FDS

Capital-structure-agnostic valuation multiple. Useful for comparing levered companies because it adds debt and removes cash from the numerator and uses pre-interest, pre-tax, pre-depreciation earnings in the denominator.

Valuation expressed against the cash actually available to all capital providers. Often more honest than EV/EBITDA when capex is meaningful relative to D&A.

The multiple equity analysts most commonly quote because it reflects expected earnings rather than the trailing window. Same caveats as trailing P/E - a depressed multiple may be a value trap if forward earnings are too optimistic.

Multiple of trailing-twelve-month earnings the market has assigned to the company. Lower means cheaper relative to current earnings power, but a single low P/E can also mean the market expects earnings to fall.

Divides P/E by the annualized EPS growth rate (in percent points). Below 1.0 is conventionally read as 'cheap relative to growth.' Sensitive to which growth window you use; can flip sign if earnings are negative.

Adds dividend yield to the growth denominator so mature dividend payers don't get unfairly punished by a low-growth PEG. Sweet spot ~1.0; below 0.5 is often a broken growth assumption, above 2 is over-paying.

Lower is better for shareholder cash returns; very low values can flag under-investment in a capital-intensive business. Pairs with FCF margin to separate 'thin operating margin' from 'fat operating margin offset by heavy capex'.

Sanity-check on earnings quality. Persistently below 1 means working capital or capex is consuming earnings; persistently above 1 is unusual and may flag accounting conservatism or non-cash drags.

Easier to compare than operating_margin across firms with very different leverage / depreciation profiles. Software platforms commonly run above 30%; capital-light service businesses cluster around 20%.

End-to-end conversion ratio: of every dollar of revenue, how much falls through to genuine free cash flow available to capital providers? More honest than net margin because it accounts for capex needed to maintain the business.

FCF the business throws off relative to what you pay for the equity. Treats the equity as a perpetual claim on cash. Cyclicals can swing below zero in a downturn.

Joel Greenblatt's reformulation of return-on-capital that excludes goodwill, acquired intangibles, and financial assets, focusing instead on the tangible operating capital that actually generates EBIT. Pairs with Greenblatt's Earnings Yield (EBIT/EV) to produce the Magic Formula rank.

Operating margin minus interest, tax, and below-the-line items. Useful but noisy because tax rate and debt service distort year-to-year comparability.

Captures the leverage between revenue and operating profit. Core test of whether a business converts sales into income at the operating level.

Capital-efficiency measure that ignores how the assets are financed. Useful for comparing within a sector but biased low for asset-heavy businesses (banks, utilities) and high for asset-light ones.

Headline profitability metric. High ROE compounds book value if the business can reinvest at the same return. Beware of buybacks artificially inflating ROE by shrinking the denominator.

Strips out receivables and inventory, leaving only cash and equivalents over current liabilities. Stress-tests whether the business can meet obligations even if collections seize up.

Bond covenants are commonly written against this ratio. Above ~5x is high-yield territory; investment-grade industrials typically run below 3x. Negative net debt (more cash than debt) means the firm could pay off its bonds and still hold cash.

Earnings-quality flag. Receivables growing faster than revenue is one of the cleanest tells for revenue recognition stretching. Beneish-style.

Sustainability check on the dividend yield. Below 30% means the dividend has room to grow; 30-60% is the conventional sweet spot; above 85% is stretched and frequently precedes a cut. REITs and utilities run higher than the broad market by design.

Five-factor distress signal originally calibrated for US public manufacturers. Above 3.0 is the conventional 'safe' zone, 1.8-3.0 is the grey zone, below 1.8 historically associates with elevated bankruptcy risk.

Beneish (1999) calibrates eight financial-statement indices against a sample of known manipulators. M < -2.22 reads as unlikely manipulator; M >= -1.78 as likely manipulator; the gap is grey. Companion to Altman Z but for fraud risk rather than bankruptcy.

Richard Sloan's accruals-quality measure. Persistent positive accruals (NI exceeds OCF) tend to mean-revert via earnings disappointments. Large negative values are usually fine but can flag one-time working-capital releases or non-cash drags. Phase D-2 made this a target-window metric centred at zero.