Screener & Metric Conventions
Normalized Change %
Measures the change in an absolute metric against its historical value using the absolute historical value as denominator. It is useful when a metric can be negative or cross zero, such as net income, OCF, FCF or net debt, where CAGR is not defensible.
Normalized Change %
normalizedChangePct · Screener & Metric Conventions
Variants: 1Y / 3Y / 5Y
- Definition
- Measures the change in an absolute metric against its historical value using the absolute historical value as denominator. It is useful when a metric can be negative or cross zero, such as net income, OCF, FCF or net debt, where CAGR is not defensible.
- Calculation
- (current_value - historical_value) / ABS(historical_value) * 100
- Difference vs CAGR
- CAGR expresses annualized compound growth and requires an economically comparable base, usually positive. NormalizedChangePct is not annualized: it measures cumulative change over the selected window and can handle negative historical values or sign changes.
- Difference vs ChangePct and Delta
- ChangePct is used for changes in percentage metrics persisted in percentage scale, for example a margin moving from 10% to 15% is stored as 5. Delta is used for absolute differences in ratios or multiples, for example net debt / EBITDA moving from 3.0x to 2.5x is stored as -0.5. NormalizedChangePct is reserved for absolute values compared against the historical magnitude.
- Interpretation
- For net income, OCF and FCF, positive values indicate a higher amount and negative values indicate deterioration. For net debt, positive values indicate more net debt and negative values indicate net debt reduction. For CapEx, the screener uses CapEx magnitude: positive means higher investment and negative means lower investment.
- Limitations
- If the historical value is zero or close to zero, the metric can be null or exaggerated. It should be cross-checked with absolute levels, margins, cash generation, balance sheet position and sector context.
