Edgar & Edgarette · brand success factors · method v1
The Trillion Score - Exponential Success Score
Built on over $200 trillion of sworn revenue, 13 years of data, 770,002 figures. Sealed by Edgarette.
One score for the odds a brand thrives over the next three years, built from 131 fields of SEC filings. 500 is about average, and every 100 points doubles the odds. Type in a brand's own figures, or load a public example, and see where it stands and what to work on next.
The worksheet
Enter dollars in millions. The last column is the latest full year. Leave a blank where a figure is unknown. These numbers stay in this browser: this page sends nothing anywhere.
How the calculation works
Each measure is worked out from the brand's own figures, then placed against every public company in the same SEC industry field. The worksheet estimates that place from field deciles, so a score here can differ by up to about 30 points from the sealed table. A success point is met at the 60th percentile, meaning better than six in ten of the field. The gold line on each bar marks that spot.
Two dollar figures sit beside the points. Price premium is margin above the field times sales. Momentum is gross profit times growth above the field's pace, the same shape as momentum in physics: mass times speed.
| Point | What it means | The math |
|---|
| SpeedPhysics: velocity | How fast sales grow each year, over three years. | ln(sales now ÷ sales three years ago) ÷ 3 |
| SteadinessEngineering: signal-to-noise | How smooth that growth is. High means growth you can plan around, not one lucky year. | average yearly growth ÷ how much it swings, up to six years |
| Price premiumBrand research: revenue premium (Ailawadi, Lehmann and Neslin, 2003) | How much more margin you keep than the middle company in your field. It is what buyers pay for the name. | your gross margin − the field's median gross margin |
| Margin stays above the fieldEconomics: persistence of profits (Mueller) | How many of the last six years your margin beat the field. One good year does not count for much. | years above the field median ÷ years on record |
| Moat half-lifePhysics: mean reversion (Ornstein-Uhlenbeck) | How long your margin edge lasts. It estimates the years for that edge to fade by half. | ln 2 ÷ −ln φ, where φ is how much of each year's edge carries into the next |
| Brand spend yieldAdvertising math: goodwill stock (Nerlove and Arrow, 1962) | How hard your built-up brand spending works. Past spending keeps some value and fades 20% a year. | gross profit ÷ G, where G(this year) = 0.8 × G(last year) + selling and admin spend |
| Learning curveEngineering: Wright's law (Wright, 1936) | Whether your cost share falls as you make and sell more. Experience should get cheaper. | slope of ln(cost share) against ln(all sales to date), sign flipped |
| Climb in the fieldRank-size math: Zipf's law (Axtell, 2001) | Whether you moved up your field's size ranking over three years. | ln(rank three years ago ÷ rank now) |
The actuarial view
Four more figures answer the question an actuary asks first: what could go wrong, and how much weight does the record deserve?
| Measure | What it means | The math |
|---|
| Credibility | How much weight the record deserves. Short or partial records are pulled toward the middle, and both ranks use this. | Z = (n − 1) ÷ (n − 1 + 3) × share of measures scored (Bühlmann) |
| Severe decline | A life table by class: how often similar filers fell 30% or stopped reporting within three years. | deaths ÷ exposed, with a 95% range |
| Ruin index | How exposed the cash position is to its own swings. It ranks risk well, and it is not a calibrated probability. | ψ = e^(−2uμ/σ²), Cramér-Lundberg, Brownian approximation |
| Tail, TVaR 80 | How bad the bad years are. | average growth in the worst fifth of years |
How the score tested
Fitted on 2017 and 2018, then checked on 2019 to 2022 against what happened. Thriving means beating the field for three years with no severe decline.
| Score | Actually thrived | Modeled | Filer-years |
|---|
| Under 450 | 31.4% | 23.8% | 2,651 |
| 450 to 499 | 34.6% | 32.6% | 2,850 |
| 500 to 549 | 37.8% | 40.3% | 3,091 |
| 550 to 599 | 43.7% | 48.2% | 1,822 |
| 600 and up | 56.8% | 57.3% | 595 |
The low end runs better than modeled, so low scores are not a verdict. In this model, the score comes almost entirely from the strength measures. Ruin and tail predict falls, not who thrives, so they sit beside it as risk measures.
How the eight points tested
We built it on 2017 and 2018, then tested it on 2019 to 2022, using 7,293 filers including ones that stopped filing. This is the share that beat their field over the next three years.
| Companies | Top fifth by these measures | Bottom fifth |
|---|
| All filers (average 39.7%) | 47.7% | 32.1% |
| $1B and up | 50.1% | 32.6% |
| $10B and up (305 company-years) | 62.2% | 31.1% |
Fall Risk
The score asks how well a brand is doing. Fall Risk asks what could go wrong. It uses free cash flow after capital spending, how long cash would last, debt, the worst years for sales, size, and how many serious events the company has reported to the SEC on Form 8-K: restatements, delisting notices, bankruptcy, layoffs, write-downs, cyber incidents, and leadership or auditor changes. It was fit on 2017 and 2018 filings and tested on 2019 to 2022 filings it never saw.
| Band | Companies tested | Fell 30% or stopped reporting within three years |
|---|
| Low | 560 | 7.3% |
| Medium | 8,504 | 22.2% |
| High | 7,068 | 40.8% |
The order held up well, but the model ran high on the test years, so company pages quote the tested rate for each band and not the modeled odds. Separately, a company page may quote sentences from its newest 10-K or 10-Q when a company above $1 billion in sales dates a serious event in the last two years. Those quotes are not part of Fall Risk and have not been tested against past results.
What this is not
It reads filings, so it measures the business behind a brand, not how people feel about it. Coca-Cola meets 4 of 8. Across all filers it barely beats past growth alone; its edge is among large companies. The test years were reviewed more than once while fixing data errors, so the fair test is forward, and the table is sealed to be scored in public. Growth includes acquisitions. Fields are SEC industry codes and can be crude. Comparing a small private brand with public companies is a stretch on size, so read Climb in the field for direction only. A statistical description of past figures, not a rating, forecast, guarantee or advice.