Methodology

Overview

Maple Value Screener uses a transparent, two-factor ranking model inspired by well-known public value investing formulas. The approach combines a measure of cheapness (earnings yield) with a measure of business quality (return on capital) to identify companies that may be both undervalued and high-quality.

This is a public-formula-inspired implementation. It is not an official clone of any commercial screener. Results will differ from other screeners due to differences in data sources, universe definitions, field extraction, and calculation methodology.

1. Earnings Yield

Measures how cheap a stock is relative to its enterprise value.

Earnings Yield = EBIT / Enterprise Value

Where:

• EBIT = Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (operating income)
• Enterprise Value (EV) = Market Capitalization + Total Debt - Cash and Cash Equivalents

Simplification note: In the MVP, we use a simplified EV calculation that omits preferred equity and minority interest, as these fields are not consistently available from free data sources.

2. Return on Capital (ROC)

Measures how efficiently a company uses its tangible capital to generate earnings.

Return on Capital = EBIT / (Net Working Capital + Net Fixed Assets)

Where:

• Net Working Capital = Current Assets - Current Liabilities
• Net Fixed Assets = Net Property, Plant & Equipment (PP&E)

Note: When tangible capital is very small or negative (e.g., asset-light businesses), ROC is capped at 1000% to prevent extreme outliers from dominating the ranking.

For every eligible company in the universe:

1. Calculate Earnings Yield (higher is better = cheaper)
2. Calculate Return on Capital (higher is better = more efficient)
3. Rank all companies by Earnings Yield (rank 1 = highest yield)
4. Rank all companies by Return on Capital (rank 1 = highest ROC)
5. Combine: Combined Rank = Earnings Yield Rank + ROC Rank
6. Sort ascending by Combined Rank (lowest = best)

A company that ranks highly on both factors will have a low combined rank and appear near the top of the list.

Included

• TSX-listed common operating companies
• Companies with sufficient data for both factors
• Companies above the minimum market cap threshold (default: $300M)
• Companies with positive EBIT

Excluded

• Financial companies (banks, insurance) — balance sheet structure makes the formula unreliable
• Utilities — regulated returns make ROC comparisons misleading
• ETFs, mutual funds, preferred shares, structured products
• Companies with negative EBIT
• Companies with broken or insufficient financial data
• SPACs and shell companies

Financial and utility exclusions follow the traditional public formula. Users can toggle these filters on the rankings page.

All financial data is derived from publicly available company filings and public market data sources. No paid APIs or proprietary datasets are used.

• Financial statements: Extracted from public issuer filings
• Market prices: From free public market data sources
• Sector classification: Based on public information with manual corrections where needed

Data may be stale, simplified, or contain extraction errors. We display data dates and quality flags to help users evaluate freshness and reliability.

If you compare our rankings with other screeners, expect differences. Common reasons include:

• Different stock universes (TSX-only vs. global)
• Different EV calculation (we omit preferred equity and minority interest)
• Different EBIT definitions (some screeners adjust for one-time items)
• Filing timing differences (our data may be more or less recent)
• Different exclusion rules
• Different data vendors and extraction methods

This is expected and normal. No two screeners will produce identical results.

• Market prices: Updated daily
• Financial data: Updated as new filings become available (checked daily/weekly)
• Rankings: Recomputed nightly
• History: One snapshot per ranking date is retained

Current version: v1

Each ranking snapshot records the methodology version used, so historical comparisons can account for formula changes over time.