Piotroski F-Score
A 9-point checklist of profitability, leverage and operating-efficiency signals that flags financially improving companies.
Joseph Piotroski's F-score is a 9-point check built to filter value stocks. A firm gets one point for each of these conditions being true year-over-year:
- Positive net income
- Positive operating cash flow
- ROA improving
- Operating cash flow > net income (earnings quality)
- Lower long-term debt ratio
- Higher current ratio
- No new share issuance
- Higher gross margin
- Higher asset turnover
Interpretation. 8–9 is "strong improver", 0–2 is "deteriorating". On long–short value portfolios, Piotroski's 2000 paper showed a ~7.5% annual outperformance when buying the high-score side and shorting the low-score side.
Why it matters. It's a free, robust quality screen. alphactor.ai publishes the F-score breakdown on every ticker analysis page so you can see *which* of the 9 signals are driving the number.
See it applied
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