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AES

AES on NYSE. AES builds and sells electricity to data centers, mines, utilities and other companies. Market value $10.6bn.

Watch this stockFree. We tell you when something changes.

Price checks use the past 12 months to June 2026. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to December 2025.

We can't read total debt from the filing, so debt is left out.

The company doesn't report operating profit, so we work it out from pre-tax profit and interest.

Should I look at this?

Look carefully before going further

Why it could be worth it

What to watch out for

Read the warning sign in its own filings

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

Compare with another stock

Cash yield
past 12 months to June 2026
-16.1%low

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $-16.15 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
past 12 months to June 2026
n/a

The filings do not give us enough to work this out.

Return on capital
five annual reports to December 2025
n/a

The filings do not give us enough to work this out.

Quality score: 55 of 100. Price score: 50 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$14.93 a share, 13% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $13.21 to $17.65.

Dividend: 4.7% a year

Paid every year for at least 5 years

Prices from Tuesday’s close (6 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

-0.2
-1.8
-4.7
-4.6
-1.6
-1.7
2021202220232024202512 monthsto Jun '26
Revenue
$11.1bn$12.6bn$12.7bn$12.3bn$12.2bn
Operating margin
14.0%9.6%11.2%19.4%12.1%
Debt to equity
n/an/an/an/an/a
Shares outstanding
0.67bn0.67bn0.71bn0.71bn0.71bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive0 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Not enough data
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)4 of 8 checks we could run
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
  • DebtUnknown
  • Revenue growth, five yearsSlow, 4.8% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesNo, 7% more shares since 2021

The quarter to June 2026

How the business did, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

  • Sales: $3.4 billion last quarter, up 20% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $426 million, after a loss of $95 million a year ago.
  • Over the past 12 months it spent $1.7 billion more cash than it brought in, compared with $2.6 billion a year earlier.
  • About the same number of shares as a year ago.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
June 2024$2.9bn
September 2024$3.3bn
December 2024$3.0bn
June 2025$2.9bn
September 2025$3.4bn
December 2025$3.1bn
March 2026$3.2bn
June 2026$3.4bn
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
June 2024$276m
September 2024$504m
December 2024$467m
June 2025-$95m
September 2025$639m
December 2025$320m
March 2026$487m
June 2026$426m

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
4 November 2026
Last annual report (10-K)
2 March 2026
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
3 November 2026

Who owns it

3 long-term investors we follow own it, down from 4 last quarter. 703 funds in all.

Jun '25
Dec '25
Jun '26

Sold out this quarter

Largest holders overall

From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.

Big holders and activists

4 investors own more than 5%.

From Schedule 13D and 13G filings: anyone owning more than 5% must file one.

What insiders did

No insider bought or sold on the open market in the last 12 months.

From Form 4 filings: insiders must report trades in their own company's shares within two days.

Warning signs in its filings

Problems the company itself reported to the SEC, in its own words.

1 serious warning sign in AES’s filings.

We look for five warning signs: doubt it can keep going, weak checks on its own accounts, a notice that its past accounts can't be relied on, a change of auditor, and one customer bringing in a big share of sales. We don't check lawsuits, investigations or debt yet.

We checked the auditor's report, internal controls, restatement notices, auditor changes and big customers in the 10-K filed 2 Mar 2026, plus the 10-Q filed 4 Aug 2026 and 11 later 8-Ks.

  • Its past accounts can't be relied on

    Serious

    It told the SEC its earlier accounts should no longer be relied on, usually because they contained errors.

    8-K Item 4.02 filed 11 Mar 2025: the company said its earlier financial statements should no longer be relied on.

    From an 8-K filed 11 March 2025: Previously issued accounts should no longer be relied on. Open the filing

  • Changed auditor

    Worth knowing

    The company changed its auditor (the firm that checks its books) in the last two years.

    “On July 21, 2026, the Financial Audit Committee (the “Audit Committee”) of the Board of Directors of The AES Corporation (the “Company”) dismissed Ernst & Young LLP (“EY”) as the Company’s independent registered public accounting firm”

    From an 8-K filed 27 July 2026: Change of auditor. Read it in the filing

A 10-K is the yearly report every US company files with the SEC. An 8-K is a short notice of a big event.

What could go wrong

Cheap for a reason is the question the numbers cannot answer.

Whether the price already reflects the risks is what the deep dive is for.

The deep dive

Everything above is arithmetic on public filings. The deep dive reads the last ten years of annual reports, the proxy statements, and the earnings calls, then argues the case the way Buffett, Klarman, and Hohn would, and checks every claim against the source.

  • What the business is worth, as a range, and the margin of safety at today’s price
  • Prices to start buying, buy, and buy hard
  • The three things that would make this a mistake
  • Every number footnoted to the filing it came from
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What a finished deep dive looks like

Not advice. Numbers on this page come from SEC filings and are updated each night; prices are updated again after the US market closes. The five-year figures are rounded.