I’ve noticed that several of the prebuilt functions I use in screener are returning massive numbers of NA. Most of these I have been using for 5+ years.
One in particular is Pr2CashFlTTM. If I screen for just the value using No OTC Exchange (5639 stocks) the totals number is 2745 before I hit NA’s.
When I screen using CashFlPS(0, TTM, KEEPNA) I get 4670 stocks with values other than NA.
I also get 4670 when I screen using this: showVar(@P2CF, close(0)/ CashFlPS(0,TTM, KEEPNA)) but only 2738 positive values.
Any insight is appreciated.
Pr2CashFlTTM gives NA for stocks with a negative cash flow. In this, it’s like the other Pr2 factors. Because most people rank stocks on these factors with lower numbers better, it’s important to convert negative values to NA otherwise all the companies with negative cash flow and earnings would rank highest. I believe that this is standard operating procedure in financial reporting.
We also offer a number of prebuilt factors that retain the negatives like FCFYield, OCFYield, and EarnYield, in which we divide the financial data by the price rather than the other way around. But we don’t offer that for cash flow.
Thank you Yuval. I understand this when it comes to ranking, but in screener I just want the number. I’ll switch to the showVar formula.