Weekly analysis
One company a week, taken apart. What a multiple built on a full cycle of operating profit says about the price, what a valuation giving no credit for growth says it is worth, and what the board found that the screen could not see.
Every figure is computed in Python from SEC EDGAR filings, not written by a language model. None of it is a recommendation to buy or sell.
October 4, 2026 · 15 min read
Seventy-four cents on the dollar, and no equity left
HCA Healthcare's shares have fallen 22% since March. Over the last three fiscal years its revenue rose 26% and its net income 20%, and at Friday's close the market pays 74 cents for each dollar the accounts support with no growth at all. It is also a company with no book equity left — it has spent it buying back its own shares — and the market's worry is about who pays its bills next year. It is the eleventh cheapest of the 100 companies that clear our two gates; the machine's pick is A. O. Smith, for the third Sunday running. This piece also withdraws a cushion our own Sunday table printed for it.
HCA
September 27, 2026 · 14 min read
Priced for no growth, and still growing
Accenture's shares have lost 56% since February 2025. Over the same stretch its revenue set a record every year and its latest quarter grew 5.6%, with earnings per share up 9%. At Friday's close the market pays 95 cents for each dollar the accounts support with no growth at all — everything above the price is the credit our frame gives the franchise record, and whether that record survives AI is the whole disagreement. It is the eighth cheapest of the 100 companies that clear our two gates, expensive on its own fifteen-year past and cheap on its last twelve months; the machine's pick is A. O. Smith, again. This piece also corrects a label in our own Sunday table.
ACN
September 20, 2026 · 12 min read
A charge at the end of the window
Cognizant's operating profit rose 17% in its last fiscal year and its shares sit 30% below their January high. It is the second cheapest of the 104 companies that clear our two gates — and our own screen blocks it, on a net-income line that a single non-cash tax charge turned from up 14% to down 3%. Last week a one-off charge at the start of the window overstated a company's growth; this week one at the end erases it. This piece is about publishing against our own filter, and saying so.
CTSH
September 12, 2026 · 12 min read
Four flat years, and twenty-six percent on capital
A. O. Smith has sold the same $3.8bn of water heaters for four years, earned the same $730m or so of operating profit on them, turned all of its net income into cash and retired a tenth of its shares. The market has marked it down 28% in a year. This piece is about a business that has stopped growing being priced as if it will shrink — and about a number in our own output that would have overstated it.
AOS
September 6, 2026 · 8 min read
Forty percent on its capital, and four percent of earnings growth
Paychex earns about forty percent on the capital it employs, and its share count has barely moved — so none of the earnings growth is arithmetic. There is just not much of it. Revenue compounds at eight to nine percent, earnings at four, and this piece is about holding both of those facts at once.
PAYX
August 30, 2026 · 6 min read
Cigna added $94 billion of revenue and $2.2 billion of gross profit
The two-line screen that removed eleven of thirteen traps last week passed Cigna on 52.7% revenue growth. Look through the growth and almost none of it reached the profit line. The company may still be cheap — for a reason that has nothing to do with growth.
CI
August 23, 2026 · 5 min read
A hospital operator at 7.6x earnings, valued as if it never grows again
Rank the index by the gap between the market price and a valuation that gives no credit to growth, then ask two questions of the thirteen widest: is revenue up over three years, is earnings per share up over one. Eleven are out. Universal Health Services is the cheaper of the two left standing.
UHS
August 21, 2026 · 4 min read
Why a full-cycle EV/EBIT disagrees with every free screener
Free screeners rank the index on the last twelve months of profit. Sperio ranks it on the median of up to fifteen fiscal years. On a cyclical business the two numbers are not close, and one of them is measuring the weather.
VZ
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