Company's management conduct the bankruptcy analysis to mitigate financial distress in the hope of making the right business strategy, in particular of stages in the firm's life cycle, to reduce the possibility of earning management that has close association with financial distress. This study examines the effect of earnings management, business strategy, and firm's life cycle on financial distress by using state-owned enterprises as a moderating variable. The study used a sample of 294 listed companies on the Indonesia Stock Exchange with a total of 3,528 observations. The selected research model was the fixed effect model, which the results showed that earnings management, cost leadership & differentiation business strategy, and the firm's life cycle with a proxy for retained earnings to total assets have an effect on the possibility of financial distress, but for the firm life with a proxy for retained earnings to total equity, found that no impact on financial distress. The moderating variable of state owned enterprises in companies can strengthen or weaken each independent variable's relationship to financial distress.