What a terminal subscription used to buy, a filing and arithmetic now give anyone.

What a terminal subscription used to buy

Five measures that have lived behind paid screens, each from a published paper, each computed here from the company’s own SEC filings and shown on its card. They describe; they do not rate, and nothing here moves Edgarette’s range or its receipt. Every input is a filed figure, so any actuary can recompute every number.

The five

Altman Z″ (Altman 1968; the 1995 variant)

Z″ = 6.56·(working capital ÷ assets) + 3.26·(retained earnings ÷ assets) + 6.72·(operating income ÷ assets) + 1.05·(book equity ÷ liabilities). Above 2.6 is the safe zone, below 1.1 the distress zone, between them the grey zone. The 1995 variant uses book equity, so it needs no share price, and it was fitted for non-manufacturers as well as manufacturers. One honest caveat: a company that has returned more to shareholders than it ever retained carries negative retained earnings, and Z″ reads it as distress although it may be solvent and cash-rich; read the zone beside Health Watch, cash conversion and the accruals ratio, never alone. On the ETF, portfolio and cash-leader tables the inputs come from the SEC’s calendar-aligned frames, so a value there can differ slightly from the company card, which reads the exact fiscal year. Filed inputs: AssetsCurrent, LiabilitiesCurrent, Assets, RetainedEarningsAccumulatedDeficit, OperatingIncomeLoss, StockholdersEquity, Liabilities.

Piotroski F (Piotroski 2000)

Nine pass-or-fail tests of the latest year against the year before: positive return on assets; positive operating cash flow; return on assets improved; operating cash above net income; long-term debt to assets fell; current ratio improved; no new shares issued; gross margin improved; asset turnover improved. The score is the number passed. When a test cannot be run from the filings, the card says how many were tested. Filed inputs: NetIncomeLoss, NetCashProvidedByUsedInOperatingActivities, Assets, LongTermDebtNoncurrent, AssetsCurrent, LiabilitiesCurrent, WeightedAverageNumberOfDilutedSharesOutstanding, GrossProfit or CostOfRevenue, Revenues.

Beneish M (Beneish 1999)

M = −4.84 + 0.920·DSRI + 0.528·GMI + 0.404·AQI + 0.892·SGI + 0.115·DEPI − 0.172·SGAI + 4.679·TATA − 0.327·LVGI, the eight-variable model. The paper’s line is −1.78: above it, the accrual pattern is one the paper found more often among companies that later restated. The card states which side of the line the number falls on, nothing more. Filed inputs, two years each: AccountsReceivableNetCurrent, Revenues, CostOfRevenue, AssetsCurrent, PropertyPlantAndEquipmentNet, Assets, DepreciationDepletionAndAmortization, SellingGeneralAndAdministrativeExpense, NetIncomeLoss, NetCashProvidedByUsedInOperatingActivities, LongTermDebtNoncurrent, LiabilitiesCurrent.

Sloan accruals (Sloan 1996)

(Net income − operating cash flow) ÷ average total assets. Under 5% the card says earnings are backed by cash; over 10% it says earnings are running ahead of cash. Filed inputs: NetIncomeLoss, NetCashProvidedByUsedInOperatingActivities, Assets for two years.

DuPont (du Pont, 1920s)

Return on equity = net margin × asset turnover × (average assets ÷ average equity). The card shows the three factors, so a reader can see whether a return comes from margin, from efficiency or from leverage. Filed inputs: NetIncomeLoss, Revenues, Assets, StockholdersEquity for two years.

What is not here, and why

• Ohlson O-Score (1980). Its size term divides assets by a GNP price index fixed to 1968, and published implementations disagree on the deflator. A number that cannot be reproduced the same way by two people does not belong on a card that promises reproduction.
• Merton distance to default, Sharpe, Black-Scholes, Greenblatt’s earnings yield. Each needs a share price, and some a volatility series. The house sources no prices and stores none; the card computes price-based figures only when a reader supplies a price, as it does for P/E.
• Utilities (SIC 4900–4999), for the Z″ only. A regulated utility runs negative working capital by design, and the model reads that as distress. The card and the tables say “not covered” for them.
• Banks, insurers and other financial filers (SIC 6000–6799). Altman’s and Beneish’s models were fitted on industrial balance sheets. The card says “not covered” rather than print a number that means nothing for a bank.

Where they appear

On every company page beneath Speed and cash, in the page’s JSON twin as signals, and in the MCP card returned by get_company_performance. Each chip’s hover shows the formula and the paper. Reporting, not investment advice. No price targets and no trading recommendations.

Every range, flag and score on these boards is identical for everyone. Clients of POPS4 or Hako Shikin receive no different numbers, no earlier access and no say in what is published. The service lines shown beside each board describe work we do; they never change the data.

Jenny Huang Goodman MPA MSc MHSA, Principal · Hako Shikin LLC, Virginia Beach · jenny@pops4.com