Methodology and data
What stockrow covers, where each kind of figure comes from, how often it changes, and what to keep in mind when reading it.
Coverage
US-listed common stocks, American depositary receipts (ADRs) and limited partnerships. A company is added when it lists on Nasdaq, the New York Stock Exchange or NYSE American; one that later moves to over-the-counter trading stays covered. A company that is delisted is removed, with its data.
Financial statements
Income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements come from licensed market-data providers, standardised from the companies’ SEC filings into one set of about 240 line items, so that the same line means the same thing for every company. They are imported every weekday evening after the US market closes, and each statement page says which periods it covers and when its figures last changed.
Fiscal years are labelled by the year in which they end: a year ending in September 2025 is fiscal 2025. The few companies that name a fiscal year after the year it begins in will read one year apart from their own reports.
Prices
Share prices are delayed and refresh every five minutes while the US market is open; the price history is completed every night.
Estimates, price targets and ratings
Analyst estimates, consensus price targets and recommendation ratings come from third-party market-data providers and are updated once a week, on Saturday.
Dividends and insiders
Dividends are the ex-dividend history, from which the annual dividend, yield and payout ratio are worked out. Insider transactions are the ones reported to the SEC on Form 4, updated every weekday.
Calculated metrics
About 160 figures are calculated from the statements and prices: ratios, growth rates, averages, the Piotroski score, and flags such as index membership and uninterrupted growth. Each one’s formula is on its indicator page. Two examples:
- P/E ratio = share price ÷ basic earnings per share over the trailing twelve months.
- Return on equity = net income to shareholders ÷ average shareholders’ equity.
A valuation ratio is not meaningful when what it divides by is negative — a P/E when earnings are a loss — and is left out rather than shown negative. Figures reported in another currency are converted at the European Central Bank’s reference rates.
Scores
Four scores are worked out every evening from each company’s annual statements, by formula. Each score page shows every line that makes it up, so it can be checked.
- Piotroski F-score (Piotroski, 2000): one point for each of nine tests of profitability, leverage and efficiency against the year before. Shown only when all nine can be worked out; banks and insurers have none.
- Altman Z-score (Altman, 1968), and Z″ (Altman, Hartzell and Peck, 1995), its variant for non-manufacturing and asset-light companies: working capital, retained earnings, operating profit, market value and sales weighed against assets and liabilities.
- Beneish M-score (Beneish, 1999): eight year-on-year changes in the accounts, weighed for the pattern seen in companies that overstated earnings. A statistical screen, not a finding of wrongdoing.
Z, M and dividend safety are not worked out for banks, insurers and REITs, whose balance sheets these models do not describe. A score is left blank, with the reason, rather than worked out from a missing or doubtful figure. Where a valuation ratio sits in its own ten years is the share of the company’s daily readings over that time at or below today’s, leaving out the days it was not meaningful.
The stockrow Dividend Safety Score
Our own composite, from 0 to 100, for the latest fiscal year:
- Up to 25 points for the share of earnings the dividend takes (full marks at 40% or less).
- Up to 25 for the share of free cash flow it takes (full marks at 50% or less).
- Up to 20 for net debt against EBITDA (full marks with net cash).
- Up to 20 for the years the dividend has been paid without a cut (full marks at 25 years).
- Up to 10 for steady earnings per share: no year of losses or of a fall of more than a quarter in the last ten.
80 and above reads “well covered”, 60–79 “adequately covered”, 40–59 “stretched” and below 40 “weakly covered”. It describes the dividend’s cover, not the stock.
How we colour ratios
On a company’s overview, a ratio outside its typical range is coloured: green for a value past the good bound, red for one past the bad bound, ink in between. The bounds are the same for every company, and a value exactly on a green bound counts as green. Price multiples are never green, because a low multiple is not always good news; they are red when they are high or the company is losing money. For banks, insurers and property companies the current ratio, debt to equity and price to book are left uncoloured, because their balance sheets are built differently. These are rules applied to reported figures, not a recommendation.
| Ratio | Red | Ink | Green |
|---|---|---|---|
| Current ratio | < 1 | 1–1.5 | ≥ 1.5 |
| Debt / equity | > 2, or negative equity | 0.5–2 | ≤ 0.5 |
| P/E | > 35, or loss-making | 0–35 | — |
| Fwd P/E | > 35, or loss-making | 0–35 | — |
| P/S | > 10 | ≤ 10 | — |
| P/B | > 6, or negative equity | 0–6 | — |
| Past 5Y EPS growth | < 0% | 0%–15% | ≥ 15% |
| This Y EPS growth | < 0% | 0%–15% | ≥ 15% |
| Next Y EPS growth | < 0% | 0%–15% | ≥ 15% |
| Next 5Y EPS growth | < 0% | 0%–15% | ≥ 15% |
| Next Y revenue growth | < 0% | 0%–10% | ≥ 10% |
| Revenue growth (Q) | < 0% | 0% | > 0% |
| EPS growth (Q) | < 0% | 0% | > 0% |
| FCF growth (Q) | < 0% | 0% | > 0% |
Schedule
Fundamentals and calculations run at 1:00 am and 4:05 pm New York time, Monday to Friday, and estimates at 8:00 am on Saturday. Company news is collected every 30 minutes, and the weekly market summary is published every Friday at 7:05 pm.
Written pages
A company’s Business Profile and Financial Analysis pages are written from its reported figures and filings. Each shows the date it was last updated, and one written before the company’s latest reported quarter is no longer offered to search engines until it is brought up to date.
Corrections and limitations
Standardising thousands of companies’ filings occasionally gets a figure wrong, and stockrow checks every night for figures that break from a company’s own history. If you find one, please tell us through the contact page and we will correct it.
Nothing on stockrow is investment advice.