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Working Capital Screener: Find Liquid Stocks by Net Current Assets
Mid-cap stocks ranked by their short-term liquidity cushion. Working Capital = current assets − current liabilities, shown as a percent of revenue so companies of different sizes are comparable. A deep cushion funds operations and growth without external financing. Pair it with the Current Ratio Screener and Quick Ratio Screener for the full liquidity picture.
What Working Capital Reveals About a Business
Working capital is the plainest measure of a company's short-term financial health: the net pool of current assets left over after covering everything due within the year. It starts from total current assets — cash, receivables, and inventory — and subtracts total current liabilities like payables and short-term debt. A company with a large positive balance can pay its bills, ride out a slow quarter, and fund growth from its own pocket. A company running near zero or negative has less margin for error and may depend on constant refinancing or perfectly-timed cash collection.
Because raw dollar amounts are hard to compare across companies of different sizes, this screener normalizes working capital as a percent of revenue. That reframes the question from "how many dollars of cushion?" to "how big is the cushion relative to how much the business sells?" A software firm with $400M of working capital on $1B of sales carries a far deeper buffer than a distributor with the same dollar figure on $10B of sales.
Why Sector Context Matters
Working capital intensity varies enormously by business model, so a raw ranking across the whole market mostly sorts industries, not quality. Manufacturers and distributors tie up cash in inventory and receivables and tend to carry high working capital. Asset-light software and services firms need far less. And some of the strongest businesses in retail and food service deliberately run negative working capital, collecting from customers before paying suppliers. This screener shows tier ratings as rough guides; always filter to your target sector and compare peers head to head.
Working Capital vs. the Current Ratio
Working capital and the current ratio describe the same balance-sheet reality in two different units. Working capital is a dollar figure (current assets minus current liabilities); the current ratio is a multiple (current assets divided by current liabilities). The dollar view tells you the size of the cushion; the ratio tells you the coverage. This screener normalizes the dollar figure against revenue so it becomes comparable across companies — but for a quick coverage read, use the Current Ratio Screener alongside it.
Frequently asked questions
How is working capital calculated?
Working Capital = Total Current Assets − Total Current Liabilities, in absolute dollars. This screener pulls each company's total current assets, total current liabilities, and revenue from Yahoo Finance, computes the net figure, and normalizes it as (working capital ÷ revenue) × 100 so companies of different sizes rank fairly. Businesses with the deepest cushion relative to sales appear at the top.
What is a good working capital ratio?
It varies by business model, but this screener uses five tiers as a guide: Strong (>30%), Healthy (15–30%), Adequate (5–15%), Tight (0–5%), and Negative (<0%). Inventory-heavy manufacturers naturally sit higher; asset-light service firms sit lower; and some efficient retailers run negative by design. Always compare a company against peers in its own sector rather than the whole market.
What market cap range does this screener cover?
This screener focuses on the $2B–$40B mid-cap range — large enough to have stable, reported financials, but small enough that the market often misprices them. Mid-caps are where a strong balance sheet can be an early signal of a durable business before it becomes widely followed. Mega-caps and micro-caps are outside the covered universe.
How do I use working capital to evaluate a stock?
Start by filtering to a single sector so you compare like with like, then look for companies in the Healthy or Strong tiers whose working capital has been stable or rising. Cross-check against the current and quick ratios to confirm the cushion isn't propped up by slow-moving inventory, and read a low or negative figure in the context of the company's business model before treating it as a red flag.