WSO

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.

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.

Free cash flow the business throws off, divided by what the market currently charges for the equity. Treats the equity claim as a perpetual stream of free cash. More honest than earnings yield because it reflects the cash actually available to shareholders after all reinvestment. Cyclicals can swing below zero in a downturn — read with the trailing-cycle range.

First-line profitability measure — how much revenue is left after the direct cost of producing it. Stable or rising gross margin signals pricing power and low input-cost exposure; falling gross margin is one of the earliest reliable signals of competitive pressure or commodity-input squeeze. Industry context is everything: 30% gross margin is excellent for a grocery chain and disastrous for a software company.

The headline profitability metric. Net income divided by average book equity tells you how productive each dollar of shareholders' capital is. High sustained ROE compounds book value when the business can reinvest at a similar return. Two warnings: ROE rises mechanically with leverage (high D/E inflates ROE without making the business better), and aggressive buybacks can shrink the equity denominator faster than they shrink earnings, artificially boosting ROE even as fundamental returns are flat.

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.

DuPont productivity measure. Combined with margin, it tells the asset-light vs. asset-heavy story: low turnover with high margin is the luxury / branded model, high turnover with thin margin is the supermarket / discount model. Very high turnover in retail can also flag stockouts (lost sales) — the metric reads best industry-relative, not absolute.

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.

Sustainability check on the dividend yield. Below 30% means the dividend has substantial room to grow; 30–60% is the conventional sweet spot for a mature payer; above 85% is stretched and frequently precedes a cut. REITs and utilities run higher than the broad market by design — REIT payouts above 80% are normal because the structure requires distributing most income.