Growth Factor
How quickly the underlying business is getting bigger and more profitable per share.
Definition
The growth factor measures how fast a company's fundamentals are expanding — typically year-over-year growth in revenue, earnings per share (EPS), and free cash flow. Higher growth, all else equal, means more business to value.
Where the value factor asks "how much am I paying for what's already there," the growth factor asks "how fast is what's already there getting bigger." The two are often (but not always) in tension — cheap stocks tend to grow more slowly, fast-growing stocks tend to be expensive.
Growth and value together form most of the traditional fundamental analysis stack. A scoring system that ignored either would be missing half the picture.
How QScoring uses it
QScoring uses three growth metrics: revenue growth, EPS growth, and free-cash-flow growth, all year-over-year on the most recent annual filing. Each is z-scored against the sector — a 10% growth rate means something different in Energy than in Software, and the score reflects that. See the growth section for the lag caveats inherent in annual figures.