Anand Kumar/AI-Generated Image
Summary: Eleven companies scored near perfect on a nine-point financial health check. Most of their stocks still trade at single-digit earnings multiples. Either the market has missed something or it has noticed what the checklist can't. Working out which one starts with a question most investors never ask.
You know that feeling when you're evaluating a business, any business, and the numbers on the wall don't match what you expected? Maybe it's a restaurant that's always full but somehow still struggling, or a shop that looks quiet but keeps expanding. Financial statements can hide the same kind of surprise. Sometimes a company's numbers quietly get better long before the stock price notices.
That's the gap we went looking for. We ran a screen for companies whose financial health has been improving on paper while the stock still looks cheap, and 11 names cleared it.
The nutshell version of the score we used
The main filter here is the Piotroski F-score, a nine-point checklist built by accounting professor Joseph Piotroski to answer one question: is this company's financial health getting better or worse? It checks nine things, profit, cash flow, debt, margins, share count, among others, and gives one point for each that moved in the right direction over the past year. A score of eight or nine means almost everything on the checklist improved. Think of it as a health check-up: not a verdict on whether the company is a good investment, just a read on whether its vitals are trending the right way.
We paired that with our Valuation Score, which reads how cheap a stock is against its own history and its peers. Each of the 11 names below scored high on both, and most trade at Price-to-Earnings (P/E) ratio of 10 or below.
| Security | Market cap (Rs Cr) | P/E | Debt-to- Equity | Valuation Score | Piotroski F-score | Sector |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chennai Petroleum Corporation | 20,407 | 4.9 | 0.2 | 8 | 8 | Energy & Utilities |
| CIAN Agro Industries & Infrastructure | 3,235 | 10 | 0.6 | 8 | 9 | Consumer Staples |
| Indian Oil Corporation | 1,91,483 | 5.7 | 0.6 | 8 | 8 | Energy & Utilities |
| Indosolar | 956 | 5.8 | 0 | 8 | 8 | Technology |
| Jagran Prakashan | 1,366 | 7.2 | 0.1 | 9 | 9 | Industrials |
| Oil & Natural Gas Corporation | 2,96,391 | 6.8 | 0.5 | 9 | 8 | Energy & Utilities |
| Petronet LNG | 42,735 | 10.2 | 0.1 | 8 | 8 | Energy & Utilities |
| PTC India Financial Services | 1,691 | 7.6 | 0.3 | 8 | 8 | Financial |
| Sai Silks (Kalamandir) | 1,183 | 8.7 | 0.3 | 8 | 9 | Consumer Discretionary |
| TeamLease Services | 1,792 | 12.1 | 0.1 | 8 | 8 | Industrials |
| Tide Water Oil Company (India) | 2,352 | 10.7 | 0 | 8 | 9 | Energy & Utilities |
Run this screen yourself. The list is live and moves with prices and scores daily, so it will differ from the table above, which was run on September 25, 2026
The profit didn't come from more sales
The first thing worth noticing: profit rose across this list, but sales mostly didn't. When a company earns more without selling more, the margin has widened. That can happen because costs fell, pricing power rose, or the business is simply cyclical and caught a good year.
Five of the 11 names here are from oil and energy. Worth flagging, because profit and margins in that sector move hard with the crude and refining cycle, not with anything company-specific.
One name that shouldn't be read as improvement
Chennai Petroleum Corporation carries the lowest P/E ratio on the list, at 4.9. It's also a refiner. Refining margins swing sharply with crude prices, and a P/E ratio this low, in a cyclical business, more likely reflects where the cycle sits right now than a lasting shift in the company's profitability. The same caution applies, with less force, to the other four energy names above.
What the score can't see
The Piotroski F-score and the Valuation Score both read only the last audited year. Neither can see a cycle about to turn, or a business quietly declining that still looks fine on paper. That's exactly why a cluster like this one deserves a second look before a first conclusion.
The lesson: a high score built on margin gains, not sales growth, in a cyclical sector, is a reason to check the cycle before you check the company.
Make the screen sharper. Your turn
- Add revenue growth alongside profit growth — filters out names where profit rose only because margins expanded.[Run this cut]
- Add three year profit CAGR — checks whether the improvement is a trend, not one strong year. [Run this cut]
- Check margin against its three or five year average, manually, on the stock page the screener doesn't filter on this yet, so it's a 10 second check worth doing by hand on any name you shortlist.
Want the mechanics behind the score itself? Read our explainer: A composite score of financial health.
This article is for educational and informational purposes only. The ratings shown rest on quantitative historical financial data and should not be construed as recommendations to buy, sell or hold any security.
For actual recommendations: Value Research Stock Advisor
Ask Value Research 
New episodes every Friday 
New Process Alert 
Seems like you've uploaded a wrong QR code. Please upload the QR code downloaded from MF Central platform.
