrete signposts to watch so you can update your view as real results arrive.
- Next quarter's operating cash flow performance
- Trends in gross margin, which has been compressing (31.7% → 25.3%)
- Announcements of new significant defense contracts
The trend, in plain numbers (FY2025 → FY2026, latest reported)
Straight from the financial statements — no model, no opinion. For a small or unprofitable company, the direction of these numbers usually tells you more than any single valuation.
- Revenue grew +141% to $1.98B.
- Free cash flow is negative at -$179.3M — the cash burn widened vs last year.
- Gross margin shrank to 25% (-14 pts).
- Swung to a loss of -$265.1M (from a profit the prior year).
Management & Leadership
Wahid Nawabi serves as the Chair, President, and CEO, while Sean Thomas Woodward is the CFO. Other key executives include Brian Charles Shackley, SVP and Chief Accounting Officer, and Melissa Ann Brown, EVP and Chief Legal Officer. Trace E Stevenson is President of Autonomous Systems, and Clum Mary Elizabeth McDaniel is President of Space, Cyber & DE.
Chair, President and CEO
CFO
SVP, Chief Accounting Officer
EVP, Chief Legal Officer
What They Make
AeroVironment Inc designs and manufactures unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and related services, primarily for defense and government customers. These customers, including various military branches, are the direct payers for their products and services.
End Markets
Revenue Drivers
Why Is It Priced Like This?
Why Customers Pay
The market prices AVAV at a premium of +19.5% to the model's intrinsic valueIntrinsic Value — Our DCF model's estimate of what each share is mathematically worth based on projected cash flows.
Why it matters: Compare to current price. Below IV = potentially undervalued. Above IV = priced for growth that must actually happen.
Reference: Model-derived; quality depends on data and assumptions.
Full explanation →, likely due to the company's rapid revenue growth of 45.1% annually over the last four years. The market may be assigning value to the potential for continued expansion in defense technology and autonomous systems, which is not in the model, despite the company's negative net income and operating cash flow in the latest fiscal year.
Three Scenarios, Weighted
| Scenario | IV | Upside from today's price | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | $40.64 | -66.3% | 40% |
| Base | $96.33 | -20.1% | 35% |
| Optimistic | $203.83 | 69.0% | 25% |
| Weighted | $100.93 | -16.3% | 100% |
Reading the last column: it is the move from today's price to each value (IV ÷ price − 1). The headline "premium/discount to model IV" measures the same gap from the value's side (price ÷ IV − 1), so the two percentages differ in size and sign by construction — e.g. a price 8% above value is a value 7.4% below price.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
The company does not pay dividends or engage in significant buybacks; it funds its operations and growth through a combination of cash and debt, with long-term debt rising from $178M to $747.5 million.
Growth / Revenue DCF Medium
Negative free cash flow: revenue/margin growth model used - standard FCF DCF is unreliable for companies still scaling.
Show advanced inputs
| Revenue Growth | 45.1% |
What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings cash-flow model. Standalone segment assumptions: none. It does not project its revenue segments independently; their combined effect is embedded in the historical revenue and cash-flow trend the model extrapolates. The calculator above can only approximate a segment's impact through the single consolidated growth rate — it cannot model any one line separately. For a true segment-level view, build a separate model from the company's segment disclosures.
Maturity & Competitive Position
Moat Signals
Revenue has been growing at 45.1% annually over the last four years, from $446M to $2.0 billion.
Geography & Markets
Geographic Risks
Market Signals
These are timing signals, not value signals — they describe the stock's recent price behavior, not what the business is worth. Use them for the "the thesis looks good, but is now the moment?" question. Each tile below explains what it's saying.
Why it matters: Short-term contrarian indicator. Extreme readings often precede mean reversion, though not always.
Reference: 30–70 normal · >70 overbought · <30 oversold
Full explanation → (14)37.9NeutralMomentum is balanced — neither overbought nor oversold.
Why it matters: When the fast line crosses above the slow line, short-term momentum is turning up; below, turning down. A timing cue, not a value signal.
Reference: Line above signal = bullish momentum · below = bearish
Full explanation →BearishLine below signalThe fast trend is below the slow trend — short-term momentum is currently downward.
Technicals describe price, not the business. A great company can have a "bearish" tape (a buying chance) and a weak one a "bullish" tape (a trap). Pair these with the valuation and health sections above.
QUALITY
Data Quality & Risk Flags (1 notes — click to expand/collapse)
Guardrail Notes (1)
- FCF negative: revenue/margin growth model projects future cash flows from revenue trajectory.
FINANCIALS
Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)
From AeroVironment Inc's SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 2.0B | -265.1M | $-5.40 |
| 2025 | 820.6M | 43.6M | $1.55 |
| 2024 | 716.7M | 59.7M | $2.18 |
| 2023 | 540.5M | -176.2M | $-7.04 |
| 2022 | 445.7M | -4.2M | $-0.17 |
Cash Flow (5yr)
| Year | Operating CF | CapEx | − SBC | Free Cash Flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | -78.4M | 62.5M | 38.3M | -179.3M |
| 2025 | -1.3M | 19.5M | 21.5M | -42.3M |
| 2024 | 15.3M | 23.0M | 17.1M | -24.8M |
| 2023 | 11.4M | 14.9M | 10.8M | -14.2M |
| 2022 | -9.6M | 22.3M | 5.4M | -37.3M |
How we define FCF: operating cash flow − capital expenditure − stock-based compensation (owner-earnings basis — SBC is a real cost to shareholders even though it's non-cash). Latest year: -78.4M − 62.5M − 38.3M (stock-based comp) = -179.3M. This is the same owner-earnings FCF definition the valuation model uses, though the DCF's starting value is a projected from revenue × terminal margin, not this single year.
Balance Sheet
| Total Assets | 5.7B |
| Total Liabilities | 1.3B |
| Equity | 4.4B |
| Total Debt | 747.5M |
Recent video coverage
Top recent YouTube videos by date. We don't endorse the channels — these are surfaced for context.
Similar companies worth a look
Same sector and industry, similar fundamentals shape. Verify everything yourself — this list is computed mechanically and does not reflect our judgment about whether any of these are a good investment.
The questions people ask about AVAV
Is AeroVironment Inc (AVAV) a good stock to buy?
AeroVironment Inc (AVAV) looks expensive against its own cash flows: the price is about 19% above our $100.93 estimate. Whether it is a good buy depends on whether the company can grow faster than that price assumes, on its financial health, and on what insiders are doing. All three are on this page. This is educational research from SEC filings, not investment advice.
Is AeroVironment Inc (AVAV) overvalued?
Yes, by our measure. AeroVironment Inc (AVAV) trades at $120.60, about 19% above our estimate of $100.93 for what the business is worth. This is educational research from SEC filings, not investment advice.
What is AVAV's intrinsic value?
Our model estimates AVAV is worth about $100.93 per share, built from the cash the business is expected to generate, taken from its SEC filings. The market price is $120.60.
What growth is priced into AVAV?
Working backwards from today's price, the market expects AVAV's cash flow per share to grow by roughly 6.5% a year over the next five years. Compare that with the company's actual record on this page.
Where do these numbers come from?
From AeroVironment Inc's own SEC filings (10-K and 10-Q), Form 4 insider filings and daily market prices. Every figure on the page links to how it was calculated, and the model's weak spots are listed next to its results.