Skip to content

Piotroski F-Score

What it measures

The Piotroski F-Score is nine yes-or-no tests of a company's accounts, one point each, scored 0 to 9:

  1. return on assets above zero;
  2. operating cash flow above zero;
  3. return on assets higher than last year;
  4. operating cash flow above net income;
  5. long-term debt, against assets, lower than last year;
  6. current ratio (short-term assets ÷ short-term bills) higher than last year;
  7. no new shares issued;
  8. gross margin higher than last year;
  9. asset turnover (revenue ÷ assets) higher than last year.

Why it is on the page

Joseph Piotroski built it in 2000 to tell stronger from weaker companies among shares priced low against the equity on their balance sheet. Several of its tests are checks of the condition summary — ROA positive, CFO positive, ROA improving, Leverage not rising, Liquidity improving, No dilution and Efficiency improving.

Thresholds, their source and the population they were fitted on

The page draws no zones; it shows the score and which tests failed. In Piotroski's study, companies scoring 8 or 9 did markedly better for their owners over the following year than those scoring 0 or 1.

  • Source: Piotroski (2000), "Value investing: the use of historical financial statement information to separate winners from losers".
  • Fitted on: 14,043 company-years of US companies priced low against their book equity, 1976–1996. A later study found the effect in markets outside the US after 2000. Applied to highly priced growth companies, it is used outside the group it was tested on.
  • Evidence grade: peer-reviewed and replicated.

A worked example

Celestica, as the Fundamentals page showed it on 9 August 2026: 6 of 9. It failed "operating cash flow above net income", "current ratio higher than last year" and "no new shares issued".

What “No verdict” means here

The score carries no verdict of its own. The page shows a total only when all nine tests could be evaluated: a test that could not be checked is not a test that failed, so with one missing the row reads insufficient data and lists the tests it could run.

What the verdict is and is not

The score counts how many of nine published tests the latest statements met. It is not a ranking against other companies, not a forecast, and not an instruction to trade the shares.