Discounted cash flow: what the filings give you to start from
Of 5,521 US-listed companies, 3,206 publish a free cash flow yield computed from their filed accounts, and 1,171 of those published figures are below zero. A two-stage model started from a negative flow is a forecast of when the burning stops, which is a different exercise from valuing a business.
Each count below is of companies rather than listings, and none of it is a valuation. Nothing on this page tells you what a company is worth.
The flow a two-stage model starts from
- Companies publishing a free cash flow yieldOut of 5,521 in the catalogue.
- 3,206
- Of those, above zeroThe company turned cash over to its owners' account in the last filed year.
- 2,035
- Of those, below zeroCash went the other way. The figure is real and it is negative; it is not missing.
- 1,171
- Publishing no figure at all
- 2,315
Notes on this count
Across every published figure, negatives included, the quartiles are -5.9%, +2.6% and +6.6%. Yield here is free cash flow over market value, so the denominator moves with the price and the numerator moves once a year, when something is filed.
GET /api/public/companies. Catalogue built Oct 16, 2026. Prices of Oct 15, 2026.
Why 2,315 of them publish nothing
- Not meaningful for this company, such as a P/E on negative earnings or a bank's EV/EBIT.
- 844
- The filed cash flow statement reports neither free cash flow nor the operating cash flow and capital spending it is built from.
- 736
- Held back: the last annual report's share count does not match today's, as after a split.
- 245
- No filed statements on record for this company.
- 203
- No figures have been computed for this company yet, though we hold its filings.
- 158
- No cash flow statement for the latest filed year is on file.
- 128
- We hold no market capitalisation we can defend for this company, so there is nothing to price the figure against.
- 1
Notes on this count
The reason comes down the wire with the blank rather than being guessed at here. It matters to this reader more than to most: a company with no cash flow statement on record and a company whose statement shows cash going out are two different starting points, and a model that treats the first as a zero has invented its own first year.
GET /api/public/companies. Catalogue built Oct 16, 2026.
Where a margin forecast lands
- A tenth of them are at or below
- -173%
- A quarter are at or below
- -13.95%
- The middle company
- 3.52%
- Three quarters are at or below
- 12.82%
- A tenth are above
- 23.81%
Notes on this count
Free cash flow as a share of revenue, over 3,430 companies with filed statements. The second stage of a two-stage model is a margin assumption whether or not it is written as one, and this is the distribution it is being drawn from. A forecast above the top mark is a forecast that the company joins the highest tenth of the market and stays there.
GET /api/public/distribution/fcf_margin. Cohort built Oct 15, 2026.
The years a growth stage is fitted to
- Carrying ten filed years, so a growth stage can be fittedTen years of accounts come from the filings, so no price vendor caps them.
- 3,597
Notes on this count
A first-stage growth rate fitted to three years is a fit to one cycle of whatever was happening in those three years. The price overlay behind a chart here is five years by decision, which is a separate limit and not this one.
GET /api/stats/universe. Newest price Oct 15, 2026.
Both conditions of the Cash-flow yield and ROIC screen, run together
- Free cash flow yield at or above 5Of the 3,206 companies publishing that figure.
- 1,076
- Return on invested capital, after tax at or above 10Of the 1,614 companies publishing that figure.
- 574
- Publishing both figures, so the screen can be run at all
- 1,275
- Clearing both at once
- 244
Notes on this count
The two levels are read from the discipline catalogue the screener itself runs, so a change there changes this count rather than leaving it behind. The gap between the two middle rows is the part a cohort cannot show you: most of the market is not rejected by this screen, it is unmeasurable by it.
GET /api/public/companies. Catalogue built Oct 16, 2026. Prices of Oct 15, 2026.
The valuation this page refuses to print
There is no intrinsic value here and no margin of safety, and neither is an omission. A margin of safety is the distance between a price and an estimate of worth, and the only estimate that means anything is the one you made. A vendor’s valuation was carried here once and was retired: a figure nobody on this side can derive is a figure nobody on this side can defend.
What is offered instead is the arithmetic and the inputs. The DCF calculator runs the same two-stage engine the workbench runs, shows the year ladder, and prints the terminal value as a share of the answer, which is usually the uncomfortable part.
What this page cannot tell you
None of these counts is about a company you are modelling, and a model has a shelf life nobody writes on it: the growth rate you chose was chosen against the accounts as they stood, and they move once a quarter while the spreadsheet stays as you left it. The usual failure is not a bad model, it is a good model nobody reopened.
A list of companies goes through the audit for nothing, and comes back with every figure that could not be read named. Keeping your own cases in the workbench comes with Serious. The link between a model and a calendar comes with Professional: the growth rate you assumed becomes a guardrail, so the filed number has to keep supporting it.
Every guardrail you have saved is re-tested every night against newly filed accounts, and you get one email the first night one breaks, naming the company, the reading and the filing it came from. What to do about it is yours. It comes with Professional.
The check runs every night at 23:30 UTC. A filing is picked up the night after it is published.
The audit needs no account. A new account starts with 30 days of Professional, no card.
Meeting a test is not a reason to buy. Every count above is read from the public endpoints when the page is built, never typed into it: the whole table is at the company catalogue and every formula is at methodology.
The two-stage engine and its terminal-value treatment are written out there too.