What Is the Piotroski F-Score?

The Piotroski F-Score is a simple 0–9 score of how financially healthy a company is. It was created by accounting professor Joseph Piotroski in 2000 to separate strong businesses from weak ones using only their financial statements — no opinions, no forecasts.

How it works

The company earns one point for passing each of nine yes/no tests, grouped into three areas:

Profitability

• Positive return on assets (it makes a profit)
• Positive operating cash flow (it generates real cash)
• Return on assets is rising year over year
• Cash flow is bigger than reported profit (high earnings quality)

Leverage & liquidity

• Long-term debt is shrinking relative to assets
• The current ratio is improving (it can cover short-term bills)
• It isn’t issuing lots of new shares (no heavy dilution)

Operating efficiency

• Gross margin is rising
• Asset turnover is rising (it squeezes more sales from its assets)

How to read it

• 8–9 — excellent financial health
• 5–7 — solid
• 0–3 — weak; dig deeper before trusting the numbers

A high F-Score doesn’t mean a stock is cheap or a good buy — it means the underlying business looks financially sound. Pair it with valuation and the Altman Z-score .

See the highest-F-score companies or build your own filter in the screener . Every Stocktoria score links to its SEC source filing.