High ROIC Stocks Screener
Enter or paste your own quality metrics and filter for high returns on invested capital, strong margins, and low debt. Everything runs locally in your browser — this is a research starting point, not live data or investment advice.
Not financial advice. This calculator is for research and educational purposes only. Outputs are estimates based on the inputs you provide and are not buy or sell recommendations. Always do your own research and consult a licensed professional before making investment decisions.
Default thresholds are a common quality starting point, not a recommendation. Leave a field blank to disable that filter.
Up to 10 stocks. All filtering happens locally in your browser.
One stock per line: ticker, ROIC, ROE, Gross, Operating, FCF margin, Debt/Equity, Rev growth (commas or tabs). ROIC trend and notes optional.
Add a stock or paste a table to start screening.
Stress-test the result
Change one assumption at a time. The bars show direction, not a forecast.
What it is
A high-ROIC screener looks for quality compounders — businesses that earn high returns on the capital they invest, sustain strong margins, and carry manageable debt. This tool is a manual, data-ready screener: you enter or paste the quality metrics yourself, set your own thresholds, and it filters locally in your browser. No live data is fetched and no real stock figures are pre-loaded. The tickers you type are just labels, and the results are a research shortlist based only on the numbers you entered.
Who it is for
- Quality and compounder-focused investors building a watchlist from metrics they already gathered.
- Anyone learning which margin, return, and leverage thresholds separate durable businesses from fragile ones.
- Students and analysts practicing a repeatable, criteria-based quality screen.
Inputs and outputs
Inputs
- Ticker / label
- A name for each row. You can use a real ticker — it is treated only as a label.
- ROIC, ROE
- Returns on capital and equity you enter for each stock, as percentages.
- Gross / Operating / FCF margin
- Profitability and cash-conversion metrics, entered as percentages.
- Debt / Equity, Rev growth
- Balance-sheet leverage and growth context.
- ROIC trend
- Whether returns are improving, stable, declining, or unknown — used to test durability.
- Filter thresholds
- The min/max limits each stock must meet to pass.
Outputs
- High quality candidates
- Stocks that meet every active filter, sorted by ROIC, then FCF margin, then lowest debt.
- Failed filters
- For each stock, the specific filters it missed and by how much.
- Quality profile
- A pass / fail / missing flag for every stock on every metric.
Example workflow
- Add a few stocks, or paste a table of quality metrics you gathered yourself.
- Set thresholds — for example Min ROIC 15%, Min FCF margin 10%, Max D/E 1.0, ROIC trend Improving or Stable.
- Read the high quality candidates and check why each other stock failed.
- Use the quality profile to see exactly which criteria each stock met or missed.
- Treat the survivors as a research shortlist — then verify durability, moat, and debt yourself.
Change a threshold and the candidate list shifts immediately. The screener organizes the numbers you entered; it does not judge whether a stock is a good investment.
Common mistakes
- Chasing a single high ROIC number without checking whether it is durable or just one good year.
- Ignoring debt — high returns financed with heavy leverage are more fragile.
- Treating a passing screen as a buy decision instead of a research starting point.
- Entering stale or inconsistent figures, so the screen filters on bad data.
- Comparing companies from very different industries on the same fixed thresholds.
The $25 million lesson that changed Buffett
In 1972 the sellers of See's Candies asked $30 million; Buffett, trained on Graham's cigar butts, refused to go above $25 million — roughly three times book value, a price the old Buffett would never pay. The deal nearly died over $5 million. Charlie Munger pushed back: a beloved brand with loyal customers and genuine pricing power deserved a premium.
They paid the $25 million. See's went on to ship more than $1.65 billion of cumulative pre-tax earnings back to Omaha while needing almost no additional capital — raising prices every year without losing a single loyal customer. Buffett later called it 'the prototype of a dream business' and credits this one purchase with rewiring how he invests.
Quality compounds quietly for decades. Temperament and a clear circle of competence beat chasing the cheapest price.
A quality compounder hiding in plain sight
In 2016, with Apple trading near 10–12 times earnings amid fears the iPhone cycle had peaked, Berkshire began buying — eventually about $36 billion of stock. Buffett's thesis required no technology forecast: a product customers would not abandon, extraordinary returns on invested capital, and a buyback machine that increased Berkshire's ownership share every year without another dollar spent.
The stake grew to be worth more than $150 billion at its peak — the most profitable single investment in Berkshire's history, earned not by predicting gadgets but by recognizing a high-ROIC franchise priced like a metal-bender.
High returns on capital plus a shrinking share count quietly multiply your slice of the profits.
The only deal Munger ever pushed
In the depths of the 2008 crisis, Munger did something he had never done before: he actively lobbied Buffett to invest in BYD, a Chinese battery and car maker led by engineer Wang Chuanfu — a man Munger described as "a combination of Thomas Edison and Jack Welch". The conviction came through Li Lu, whose circle of competence covered what Omaha's did not.
Berkshire paid $232 million for about 10% of the company — a tiny position by its standards, in an industry Buffett had publicly sworn off. At its 2022 peak the stake was worth roughly $9 billion, close to a forty-fold gain, before Berkshire began trimming.
A circle of competence can be extended honestly — by trusting someone who genuinely has one where you do not.
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Frequently asked questions
Does this screener use live market data?
No. You enter or paste all the metrics yourself, and the filtering runs locally in your browser. No data is fetched from any API and no real stock figures are pre-loaded.
What is a "good" ROIC?
There is no universal number, and this tool does not set one for you. Many quality investors look for ROIC comfortably above a company's cost of capital and sustained over several years, but the right threshold depends on the industry. You decide the cutoff.
Why does ROIC trend matter?
A high ROIC in one year can fade. The trend field lets you require returns that are improving or stable, so you focus on businesses whose advantage looks durable rather than temporary.
How do I paste a list of stocks?
Put one stock per line as ticker, ROIC, ROE, Gross, Operating, FCF margin, Debt/Equity, revenue growth, then optionally ROIC trend, separated by commas or tabs. Press Parse to load them into the table.
Will this be connected to real data later?
The tool is built data-ready so it can later be upgraded to pull metrics from a source like GuruFocus or EODHD. Until then it is fully manual and shows only the numbers you enter.
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