CHWY

Sanity-check on earnings quality — a ratio of 1.0 means every dollar of GAAP earnings shows up as free cash flow. Persistently below 1.0 means working-capital build or capex is consuming earnings; persistently above 1.0 is unusual and may flag accounting conservatism (heavy non-cash charges) or a one-time release. Trend matters more than absolute level.

Easier to compare than operating margin across firms with very different leverage and depreciation profiles, because it adds D&A back. Software platforms commonly run above 30%; capital-light service businesses cluster around 20%; capital-intensive industrials sit below 15%. The weakness: ignores the cash needed to maintain the asset base — pair with FCF margin for a complete profitability picture.

End-to-end conversion ratio: of every dollar of revenue, how much falls through to genuine free cash flow available to all capital providers? More honest than net margin because it accounts for the capex needed to maintain (and grow) the business. The single best indicator of whether the business is a quality compounder or a GAAP-earnings illusion.

First-line profitability measure — how much revenue is left after the direct cost of producing it. Stable or rising gross margin signals pricing power and low input-cost exposure; falling gross margin is one of the earliest reliable signals of competitive pressure or commodity-input squeeze. Industry context is everything: 30% gross margin is excellent for a grocery chain and disastrous for a software company.

Operating margin minus interest, tax, and below-the-line items. Useful but noisier than operating margin: tax rate changes, debt-service shifts, and one-time items can move net margin year-over-year even when the operating business is unchanged. Always pair with operating margin and FCF margin — divergence between them is a tell about leverage, tax structure, or earnings quality.

Pre-capex version of cash conversion: compares operating cash flow directly to net income, before subtracting capex. Numbers persistently below 1.0 suggest accruals are doing the work (revenue recognised before cash collected, or expenses deferred). Numbers above 1.0 are typically driven by D&A exceeding true economic depreciation — a mild positive sign but not always meaningful.

Captures the leverage between revenue and operating profit — the core test of whether a business converts sales into income at the operating level. Independent of capital structure (excludes interest) and tax-jurisdiction noise. Trend matters as much as level: an improving operating margin indicates pricing power or operational efficiency gains; a falling margin signals input-cost pressure, wage inflation, or competitive erosion.

Capital-efficiency measure that ignores how the assets are financed. Useful for comparing within a sector but heavily biased by industry — banks and utilities run low ROA by design (huge balance sheets), software and franchise businesses run high ROA (asset-light). The DuPont decomposition links it to ROE: ROE = ROA × (assets / equity), so leverage inflates the gap between ROA and ROE.

Bottom-line growth on a per-share basis — captures both operating progress and any net buyback effect. The denominator uses the absolute value of prior EPS so a turnaround from negative to positive earnings reads with the conventional sign rather than producing arithmetic nonsense. Pair with revenue growth to separate real franchise expansion from buyback-driven per-share lift.

Top-line growth — the cleanest way to see whether the franchise is expanding. Best read alongside margin trend: revenue rising while margin compresses is often discount-driven volume rather than real growth, and can mask underlying weakness. Compare to industry peers — what looks weak in absolute terms can be best-in-sector if the industry is contracting.

Net income divided by market cap, expressed as a percent. Lets you compare equity earning power directly to bond yields: a 6% earnings yield is the equity-side analog to a 6% coupon, with the difference that earnings can grow (or contract) while a bond coupon is fixed. The standard 'is the equity risk-premium adequate?' framing.

The Coppock Curve is a weighted moving average of the sum of two rate-of-change measures, originally designed as a long-horizon, buy-only bottom indicator for equity indices. This screener applies it to daily bars and adds a bearish state for symmetry: a cross up through zero is the classic long-term buy tell, a cross down through zero flags a bearish momentum cycle.

+1 while the Coppock Curve is above zero; -1 while it is below zero; 0 only at exactly zero.

+1 = bullish zero-line cross (classic long-term buy), -1 = bearish zero-line cross.

Compares price pivots against the MACD histogram (MACD line minus signal line) at those same bars. Bullish divergence: price makes a lower low, histogram makes a higher low — momentum is improving beneath the surface. Bearish divergence: price makes a higher high, histogram makes a lower high. Slower than the MACD signal cross but a richer confirmatory tell — the histogram captures momentum acceleration, not just direction.

+1 at the right-hand pivot of bullish divergence; -1 at right-hand pivot of bearish divergence; 0 otherwise.

+1 = bullish divergence, -1 = bearish divergence.

Fires on the bar where the MACD line (EMA12 minus EMA26) crosses through the signal line (EMA9 of MACD). Bullish when MACD crosses up through signal, bearish when it crosses down. Far more commonly used as a trade trigger than divergence — see macd_divergence for the slower confirmatory tell. Whipsaws in chop; cleanest when combined with a trend-regime filter.

+1 on bullish cross (MACD crosses up through signal); -1 on bearish cross (MACD crosses down through signal); 0 otherwise.

+1 = bullish MACD-signal cross, -1 = bearish MACD-signal cross.

ROC is the simplest momentum oscillator: (close − close_N_ago) / close_N_ago × 100. It's unbounded, sign-bearing, and reads as 'how much price has moved in absolute % terms over the lookback'. A configurable threshold (default 5%) separates ordinary fluctuation from strong directional thrusts. Useful as a coarse momentum cross when you want a less smoothed signal than RSI or MACD.

+1 while ROC is above +threshold (strong bullish thrust); -1 while ROC is below −threshold (strong bearish thrust); 0 inside the ±threshold band.

+1 = ROC above +threshold (bullish thrust), -1 = ROC below −threshold (bearish thrust), 0 = ROC within ±threshold.

TRIX is the one-bar rate of change of a triple-exponentially-smoothed closing price. The triple smoothing strips out short-term noise, so TRIX oscillates slowly around zero. A cross up through zero marks momentum turning positive (bullish); a cross down through zero marks it turning negative (bearish). Smoother and lower-frequency than most momentum oscillators, which trades responsiveness for fewer whipsaws.

+1 while TRIX is above zero; -1 while TRIX is below zero; 0 only at exactly zero.

+1 = TRIX turned positive (bullish momentum), -1 = TRIX turned negative (bearish momentum).