CLFCleveland-Cliffs Inc.
Is it safe?
Elevated bankruptcy risk: a balance sheet under strain, quality weak, and big price swings. Everything else is secondary until this clears.
Elevated financial-distress risk Altman Z-score, a bankruptcy-risk model from five balance-sheet ratios.
Weak, deteriorating fundamentals Piotroski F-score, nine pass/fail tests of year-over-year financial health across profitability, balance sheet and efficiency. 7 to 9 is strong, 0 to 3 weak.
Investment-grade balance sheet. A rule of thumb on leverage, not a credit rating.
Large price swings, high volatility. Worst drawdown -82% · now 14% below its 52-week high.
Unless marked, from SEC EDGAR, as of Dec 31, 2025.
Against the whole market›
Percentile against every name Ryufin tracks. Higher is better; the tick marks the middle of the market. Context, not one of the checks above.
Where this answer is blind. Altman sits structurally low for utilities and pipelines; Beneish runs high for fast growers, since sales growth alone lifts it; banks and REITs are excluded.
Can CLF take a bad year?
Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. carries $7.57B of net debt at 9.83× EBITDA: a heavy load to carry through a bad year.
Net debt · as at Q3 2026 · over four years of earnings before interest, tax and depreciation, heavy
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 9.83×
Net debt / EBITDA
- Altman Z-score
- 1.17
Altman Z-score · distress zone, below 1.8
- Debt / equity
- 1.34×
Debt / equity
Details›
- Total debtQ3 2026
- $7.64B
- Cash and short-term investments
- $77M
- Net debt
- $7.57B
- EBITDA, trailing twelve months
- $770M
- Operating profit, trailing twelve months
- −$282M
- Debt / equity
- 1.34×
- Total debt / EBITDA
- 9.93×
- Annualised volatilitytwo years of daily moves
- 73%
- Worst drawdown on file
- −82%
- Below its 52-week high
- 14%
Balance sheet from SEC filings; drawdown and volatility from end-of-day closes; Altman Z from the filed statements.
The balance sheet
What it owes against what it owns, and how close that comes to trouble.
How far can it fall?
How much the price moves, how deep and how long its falls have run, and what each unit of risk has paid.