Cash Conversion Screener Excel May 2026: Earnings Quality Dashboard

Cash Conversion Screener Excel May 2026 is the tool to pull out when the first-quarter earnings season is in the rearview mirror and every management team has already pitched their growth story. Reported earnings per share is the headline number, but earnings per share is a polished construct. Cash is not. The cash that actually moves into the corporate bank account each quarter is the only thing that funds dividends, buybacks, reinvestment, and debt service. This template makes it easy to compare reported profits to real cash for 30 large-cap names side by side, then sort the survivors into a quality screener you can act on.

This guide walks through how the May 2026 edition of the Cash Conversion Screener Excel dashboard is built, how the model treats operating cash flow, levered free cash flow, and return on invested capital, and how every metric maps to a live MarketXLS formula. The full premium template downloads at the end of the post.

Cash Conversion Screener Excel May 2026: The Quality Snapshot

The screener captures three earnings-quality factors at once. Cash conversion measures how much of reported profit shows up as operating cash. Free cash flow conversion strips out capital expenditure to test whether the business is self-funding. Return on invested capital checks whether reinvested cash actually earns a return above the cost of capital. The headline table below shows where each name sits as of mid-May 2026.

Sample data captured 2026-05-17. The live template recomputes these values every time the file opens using MarketXLS functions.

Why Cash Conversion Matters in May 2026

Three things make mid-2026 a particularly useful moment to run a cash conversion screen on a large-cap watchlist.

First, the AI capex cycle has visibly distorted the relationship between reported earnings and free cash flow for a small group of hyperscalers and chip vendors. NVIDIA, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Oracle have all stepped up data center spending materially over the last 18 months. Operating cash flow has grown, but free cash flow has compressed because capital expenditure absorbs a larger share. NVIDIA's OCF/NI sits below 1.0x in the sample - not because its earnings quality is poor, but because inventory and receivables grew as revenue exploded. The screener surfaces this without making you read 30 cash flow statements line by line.

Second, the consumer staples and retailers that historically generated high cash conversion are now compressed against rising working capital. Walmart still shows OCF/NI above 2x in the snapshot - inventory and payables management remain a structural advantage - but Costco and Nike are running below their five-year norms. A cash conversion screener separates the names where the dip is cyclical from the names where it is structural.

Third, the payment networks (Visa and Mastercard) keep printing the cleanest cash flow profiles in the public equity market. Both convert north of 1.0x on both OCF/NI and FCF/NI, and both clear 24 percent ROIC. The premium template surfaces these names at the top of the allocation sizer, which is useful framing if you are building a quality basket.

How the Cash Conversion Calculation Works

Cash conversion is structurally simple but conceptually rich. The base formula is:

Cash Conversion (OCF / NI) = Trailing Operating Cash Flow / Trailing Net Income

A ratio above 1.0x means the company generated more cash than it reported as profit. This is normal for companies with significant non-cash depreciation (capital-heavy industrials, telecoms, energy), favorable working capital dynamics (retailers with strong payables management), or deferred revenue tailwinds (subscription software, payment networks).

A ratio below 1.0x means the company reported more profit than it generated in cash. Sometimes this is benign - a growth company building inventory ahead of an expected sales lift, or a name booking large prepaid expenses. Sometimes it is the first hint of an accrual buildup that will reverse as a future writedown or earnings disappointment.

FCF Conversion (FCF / NI) = Trailing Levered Free Cash Flow / Trailing Net Income

FCF conversion is the harder bar. It subtracts capital expenditure from operating cash, so a company that runs heavy capex (data center builds, semiconductor fabs, retail buildouts) will show a meaningfully lower FCF conversion than OCF conversion. The gap between the two ratios is itself diagnostic. A 1.4x OCF/NI with a 0.6x FCF/NI tells you the business throws off cash but consumes most of it on growth investment - whether that is good or bad depends on the return on those investments, which is where ROIC enters.

Quality Test = OCF/NI >= 1.0x AND FCF/NI >= 0.8x AND ROIC >= 15%

Layering the three tests is the key insight. Each filter alone can be gamed. A high OCF/NI can hide heavy capex burn. A high FCF/NI can hide value-destroying capital allocation if the underlying ROIC is poor. A high ROIC can sit on top of a working capital problem that will eventually surface. Names that clear all three filters are typically high-quality compounders.

Building the Screener in Excel with MarketXLS

The full screener relies on a small number of MarketXLS functions. Each formula is verified before it lands in the template, and every cell in the sample file carries a comment pointing to the underlying formula.

Operating cash flow (TTM):

=OperatingCashFlow("AAPL")

Returns trailing twelve-month operating cash flow from the cash flow statement, sourced from QuoteMedia and Refinitiv-derived fundamentals.

Net income (TTM):

=HF_NETINCOME("AAPL",2025,"","TTM")

Returns trailing twelve-month net income from the historical fundamentals database. The TTM flag tells the function to roll up the last four quarters rather than report a calendar-year figure.

Cash conversion (OCF / NI):

=OperatingCashFlow("AAPL") / HF_NETINCOME("AAPL",2025,"","TTM")

In the live template every screener row uses an IFERROR wrapper to handle names whose TTM net income is zero or negative.

Levered free cash flow (TTM):

=LeveredFreeCashFlow("AAPL")

This is operating cash minus capital expenditure minus net debt service, which is the cash that actually accrues to equity holders.

FCF conversion:

=LeveredFreeCashFlow("AAPL") / HF_NETINCOME("AAPL",2025,"","TTM")

Return on invested capital:

=ReturnOnInvestedCapitalOneYear("AAPL")

Returns trailing twelve-month ROIC as a percentage. The template divides by 100 to express the result as a decimal that plays nicely with the other ratios.

Revenue, market cap, beta, P/E:

=Revenue("AAPL")
=MarketCapitalization("AAPL")
=Beta("AAPL")
=PERatio("AAPL")
=StockReturnOneYear("AAPL")

Every formula in the template was confirmed against the MarketXLS function documentation before publication. None of them are invented.

What is Inside the Cash Conversion Screener Excel Template

The premium dashboard ships with ten sheets, each designed to do one job well.

Sheet 1 - Cover. A branded landing page with the title, edition, version, last-updated date, and a table of contents. Gridlines hidden, tab color navy, page set up to print landscape on a single page.

Sheet 2 - How To Use. A six-step tutorial that walks a new user from "open the file" to "size positions" in five minutes. Covers picking a watchlist, setting thresholds, reading the dashboard, running a quality scenario, building a sector view, and sizing positions.

Sheet 3 - Dashboard. The headline sheet. A six-tile KPI row across the top shows median OCF/NI, median FCF/NI, the count of names above 100 percent OCF/NI, the count below 70 percent (the red flag zone), the top-decile OCF/NI threshold, and the overall Quality Mix Score. Below the tiles, two embedded bar charts compare cash conversion and ROIC across the watchlist. The screener table at the bottom carries 16 columns of metrics with full conditional formatting - color scales on the conversion ratios, data bars on revenue and market cap, three-arrow icon sets on the one-year return column.

Sheet 4 - Inputs. The control panel. Yellow input cells (gold border) hold portfolio size, minimum OCF/NI, minimum FCF/NI, and minimum ROIC. Three dropdowns let you pick a Quality Tier (Loose, Base, Strict), a Sector Tilt (Defensive, Balanced, Quality Growth, Capital-Light, Asset-Heavy), and a Weighting Method (Equal-Weight, Quality-Tilted, Market-Cap). Every downstream sheet reads from these cells.

Sheet 5 - Quality Scenarios. A scenario matrix that runs the watchlist through three threshold tiers at once. The output table shows how many names pass each tier, with a sector breakdown below. Conditional formatting highlights which sectors concentrate quality, and a side bar chart visualizes the pass count by tier. This is the sheet you open when you want to sanity-check whether your filters are restrictive or loose before sizing positions.

Sheet 6 - Strategy Playbook. A sector-level allocation tilt model. Each sector gets median OCF/NI, FCF/NI, and ROIC; the model assigns an Overweight, Modest Overweight, Neutral, or Underweight tilt based on the combination. The "Why this tilt" column reads in plain English so the logic is reproducible. This is educational framing, not financial advice.

Sheet 7 - Allocation Sizer. Position sizing engine. Computes an allocation score per name (0.5x cash conversion + 1.5x ROIC, with a penalty if FCF/NI is below 0.7x), normalizes the scores into weights, and multiplies by the portfolio size from the Inputs sheet. A donut chart on the right shows the allocation mix.

Sheet 8 - Sector Comparison. A six-column heatmap showing median OCF/NI, FCF/NI, ROIC, and P/E by sector. Color scales make sector winners and losers visually obvious, and an embedded bar chart ranks sectors by median cash conversion. This is the sheet to open when you want a 30-second read on which sector currently offers the most earnings quality.

Sheet 9 - Methodology. A one-page explainer covering universe definition (and why banks, insurers, and REITs are excluded), the formulas behind each metric, the threshold tier design, the allocation score recipe, the model's limitations, and the data sources. The methodology page exists to make every number in the dashboard reproducible.

Sheet 10 - Glossary and Disclaimer. Sixteen term definitions covering cash flow, accrual, ROIC, quality compounder, and adjacent concepts, plus the standard educational disclaimer. Every premium template carries the same disclaimer language so users know exactly what they are and are not getting.

Reading the Dashboard in May 2026

Looking at the May 2026 snapshot, the screener pulls out three distinct quality buckets.

Quality compounders that pass all three tests. Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Visa, Mastercard, AbbVie, Costco, and McDonald's clear the Base tier (OCF/NI >= 1.0x, FCF/NI >= 0.8x, ROIC >= 15 percent). These are the names where reported profits track cash, capital expenditure does not eat all the cash, and the cash that is reinvested earns a return well above the cost of capital. They have historically commanded a quality premium in the market, and the screener confirms why.

Cash strong, but capital intensity reads as a flag. NVIDIA shows the highest ROIC in the watchlist by a wide margin (85 percent) but its OCF/NI sits at 0.94x and FCF/NI at 0.76x. Both ratios are dragged down by aggressive inventory builds and accelerating capex. This is the textbook profile of a growth name where cash conversion is currently distorted by reinvestment, not by accounting risk. The screener flags it, but the user has to decide whether the distortion is cyclical or structural.

Cash light, ROIC light. GE shows an OCF/NI of 0.90x and an ROIC of 12.5 percent. Neither number is alarming on its own, but together they signal a business that is currently neither converting earnings to cash nor reinvesting at a high rate. The Strategy Playbook tilts this kind of sector profile to Neutral or Underweight, which is a defensible starting point for further research.

The Quality Mix Score sits at a healthy reading in the snapshot, well above the broad market median. That reflects the watchlist composition - 30 deliberately chosen large-caps spanning quality-favored sectors. Swap in a small-cap or REIT-heavy watchlist and the score will fall sharply.

Treating Cash Conversion as a Signal, Not a Verdict

The screener is a starting point, not an endpoint. Cash conversion ratios swing with the working capital cycle. A fast-growing retailer may show poor OCF/NI as it builds inventory and receivables, even though the underlying business is healthy. A shrinking company may show inflated OCF/NI as it harvests working capital. One year of TTM data is a snapshot, not a trend.

For higher conviction, layer three additional checks on top of the dashboard output. First, look at the five-year history of OCF/NI - the live template uses TTM data but the same formulas work with prior-year arguments, so you can extend it. Second, read the management discussion in the most recent 10-K to understand any unusual working capital movements. Third, check whether the company has had any goodwill impairments or restructuring charges in the period - non-cash charges artificially deflate reported earnings, which makes OCF/NI look better than the underlying trend.

The Methodology sheet inside the template covers each of these caveats. The Glossary sheet defines every term used in the workbook. Both exist so the template can be used responsibly rather than blindly.

Download the Cash Conversion Screener Excel Template

The full May 2026 edition of the Cash Conversion Screener Excel dashboard is available for free download. Two files:

Download the templates:

• - Pre-filled with the May 2026 snapshot data. Every cell carries a comment showing the underlying MarketXLS formula.
• - Live MarketXLS formulas throughout. The dashboard, allocation sizer, and sector comparison sheets recompute every time you open the file.

Both files carry the same premium design: branded cover page, six KPI tiles on the dashboard, two embedded charts, conditional formatting heatmaps on every comparison column, scenario analysis, sector comparison heatmap, methodology, and glossary. Ten sheets total. The design is intentionally dashboard-style so the file is presentation-ready out of the box.

How to Customize the Screener

The template is built to be modified.

Swap the watchlist. Open the Inputs sheet and replace any ticker in column B. The Dashboard, Quality Scenarios, Sector Comparison, and Allocation Sizer all refresh automatically. The watchlist holds 30 names by default, but you can extend it to 50 or 100 by copying the formula rows down.

Tune the thresholds. The four yellow input cells on the Inputs sheet control portfolio size, minimum OCF/NI, minimum FCF/NI, and minimum ROIC. The Quality Scenarios sheet uses these directly. Pull the OCF/NI threshold up to 1.20x to make the screen more selective; pull it down to 0.80x to widen the net.

Rewrite the allocation score. The default allocation score is OCF/NI multiplied by 0.5, plus ROIC multiplied by 1.5, minus a penalty for FCF/NI below 0.7x. The formula sits in column G of the Allocation Sizer sheet and is easy to replace with your own factor recipe. You could weight ROIC more heavily, add a market-cap floor, or layer in a momentum factor by adding a column that pulls =StockReturnOneYear().

Change the universe filter. The watchlist excludes banks, insurers, and REITs by design because their cash flow statement structure makes OCF/NI ratios non-comparable. If you want to add a bank, replace the OCF/NI formula in column I of the Dashboard with a CashFlowPerShare() based measure, or substitute net interest margin and efficiency ratio for the cash conversion test. The template ships with the simpler version because it ranks comparably across the included sectors.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good cash conversion ratio?

Above 1.0x is the conventional threshold for "earnings backed by cash." Above 1.2x is strong and typically reflects structural drivers like non-cash depreciation, working capital tailwinds, or deferred revenue (common in software and payment networks). Below 0.7x is a yellow flag that earnings may be inflated by accruals - the cash never arrived. The screener uses 1.0x as the Base tier and 1.15x as the Strict tier.

What is the difference between OCF/NI and FCF/NI?

OCF/NI is operating cash flow divided by net income - it tests whether reported profit shows up as cash from operations. FCF/NI is levered free cash flow divided by net income - it tests whether the company can fund operations and reinvestment from cash flow and still have surplus. A company can have a high OCF/NI but low FCF/NI if it spends heavily on capital expenditure (data center builds, retail buildouts, semiconductor fabs). Both ratios are useful; layered together they paint a fuller earnings-quality picture than either alone.

Why does the screener exclude banks and insurers?

Bank and insurer cash flow statements are dominated by deposit flows, claims reserves, trading asset purchases, and other balance sheet items that are not comparable to industrial operating cash flow. A bank with negative operating cash flow may be perfectly healthy - it just bought a large amount of mortgage-backed securities. Using OCF/NI to rank financials against industrials produces misleading signals. The screener handles financials by including only payment networks (Visa, Mastercard) where the cash flow profile mirrors a software or industrial company.

Can I use this Excel template without MarketXLS?

The Sample workbook works in any version of Excel because all data is static. The Template workbook needs the MarketXLS add-in to refresh the live formulas. If you do not have MarketXLS installed you will see #NAME? errors in the formula cells, but the design and layout still load cleanly. Learn more at the MarketXLS features page.

How often should I refresh the screener?

Cash flow data updates on a quarterly cycle when 10-Q and 10-K filings are released. The Live Template refreshes whenever you open the file, which pulls the latest TTM values from MarketXLS. Most users run the screener at the end of each earnings season (mid-February, mid-May, mid-August, mid-November) to capture the cleanest snapshot. The dashboard's "Data as of" date on the Cover sheet documents when the sample data was captured.

Is high cash conversion the same as high earnings quality?

Closely related but not identical. Earnings quality is the broader concept - it covers cash conversion, the proportion of recurring versus one-time items, the conservatism of accounting policies, the gap between GAAP and adjusted figures, and the volatility of accruals. Cash conversion is the single most observable component of earnings quality and the easiest to standardize across companies, which is why the screener centers on it. For a fuller earnings-quality view, layer in the Beneish M-Score and the Piotroski F-Score - both are covered in other MarketXLS templates.

The Bottom Line

A cash conversion screener built in Excel is one of the cheapest tools in fundamental analysis. The math is high-school arithmetic. The data is on every cash flow statement. The signal is among the most durable in equity investing - businesses that consistently turn reported earnings into cash and reinvest the cash at returns above the cost of capital have historically compounded equity value over long horizons.

The Cash Conversion Screener Excel May 2026 dashboard packages the calculation as a presentation-ready template. KPI tiles, conditional formatting, scenario analysis, sector heatmap, allocation sizer, methodology, and glossary, all on top of live MarketXLS formulas that recompute every time you open the file. Use it as the starting point for further research, not as a buy signal, and pair it with other quality tools in the MarketXLS library.

Learn more about MarketXLS and the full library of stock analysis tools at marketxls.com or book a demo to see the platform end to end.

Cash Conversion Screener Excel May 2026 is published for educational purposes only and is not investment advice. Cash flow metrics describe historical accounting behavior and do not predict future cash generation or stock returns.