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. Over-the-counter listings are not 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.

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.