How the CEO Reputation Score works

The formula, step by step

1. Take two numbers from the company's annual report (Form 10-K), for the two most recent fiscal years:
   • Profit — net income (or operating income if net income is not reported).
   • Free cash flow — cash flow from operations minus capital spending (purchases of property, plant and equipment).
2. Measure the improvement for each number: (latest − prior) ÷ max(|prior|, $1,000,000). Using the absolute value of the prior year means a swing from a loss to a profit counts as the strong improvement it is, and the $1M floor stops tiny prior-year figures from producing absurd percentages.
3. Rank each improvement as a percentile against every scored company in the three indexes. A profit percentile of 80 means the company's profit improvement was better than 80% of scored companies that year.
4. The Reputation Score is the average of the two percentiles, rounded to a whole number out of 100. If only one of the two numbers is available, the score is that percentile alone — and the profile page says so.

A quick example

If a company's free cash flow rose from $10.0B to $12.0B, its improvement is (12 − 10) ÷ 10 = +20%. If that +20% beats 75% of scored companies, its free-cash-flow percentile is 75. If its profit improvement sits at the 65th percentile, its Reputation Score is (75 + 65) ÷ 2 = 70.

Data source and freshness

All figures come from the SEC's EDGAR database — the same annual filings (Form 10-K) the companies themselves submit. Each company is measured on its own fiscal year, so a company whose year ends in January is compared on its January year, not forced onto a calendar. Scores are refreshed as new annual filings land, so a score changes roughly once a year per company. In the current edition, 500 of 515 companies could be scored (487 with profit data, 423 with free-cash-flow data). A metric also counts as unavailable when the most recent fiscal year EDGAR holds for it ended before 2023 — older fragments are not scored as if they were current.

Caveats worth knowing

• Banks and insurers report cash flow differently: many do not publish the capital-spending line the free-cash-flow formula needs, so their scores usually rest on profit improvement alone.
• Non-US filers that report under non-US accounting frameworks may not publish these figures in a comparable form in EDGAR. Those companies are shown as "Not scored yet" rather than given an estimated number.
• A new CEO inherits the year. The score measures the company's latest fiscal year. A chief executive in the role for under a year or so is being shown a score that mostly reflects a period run by their predecessor — or by decisions taken before they arrived. Tenure is shown on every profile so you can judge this yourself.
• It is two numbers, not a verdict. The score says nothing about strategy, product quality, governance, or the share price. A company can post a high improvement score off a depressed prior year, and a superbly run company can score low after an exceptional prior year set a hard comparison. It is one lens — read it next to the profile, not instead of it.
• Not investment advice. Figures are drawn from public filings and shown for information only.

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