Stop Overthinking Stock Screeners

What It Covers

Hosts Stephen Morris and Andrew Sather run a live stock screener on fiscal.ai using seven filters — including ROIC above 15%, PE below 20, and negative cash from financing — then evaluate Yelp, LendingTree, Brinker International, Yeti Holdings, Zoetis, and CarGurus in real time without prior preparation.

Key Questions Answered

• •Screener Construction: Build a stock screener using these seven specific filters: long-term revenue growth above 6% annually, stock-based compensation below 10% of revenue, negative cash from financing (capital returned not raised), PE below 20, net debt-to-EBITDA below 3.5, ROIC above 15%, and five-year revenue CAGR above 6%. Exclude biotech and Chinese-listed companies to reduce risk exposure.
• •Price vs. Valuation Mindset: A stock trading at $181 with a 16.5 PE can be cheaper than a $25 stock with a PE of 12 carrying significant business risk. Dollar price per share is irrelevant to value — PE ratio, forward earnings expectations, and business quality determine whether a stock is genuinely cheap or merely low-priced.
• •Restaurant KPI — Comparable Sales: When evaluating restaurant stocks, prioritize comparable same-store sales growth over total revenue. Brinker International (ticker: EAT), parent of Chili's, grew comparable sales 25% year-over-year and 8% annually over five years — outpacing McDonald's typical 3-5% — while still trading at a 16.5 trailing PE and 15 forward PE.
• •Management Assessment for Turnarounds: When a company has a history of legal disputes, data breaches, or sustained net losses — as LendingTree experienced across four of six years post-2019 — the first research step is identifying whether leadership changed. Same management after repeated failures warrants rejection; new management requires verifying their prior track record before considering investment.
• •Moat Evaluation — Barriers to Entry: Every stock analysis requires explicitly assessing barriers to entry, not just current competitive position. High profits attract competition, so the question is whether existing moats — brand, network effects, switching costs — are sufficient to repel new entrants. This applies even to dominant platforms like DoorDash, where restaurants are building independent delivery apps to avoid margin erosion.