Book value is purchase price less depreciation of an asset. In the case of a company, it is assets less liabilities. We report our data provider's common equity line (not shareholder equity) as book value.

The typical calculation of book value for a company is total assets less total liabilities, which results in shareholder's equity. There are several lines on the right side of the balance sheet, though, that are potentially distortions. First, some companies have a value that is not asset, liability or equity: minority interest. Furthermore, some activities result in "equity" lines that are not value-additive: Preferred shares, in particular, function much as debt, yet are included in the equity section. (And minority interest has the potential to also appear in the equity section.)

Rather than second guess all the right-side lines that could affect book value, we just draw on common sense and report common equity rather than shareholder's equity.

A side note: Some definitions of book value deduct intangible assets. We have a separate function, tangible book value, that makes that adjustment.

Source and Availability

The data points come from SEC filings or earnings announcements of a company (click here for the line-item reference spreadsheet). Since the data is "standardized" by the data provider the exact number may not exist in the original source. The data is usually a single line-item (see the link at the end for an excel spreadsheet with details). There are two access methods: prebuilt factors and using a function syntax.

When using the function syntax you specify the historical period using parameters in parenthesis as follows:

function(offset,type[,NAHandling])

offset: 0-20 (for interim) 0-10 (for annual)
type: QTR (for interim), ANN (for annual), TTM (for trailing twelve months)
NAHandling: [FALLBACK],KEEPNA,ZERONA

For types QTR & ANN the value is taken straight out of the filing with the corresponding offset, ex: 0 is most recent, 1 is previous, etc. TTM types are computed in two ways: for income and cash flow statement values are calculated by adding four quarterly values. For balance sheet items, TTM is the average of the trailing four quarters.

The NAHandling parameter is optional and is used to control what happens in preliminary reports where many items could be missing. Preliminary reports are press releases by the company and only affect the most recent ("0") offset period. They can last several weeks and can cause false signals due to incomplete data (see "CompleteStmt" for a way to identify companies with preliminary data).

Three options are available when an NA is found in a preliminary report:

 

FALLBACK	this is the default. When an NA is encountered the value is pulled from the offset "1" period.
KEEPNA	do nothing. NAs will be preserved, which can cause the entire expression to fail.
ZERONA	NAs are converted to 0

Pre-built factors are available for convenience and correspond to the following formula syntax:

 

Period	Description	Corresponding Parameters
Q	Recent Quarter	(0, QTR)
PQ	Prior Quarter	(1, QTR)
PYQ	Prior Year quarter	(4, QTR)
TTM	Trailing Twelve Months	(0, TTM)
PTM	Prior Trailing Twelve Months	(4, TTM)
A	Recent Annual	(0, ANN)
PY	Prior Year	(1, ANN)
Gr%PQ	Growth % PQ	(0, QTR) / (1, QTR)
Gr%PYQ	Growth % PYQ	(0, QTR) / (4, QTR)
Gr%TTM	Growth % TTM	(0, TTM) / (4, TTM)
Gr%PQTTM	Growth % TTM 1Q Ago	(0, TTM) / (1, TTM)
Gr%A	Growth % Annual	(0, ANN) / (1, ANN)
Gr%3Y	Growth % 3 year	(0, ANN) / (3, ANN) annualized
Gr%5Y	Growth % 5 year	(0, ANN) / (5, ANN) annualized
Gr%10Y	Growth % 10 year	(0, ANN) / (10, ANN) annualized
RSD%ANN	RSD % 10Y of annuals	LoopRelStdDev ("function(CTR,ANN)",10,0,1,1))
RSD%TTM	RSD % 5Y of TTM	LoopRelStdDev ("function(CTR*2,TTM)",10,0,1,1))
RegEstTTM	Regression Est 5Y	Eval(LinReg("function(CTR * 2, TTM)", 10) , EstimateY(0), NA)
RegGr%TTM	Regression Gr% 5Y	Eval(LinReg("function(CTR * 2, TTM)", 10) ,RegGr%(2), NA)
RegEstANN	Regression Est 10Y	Eval(LinReg("function(CTR, ANN)", 10) , EstimateY(0), NA)
RegGr%ANN	Regression Gr% 10Y	Eval(LinReg("function(CTR, ANN)", 10) ,RegGr%(1), NA)
%SalesQ	% of Q Sales	function(0, QTR) / Sales(0, QRT)
%SalesA	% of A Sales	function(0, ANN) / Sales(0, ANN)
%AssetQ	% of Q Assets	function(0, QTR) / AstTot(0, QRT)
%AssetA	% of A Assets	function(0, ANN) / AstTot(0, ANN)
PSQ	Per Share Q	function(0, QTR) / Shares(0, QRT)
PSA	Per Share A	function(0, ANN) / Shares(0, ANN)
5YAvg	5 Year Average	LoopSum("function(CTR, ANN)", 5) / 5

NOTE: PTM offset is 4 , not 1, since it uses interim periods

Click Here for the Line-Item Reference Spreadsheet.