IBP

What it would cost to take over the entire firm (equity plus debt, less cash) per dollar of pre-interest, pre-tax, pre-depreciation operating earnings. Capital-structure-agnostic — directly comparable across heavily and lightly levered businesses, which a P/E can't do. The weakness: EBITDA ignores capex, so capital-intensive businesses look artificially cheap on this metric. Cross-check with EV/FCF when capex is meaningful.

Adjusts the numerator for debt and cash so heavily-levered or cash-rich companies become comparable on a revenue-multiple basis. Particularly useful for cross-industry valuation work where some firms run net cash and others carry meaningful debt loads. Same caveats as P/S: best read alongside gross margin to translate the multiple into expected steady-state earnings power.

The multiple equity analysts most commonly quote because it reflects expected earnings rather than the trailing window. Same caveats as trailing P/E plus one extra: the denominator depends on consensus estimates, which can be systematically optimistic going into a downturn or pessimistic at a cyclical trough. Worth cross-checking against trailing P/E and sell-side estimate trend.

Capital-structure-agnostic earnings yield. Pairs with Greenblatt ROC to compute the famous Magic Formula rank (the universe-rank of earnings yield plus universe-rank of return on capital). Pre-tax operating earnings divided by the full claim on the firm gives a cleaner cross-firm valuation comparison than P/E or earnings yield alone, because it strips out the distortions from leverage, cash, and tax structure.

An ABSOLUTE intrinsic-value signal, distinct from the relative multiples (PE, EV/EBITDA) which only compare a stock to its industry peers. Intrinsic value comes from the Residual Income Model: book value plus the present value of the residual income (earnings above a charge for the cost of equity) the firm is forecast to generate. This is the best-VALIDATED absolute value signal in the academic literature (Frankel & Lee 1998, replicated through 2026): the value-to-price ratio robustly predicts 1-3 year cross-sectional returns, survives every major factor model, and subsumes book-to-market. Because it is scored across the WHOLE universe (not within-industry), it complements the relative multiples rather than double-counting them. Pair it with a quality screen (Piotroski) to avoid value traps, and read the EPV decomposition to see whether a discount is unpriced earnings power or just speculative growth coming out of the price. One caveat: the model anchors on book equity, so for low-book, buyback-heavy, or asset-light firms (think Apple or Coca-Cola) book is a poor floor and the model can read durable franchises as wildly overvalued. Readings are clamped, and the metric is currently shadow-scored — shown for context, with zero weight in the fundamentals grade — pending validation.

Share price divided by per-share book value of common equity — what the market values the franchise at versus what the accountants say it's worth on paper. Most informative for asset-heavy businesses (banks, insurers, industrials) where book value approximates a liquidation floor; far less informative for asset-light franchises whose value sits in brand, software, or other intangibles that GAAP under-states or excludes entirely.

How many dollars of share price the market is willing to pay for one dollar of trailing-twelve-month earnings. The universal valuation anchor for profitable companies — useful for cross-sector comparison and as a quick read on whether the market expects earnings growth, decline, or a quality re-rating. Sensitive to one-off items in the denominator (write-downs, tax holidays, share buybacks); pair with EV/EBITDA when capital structure or non-cash charges look noisy.

Useful when earnings are negative, noisy, or one-time-distorted (early-stage growth, restructurings, cyclical troughs). Works best within an industry, not across — gross margin profiles vary so wildly that 1x P/S for a software company means something completely different from 1x P/S for a grocery chain.

Divides the trailing P/E by the year-over-year EPS growth rate (in percentage points). Below 1.0 is conventionally read as 'cheap relative to growth'; above 2 implies the multiple is well ahead of recent growth. Sensitive to which growth window you choose and unstable when earnings cross zero — flips sign or explodes when prior EPS is negative.

Peter Lynch's adjustment to PEG: adds the dividend yield to the growth rate in the denominator so that mature dividend payers don't get unfairly punished by a low growth rate alone. Sweet spot is 1.0 (P/E equals growth plus yield); below 0.5 often signals a broken growth assumption rather than genuine value; above 2 is over-paying.

Lower is generally better for shareholder cash returns — less of every dollar of revenue gets reinvested in maintaining the asset base. But very low values can flag under-investment in a capital-intensive business, which catches up later via deteriorating capacity or competitiveness. Pairs with FCF margin to separate 'thin operating margin' from 'fat operating margin offset by heavy capex'.

Operating margin minus interest, tax, and below-the-line items. Useful but noisier than operating margin: tax rate changes, debt-service shifts, and one-time items can move net margin year-over-year even when the operating business is unchanged. Always pair with operating margin and FCF margin — divergence between them is a tell about leverage, tax structure, or earnings quality.

Pre-capex version of cash conversion: compares operating cash flow directly to net income, before subtracting capex. Numbers persistently below 1.0 suggest accruals are doing the work (revenue recognised before cash collected, or expenses deferred). Numbers above 1.0 are typically driven by D&A exceeding true economic depreciation — a mild positive sign but not always meaningful.

Bottom-line growth on a per-share basis — captures both operating progress and any net buyback effect. The denominator uses the absolute value of prior EPS so a turnaround from negative to positive earnings reads with the conventional sign rather than producing arithmetic nonsense. Pair with revenue growth to separate real franchise expansion from buyback-driven per-share lift.

Top-line growth — the cleanest way to see whether the franchise is expanding. Best read alongside margin trend: revenue rising while margin compresses is often discount-driven volume rather than real growth, and can mask underlying weakness. Compare to industry peers — what looks weak in absolute terms can be best-in-sector if the industry is contracting.

The single best operations-quality metric. Negative CCC means the firm is funded by suppliers — the customer pays before the supplier needs to be paid (Apple, Costco, Amazon at scale). Long CCC ties up working capital and forces operating-loan dependence. Combines three sub-metrics: days inventory outstanding, days sales outstanding, days payable outstanding.

Direct cash income from holding the share. Stable dividend yield over time often signals capital discipline and predictable cash generation; abnormally high yield is frequently a warning that the dividend isn't covered by free cash flow and may be cut. Always read alongside payout ratio and FCF coverage.

Net income divided by market cap, expressed as a percent. Lets you compare equity earning power directly to bond yields: a 6% earnings yield is the equity-side analog to a 6% coupon, with the difference that earnings can grow (or contract) while a bond coupon is fixed. The standard 'is the equity risk-premium adequate?' framing.

CCI measures how far the current typical price ((H+L+C)/3) sits from its rolling SMA, normalized by the mean absolute deviation. Originally built for commodity cycles by Donald Lambert; widely used as a generic momentum / overbought-oversold gauge on any asset. CCI is unbounded but ±100 is the conventional 'normal range' edge — readings beyond that are interpreted as strong directional thrusts or stretched extremes depending on context.

+1 while CCI is below -100 (oversold); -1 while CCI is above +100 (overbought); 0 inside the ±100 band.

+1 = oversold (stretched below the typical-price mean, mean-reversion buy bias), -1 = overbought (stretched above), 0 = inside the ±100 band.

The Coppock Curve is a weighted moving average of the sum of two rate-of-change measures, originally designed as a long-horizon, buy-only bottom indicator for equity indices. This screener applies it to daily bars and adds a bearish state for symmetry: a cross up through zero is the classic long-term buy tell, a cross down through zero flags a bearish momentum cycle.

+1 while the Coppock Curve is above zero; -1 while it is below zero; 0 only at exactly zero.

+1 = bullish zero-line cross (classic long-term buy), -1 = bearish zero-line cross.

TRIX is the one-bar rate of change of a triple-exponentially-smoothed closing price. The triple smoothing strips out short-term noise, so TRIX oscillates slowly around zero. A cross up through zero marks momentum turning positive (bullish); a cross down through zero marks it turning negative (bearish). Smoother and lower-frequency than most momentum oscillators, which trades responsiveness for fewer whipsaws.

+1 while TRIX is above zero; -1 while TRIX is below zero; 0 only at exactly zero.

+1 = TRIX turned positive (bullish momentum), -1 = TRIX turned negative (bearish momentum).

Williams %R maps close-to-range position onto a -100 to 0 scale: -100 means the close is right at the lookback period's low (oversold), 0 means right at the period's high (overbought). The oscillator's interpretation mirrors RSI but the scale is inverted. Like other OB/OS oscillators, it works best as a tactical timing aid inside an already-established trend, not as a standalone reversal trigger in choppy markets.

+1 while %R is below -80 (oversold); -1 while %R is above -20 (overbought); 0 in between.

+1 = oversold (bullish), -1 = overbought (bearish), 0 = mid-range.