Cody Scott would like to screen potential equity investments to identify value stocks and selects firms that have low price-to-sales ratios. Unfortunately, screening stocks based only on this criterion may result in stocks that have poor profitability or high financial leverage, which are undesirable to Scott. Which of the following filters could be added to the stock screen to best control for poor profitability and high financial leverage?
Filter #1 – Include only stocks with a debt-to-equity ratio that is above a certain benchmark value.
Filter #2 – Include only dividend paying stocks.
Filter #3 – Include only stocks with an assets-to-equity ratio that is below a certain benchmark value.
Filter #4 – Include only stocks with a positive return-on-equity.
| Poor profitability | High financial leverage |
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Firms that have poor profitability are more likely to be non-dividend paying. Selecting only dividend paying stocks can serve as a check on poor profitability. Using positive ROE to control for poor performance can result in bogus results without additional filters. For example, if both the numerator (net income) and the denominator (average equity) are negative, ROE will be positive. The higher the assets-to-equity ratio, the higher the leverage. Selecting only stocks with an assets-to-equity ratio below a certain cut-off point will eliminate stocks with high leverage. Debt-to-equity above a certain point would include firms with higher, not lower, financial leverage.
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