Improving on the numbers

The improvement score is a 0-100 figure that compares numbers a US-listed company printed in its own SEC 10-Q or 10-K against the prior-year comparatives printed beside them in the same document. It reads eight lines: revenue, operating income, gross margin, cash from operations, free cash flow, net cash position, receivables ratio and inventory ratio. No outside estimates, analyst consensus, share prices or trading volumes enter the calculation.

No. The improvement score is not a price forecast and not investment advice. It means only that the figures written in a filing improved against the prior year. A company whose numbers improved may see its shares fall, and the reverse is equally true. Appearing in the ranking is not a recommendation to buy, and absence from it is not a recommendation to sell.

Each of the ten lines carries points: revenue 20, operating income 20, gross margin 15, cash from operations 15, free cash flow 10, net cash position 10, stock pay ratio 5, deferred revenue 5, receivables ratio 5 and inventory ratio 5. Lines a filing does not provide are dropped from both the earned and available points, and the result is normalised to a 0-100 scale. Both the prior-year figure and this filing's figure are shown on the page so you can check the arithmetic yourself.

The trend is the direction of this score, not of a share price. It compares the score calculated from the company's previous filing with the score from this one. A higher score reads Improving, a rise smaller than the last one reads Slowing, an identical score reads Unchanged, a lower score reads Weakening, and no earlier filing to compare reads First reading.

Yes. The Weakening tab on the same page lists companies from the lowest score upward. The calculation is identical to the improving ranking; only the sort order is reversed.

A filing is excluded when it does not print prior-year comparatives alongside its figures, or when fewer than three comparable lines are available. We would rather leave a company out than publish a score resting on thin evidence. As coverage grows, so does the number of companies that appear.

Yes. The /api/v1/improving endpoint returns the ranking, the score, the trend, the figures behind all ten components and a link to the EDGAR original, as JSON. A free key returns the top five companies; a subscriber key returns the full list.

New filings are detected on EDGAR within about a minute, scored on the spot and reflected in the ranking immediately. Only the most recent filing per company enters the ranking, so a company's score stands until it files its next quarterly or annual report.