How big a company is, what its share price actually buys you, whether it makes a decent profit and whether it owes too much. These are the figures on the front page of every stock, and once you can read them you can read most of what is written about a company.
Basics · Size, sector and where it trades. Start here to narrow the market to companies you can understand.
The price tag for the whole company: share price × number of shares. ₹5,000 Cr means buying every share would cost ₹5,000 crore.
What one share costs right now.
How many shares changed hands in a day.
Size buckets. Under SEBI's rules the 100 biggest listed companies are large caps, the next 150 are mid caps and the rest are small caps. Micro caps are the very smallest.
Where the share is listed: NSE or BSE. Most large companies are on both.
The broad industry group, like Financials, Consumer or Industrials.
A narrower industry bucket, like Private Banks or Cement.
Whether futures and options trade on this stock. SEBI allows that only for stocks that meet size and trading-volume rules.
Search each company's own description for a word, like pharma, EV or cement. Type / between words for OR: battery/EV.
Whether the government holds a controlling stake.
Business Model · Built from each company's annual report, with every statement checked against the filing.
Valarth has built a business model card for this company from its annual report: how it makes money, its customers and its risks. Every statement on the card is checked word for word against the filing.
How many statements on the business model card were matched word for word to the annual report.
Is It Cheap? · A great company can still be a poor buy at the wrong price. These compare the price with profits, sales, cash and the company's own history.
Price ÷ earnings per share: how many rupees you pay for every ₹1 of yearly profit.
Price ÷ book value per share. Book value is roughly what shareholders would get if the company sold everything at accounting values and paid off its debts.
Yearly dividend ÷ share price. 3% means ₹3 a year for every ₹100 you invest.
Valarth's summary label: Cheap, Fair or Expensive, from several valuation measures together.
How many of Valarth's 9 valuation models say the share is cheap.
Is It Well-Run? · Returns on capital show how much profit the business makes from every rupee put into it.
Return on equity: yearly profit ÷ the shareholders' money in the business. 20% means ₹20 of profit a year for every ₹100 of shareholders' funds.
Return on capital employed: operating profit ÷ all the money in the business, from shareholders and lenders.
Operating profit ÷ interest payments: how many times over the company could pay its interest bill.
Whether RoCE is improving, stable or declining.
Valarth's 0 to 100 score combining returns, debt, stability and the Piotroski F-score.
Profitability · Margins show how much the company keeps after paying its costs.
EBITDA ÷ sales: profit from the core business before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, for every ₹100 of sales.
Operating profit ÷ sales: what's left from each ₹100 of sales after running costs and depreciation.
Net profit ÷ sales: what finally reaches shareholders from each ₹100 of sales, after everything including interest and tax.
Net margin in the most recent quarter.
Whether margins are improving, stable or declining.
How Fast Is It Growing? · Growth in sales and profit over different periods, from the latest quarter to 15 years.
How fast sales grew each year, on average, over the last 3 years. CAGR is the steady yearly rate that gets you from the starting number to today's.
How fast profit after tax grew each year, on average, over the last 3 years. CAGR is the steady yearly rate that gets you from the starting number to today's.
Sales this quarter compared with the same quarter last year.
Profit after tax this quarter compared with the same quarter last year.
Track Record · Streaks and bad years tell you how dependable the business has been.
How many years in a row profit after tax has grown.
How many years in a row sales have grown.
In how many of the last 10 years the company made a profit.
In how many of the last 10 years the company made a loss.
How many years in a row the company has paid a dividend.
How many years have passed since the company last made a loss.
Debt Check · Borrowing helps a business grow, until a bad year makes the interest hard to pay.
Borrowings ÷ shareholders' money. 0.5 means ₹50 of debt for every ₹100 of equity.
Past Performance · Price returns over different periods. Useful context, never a forecast.
How much the share price changed over the last month.
How much the share price changed over the last 3 months.
How much the share price changed over the last 6 months.
How much the share price changed over the last year.
How Risky Is It? · How much the price swings and how far it has fallen before.
How much the share tends to move when the market moves. 1 means in step, 1.5 means 50% more, 0.5 means half as much.
How much the price swung over the last year, as a yearly percentage. Higher means a bumpier ride.
The biggest fall from a peak in the share price over the last 10 years.
Valarth's single risk score for the stock, combining price swings, past falls and balance-sheet stress.
Who Owns It? · Owners, foreign funds and mutual funds, and whether their stakes are rising or falling.
The share of the company owned by its founders or controlling group, the promoters.
The share of the promoters' holding they have pledged as security for loans.
The share of the company owned by foreign institutional investors.
The share of the company owned by Indian mutual funds.
Whether the promoters' stake is rising, stable or falling.
Whether foreign institutional investors' stake is rising, stable or falling.
Whether mutual funds' stake is rising, stable or falling.
What Analysts Say · Opinions from brokerage analysts. Treat them as views, not facts.
The gap between analysts' average target price and today's price.
The share of analysts covering the stock who rate it a Buy.
How many brokerage analysts follow the stock.
The overall rating from analysts: Buy, Hold or Sell.
Can It Stay Ahead? · Signs of a lasting edge: steady margins and years of high returns.
Wide, narrow or none: whether the company has earned more than its cost of capital for many years, a sign of a lasting edge competitors can't easily copy.
Yes for businesses whose profits rise and fall with the economy or commodity prices, like metals, cement and autos.
Beating The Market? · Compares the stock with the Nifty 500, its sector and a fixed deposit.
In how many of the last 10 calendar years the stock beat the Nifty 500.
Yearly growth over 10 years including dividends: price growth plus dividend yield.
Yes if, over 5 years, the stock earned less than a typical bank FD.
Something Happening? · Turnarounds, buybacks, demergers and where the price sits in its yearly range.
Today's price as a percentage of the highest price in the last year. 80% means 20% below the high.
Today's price as a percentage of the lowest price in the last year. 150% means 50% above the low.
Yes if the company made a loss two years ago and a profit now.
The same test as Recently turned profitable: a loss two years ago, a profit now.
Yes if the company bought back its own shares in the last 6 months.
Where the company is in its life: young growth, high growth, mature growth, mature stable or decline.
Is It Trustworthy? · Forensic checks for accounts that look better than the business really is.
Valarth runs 15 green checks and 15 red checks on each company. This is the number of greens minus the number of reds.
Valarth's overall forensic label: Clean, Watch, Caution, Danger or Avoid.
Growth-Stage Metrics · Measures that work before profits arrive.
The share owned by foreign and domestic institutions together.
Banks and Lenders · A bank's raw material is other people's money, so the ratios that judge a factory misread it. These are the figures that matter for banks, NBFCs and housing finance companies: what they earn on lending, how many loans have gone bad, how well they are cushioned against losses, and how cheaply they fund themselves.
The gap between the interest a lender earns on its loans and investments and the interest it pays on deposits and borrowings, as a share of its interest-earning assets.
Loans on which the borrower has stopped paying, as a share of all the lender's loans. A loan becomes a non-performing asset when interest or principal is overdue for more than 90 days.
Bad loans left after subtracting the provisions the lender has already made against them, as a share of its net loans.
A lender's net profit as a share of everything on its balance sheet.
A lender's net profit as a share of its shareholders' funds, worked out from the same accounts as the other lender figures.
The share of a bank's deposits held in current and savings accounts, which pay little or no interest, rather than in fixed deposits.
How much a lender's loan book grew over the latest fiscal year.
How much a bank's deposits grew over the latest fiscal year.
Our Valuation · Valarth values each company with several models and compares the result with today's price and with the company's peers. These figures say what that work concludes and how much weight it can bear.
Valarth's own reading of the price: cheap, fair or dear, from today's price against the value range our valuation models put on the company, and its P/E and P/B against its peers.