The Value Graph

The Value Graph asks one question seven ways: is this stock cheap or expensive compared to its own history? Rather than comparing a company to the market or to peers, it compares today's valuation to where that same company has traded over years of daily history.

The Value Graph is a Pro tool. Free accounts see a preview landing with a sample chart; the workbench unlocks with Pro.

The Seven Lenses

Each lens values the stock through a different fundamental:

• EPS — price to earnings (P/E): adjusted (street), GAAP, or forward
• Dividend — dividend yield (inverted: a high yield reads as cheap)
• Free Cash Flow — price to free cash flow
• Operating Cash Flow — price to operating cash flow
• Revenue — price to sales
• EBITDA — enterprise value to EBITDA
• Book Value — price to book

Seven lenses exist because no single one fits every company. P/E misleads when earnings dip; yield only works for dividend payers; asset-heavy businesses suit book value. When several lenses agree, the signal is stronger.

Adjusted vs GAAP EPS

The EPS lens defaults to adjusted (street) EPS — the headline number the company announces each quarter and the one analysts forecast. For businesses with heavy stock-based compensation or one-time charges, GAAP earnings can sit far below the operating reality, which turns the GAAP P/E into a statistical outlier machine: a company earning five times more on the street basis than under GAAP shows a "P/E" in the hundreds even when the market is pricing it quite normally. Every read on the adjusted basis is labeled Adj P/E so it can never be mistaken for the GAAP P/E shown elsewhere on the site.

The GAAP option values the same history on as-filed diluted EPS, and FWD on next-year analyst consensus (itself a street-basis number, which is why a forward P/E of 18 next to a GAAP trailing P/E of 125 was never a contradiction — they were counting different earnings). For most non-tech companies adjusted and GAAP are close, and the toggle changes little. Where street coverage doesn't exist, the lens falls back to GAAP and says so.

Reading the Band

The centerpiece chart draws the stock's price against a fair-value line — what the price would be if the stock traded at its own long-run median multiple — with the gap between them shaded. Price below the line suggests the stock is cheaper than its own norm; above, richer.

Each lens also shows where today sits as a percentile of the daily history, summarized in a five-tier verdict from Deep Value to Expensive, plus a distribution chart of where the multiple has spent its time. A buy-target solver works backwards: pick the multiple or yield you'd want to pay, and it shows the price that gets you there.

The Two Percentages

The Snapshot shows two percentages that answer different questions, so they will not match:

• The verdict gap — "price sits 48% below fair value" — is the distance between price and fair value, measured against fair value. It's a discount.
• Upside is the distance between price and the implied value, measured against today's price. It's a return.

Same two prices, opposite denominators: a stock 48% below fair value needs a 92% gain to get there. Each tile names its anchor and its denominator so the two never read as one number.

Fair value itself is spelled out under the verdict as the calculation it comes from — the current fundamental, times the window's median multiple (for example, TTM EPS times the 5Y median P/E) — so the headline discount is arithmetic you can check rather than a number you have to trust. The median is the pivot: change the range and the median moves, and fair value moves with it.

The target multiple beside it is yours to edit, and it starts on that median — following it as you change the range, lens, or basis, so the default is always the median of what you're actually looking at. Type your own (or click a point on the spectrum) and it holds there, the tiles re-label to "your target", and a one-click reset hands it back to the median.

If you've saved a price target for the stock on your watchlist, it's offered under the input as Use watchlist target rather than applied for you. A saved *price* means something specific on the EPS lens and nothing at all as a P/S or P/B target, so it stays a one-click option instead of the silent default on all seven tabs. A saved *yield* target is already in the dividend lens's own unit, so that one applies itself.

What "Undervalued" Here Really Means

Be clear-eyed about what this measures. "Cheap versus its own history" assumes the company's past is a fair yardstick for its future. If the business has genuinely deteriorated, a low percentile isn't a bargain — it's the market repricing reality. The Value Graph flags *when a stock is unusual relative to itself*; it can't tell you *why*. That's your research.