Perfect Balance Sheets Harder to Find in Asia Than in the U.S.
- Just two firms in Asian gauge have perfect Piotroski F-Score
- Asia stocks with weak balance sheets have outperformed in 2021
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Asia investors following the global switch to quality stocks are not only suffering from striking underperformance but also a relative lack of candidates with the strongest balance sheets.
Just two of the MSCI Asia Pacific Index’s 1,543 members have a perfect Piotroski F-Score -- a financial-health assessment devised by an accounting professor to measure the overall quality of a firm’s financial position, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Professor Joseph Piotroski -- now at Stanford University -- based his gauge on nine fundamental signals of profitability, leverage and operating efficiency.