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TickerAWK
SectorRegulated Water
Mkt cap$24.4B
EV / EBITDA14.4×
PostureHigh Velocity
Composite78/100
LensTarget-side
SE-Cluster Research·Issuer Brief·Q2 2026CIK 1410636

American Water Works Company, Inc.

AWKHIGH VELOCITYFILING INTENSITY

American Water Works Company, Inc. reads as High Velocity (composite 78/100); pressure / disclosure signals dominate the posture this cycle · primary market Waste.

Lens

Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)

N/A

flat

vs N/A in 2020–2022

Disclosed transactions

N/A

flat

0/3 active fiscal years in window

Buyer archetype

N/A

Insufficient acquisition disclosure for archetype classification.

Composite score

78

/100

High Velocity dominates · Filing Intensity

Financial snapshot
Revenue$5.2B
EBITDA$2.8B
Enterprise value$40B
EV / Revenue7.7×
EV / EBITDA14.4×
P/EN/A
Cash$137M
Total debt$14.1B
as of 2026-05-10
Coverage ViewDraft · pending auditSECluster Atlas (stub) · 2026-05-21T10:01:03.248Z

American Water Works (AWK) is a public-company acquirer in regulated water. Current capacity: $137M cash, $14.1B total debt, 5.0x net leverage (stressed). Stretched past the 5.0x HY threshold; equity issuance or asset sales likely required for any debt-funded acquisition.

Next-move thesis
  • Insufficient strategy signal in filings to draft a next-move thesis.
§ I·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Behavioral posture, nine reads.

Each index scores the issuer 0–100 against an EDGAR-anchored definition. Scores ≥ threshold elevate the issuer into the index's constituent set; the dominant index drives the masthead label.

Active Acquirer

0/100

Companies actively deploying disclosed capital into M&A

  • Filed within 18d

Buyer Cadence

22/100

Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity

  • Filed within 18d
  • 298 8-Ks

Target Probability

36/100

Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings

  • Control-process language

Spin/Carve

0/100

Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture

Pressure Watch

28/100

Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure

  • Control-process filings

Distress Watch

0/100

Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns

Restatement Risk

0/100

Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings

Capital Velocity

Dominant
78/100

Issuers with the highest filing-activity intensity

  • 298 8-Ks
  • Filed within 18d
  • 4 form types

Quiet Power

0/100

Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence

  • Enterprise value $40B
  • 10-Q 27d ago
  • 2 active signals
§ II·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Capital cadence.

No disclosed M&A capital in the 10-year window.

This issuer has not disclosed material acquisition spend or count in the last ten fiscal years.

§ V·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Market context.

Where this issuer sits inside its SE-Cluster rollup wedge, with disclosed-spend rank plus trading comparables against the public peer set.

Primary market

Waste

Market spend (2023–2025)
$24.4B
Market spend (2020–2022)
$21.3B
Recent vs prior
+15%
Issuer rank in market
N/A
Share of market capital
0.0%

Valuation positioning

14.4×EV / EBITDA

AWK trades at a +0.3-turn premium to the Waste peer median of 14.1×.

EV / Revenue
7.7×
Net debt / EBITDA
5.1×
Peer median EV / EBITDA
14.1×

Trading comparables

FMP market data · 2026-05-10

CompanyEV / EBITDAEV / RevNet debt / EBITDARevenueM&A 2023–2025
15.3×5.8×3.0×$679MN/A
American Water Works Company, Inc.AWK
14.4×7.7×5.1×$5.2BN/A
14.4×7.0×3.9×$199MN/A
14.1×7.4×6.2×$2.6B$103M
13.0×4.2×5.1×$1BN/A
12.2×4.6×5.6×$816M$547M

Trading multiples from FMP market data; disclosed M&A spend from the SE-Cluster EDGAR 10-K corpus. Peer set = top disclosed buyers in Waste. Bars scaled to the highest EV/EBITDA in the set.

§ VI·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Buyer landscape.

Public buyers whose stated archetypes, target categories, and recent cadence align with this issuer as a plausible acquisition target. Scores cross EDGAR signal and disclosure overlap.

Likely buyers

No public buyers surface as a strong target-side fit on current signal.

Likely sellers / divestiture partners

No reciprocal divestiture / strategic-alternatives matches identified.

§ VII·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Filing activity & signal stream.

Filing cadence and event-driven signals visible on EDGAR. The signal stream below is curated from restatement / spin-carve / activism categories, providing context for any near-term call.

Filing cadence

  • 10-K (annual)192026-02-18
  • 10-Q (quarterly)562026-04-29
  • 8-K (event)2982026-04-29
  • Proxy / DEF 14A492026-05-08
  • Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)0N/A

Signals on file

  • info

    Signal

    Recent transaction activity

  • info

    Signal

    Control-process filings

§ VIII·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Audited corpus.

No audited record on file for this CIK in the current v6 corpus.

This issuer has not been extracted into the v6 audited acquirer corpus yet. The brief above pulls from ranking-level aggregates and issuer-index signal only.