What Is the Piotroski F-Score? A Simple Guide
The Piotroski F-Score is a 0-to-9 score that measures how financially healthy and improving a company is, using nine pass/fail checks on its profitability, debt and efficiency. Created by accounting professor Joseph Piotroski, it was designed to separate genuinely strong value stocks from cheap-but-deteriorating ones. A score of 8–9 is strong; 0–2 is weak.
What is the Piotroski F-Score?
The Piotroski F-Score is a financial-strength score from 0 to 9. Each point is a yes/no test of whether a company improved on a specific measure over the past year. Add up the passes and you get the F-Score. It was introduced by Joseph Piotroski in 2000 as a way to find the strongest companies among cheap 'value' stocks, where accounting red flags matter most.
The 9 checks behind the score
The nine criteria fall into three groups:
Profitability (4 points)
- Positive net income
- Positive operating cash flow
- Rising return on assets (ROA) year over year
- Operating cash flow greater than net income (earnings backed by real cash)
Leverage, liquidity & funding (3 points)
- Lower long-term debt than the prior year
- Higher current ratio (better short-term liquidity)
- No new shares issued (no dilution)
Operating efficiency (2 points)
- Higher gross margin than the prior year
- Higher asset turnover than the prior year
What is a good Piotroski F-Score?
Broadly: 8–9 is strong (financially solid and improving), 4–6 is middling, and 0–2 is weak (deteriorating fundamentals). Piotroski's original research found that buying high-scoring value stocks and avoiding low-scoring ones improved returns — the score's strength is spotting quality within cheap stocks.
How the F-Score fits into the ST Score
On Stocks Telegraph, the Piotroski F-Score is one of the eight factors graded into every ST Score. It acts as a financial-health check: a stock that looks cheap on valuation but has a weak Piotroski score is flagged as a possible value trap, while a cheap stock with a high F-Score is a more convincing bargain. You can see each company's factor grades, including Piotroski, on its stock page.
Limitations to keep in mind
- It's backward-looking — it scores last year's financials, not the future.
- It's designed for established, profitable companies; it's less meaningful for early-stage or loss-making growth firms.
- A high score isn't a buy signal on its own — pair it with valuation, growth and momentum.