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Piotroski F-Score Calculator
Calculate the Piotroski F-Score for any US-listed public company. Enter a ticker to get an instant 9-signal financial health breakdown — profitability, leverage, and operating efficiency — with plain-English explanations for each signal.
Enter a ticker to calculate F-Score
Try AAPL, MSFT, or any US-listed company. The calculator fetches two years of annual financial statements and scores all 9 Piotroski signals instantly.
How to use this Piotroski F-Score calculator
Enter a ticker and click Analyze
Type any US-listed ticker — AAPL, F, NUE, HTZ — and click Analyze. The calculator fetches two years of annual income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements from Yahoo Finance automatically. No manual data entry needed.
Read the score and label
The large score out of 9 is color-coded: green for Strong Financial Health (7–9), amber for Neutral (4–6), red for Weak — Potential Distress Signals (0–3). The label summarizes the overall picture at a glance.
Review each signal
The nine signals are grouped into Profitability (F1–F4), Leverage & Liquidity (F5–F7), and Operating Efficiency (F8–F9). Each row shows a pass ✓ or fail ✗ and a plain-English explanation with the actual computed values — so you know exactly why a signal passed or failed.
Use it as a pre-DCF filter
A high F-Score means the company's fundamentals are improving — run a DCF valuation to see if it's undervalued. A low F-Score warrants checking earnings quality before modeling future cash flows.
Piotroski F-Score — Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Piotroski F-Score?
The Piotroski F-Score is a 9-point financial health screen developed by Joseph Piotroski in his 2000 paper 'Value Investing: The Use of Historical Financial Statement Information to Separate Winners from Losers.' It scores a company across nine binary signals — four covering profitability, three covering leverage and liquidity, and two covering operating efficiency. Each signal earns a 1 if passed, 0 if failed. Scores of 7–9 indicate strong financial health; 0–3 signal potential distress.
What is a good Piotroski F-Score?
A score of 7, 8, or 9 is considered strong — the company is passing most of the financial health signals. Scores of 4, 5, or 6 are neutral; the company has mixed financial characteristics and warrants further review. Scores of 0, 1, 2, or 3 indicate weak financial conditions that may signal operational or financial deterioration. Piotroski's original research found that a long/short portfolio buying high-scorers and shorting low-scorers generated significant abnormal returns among value stocks.
Does the Piotroski F-Score work for all stocks?
The F-Score was originally tested on value stocks (high book-to-market ratio) and works best for small and mid-cap companies where financial improvement drives stock re-rating. It is less reliable for financial sector companies (banks, insurance), early-stage companies with no profitability history, and companies with only one year of financial data — the model requires two years of annual statements to compute year-over-year changes. Use it as a directional screen, not a standalone buy or sell signal.
How does the Piotroski F-Score relate to the Altman Z-Score?
Both are accounting-based financial health screens, but they measure different things. The Altman Z-Score predicts near-term bankruptcy risk using a weighted formula of five ratios. The Piotroski F-Score measures whether a company's financial condition is improving or deteriorating across nine signals — it is more about momentum in financial health than absolute distress. Many investors use both together: the Z-Score as a solvency gate and the F-Score to confirm that operating trends are moving in the right direction before running a DCF valuation.