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Methodology

Altamira Equity Research is built around one idea: a verdict is only worth reading if the work behind it can be inspected. This page describes the three engines every report on this site passes through — the KPI gauntlet, the long-view lenses, and the five-analyst process — and the standard an edition must meet before it is published.

The KPI gauntlet

Every company we cover is measured on the Altamira KPI Scorecard: 31 key performance indicators grouped into seven pillars — Quality, Growth, Value, Shareholder, Health, Moat and Technical. The pillars roll up into a Fundamental score and a Total score, a tier (T1–T4) and a grade, and each name is tested against three gates: quality, price and timing. The raw measures underneath include return on invested capital (5-year average), revenue and free-cash-flow growth (3- and 5-year, total and per share), gross and net margins, cash conversion, buyback yield, leverage and interest cover, and a moat heuristic. Fair value is a single sourced estimate of record for each company; the margin of safety is the gap between price and that fair value. Scores are percentile ranks across the tracked research universe, so a score always answers "compared with what?" — the universe named on the page.

The long view — four lenses

Every deep dive grades the company through the same four lenses, in the same order, so editions can be compared across companies and across time:

  • Revenue growth — is the top line compounding, and is growth accelerating or fading against its own 5-year record?
  • Operating margin — does growth arrive with operating leverage, or is it bought with spending?
  • Cash — free-cash-flow margin and conversion: how much of each revenue dollar survives as cash the owners can use?
  • ROIC — return on invested capital, the discipline metric: growth that earns below the cost of capital destroys value no matter how fast it is.

Each lens follows the same rhythm: why the metric matters, the chart, and a written judgment that is graded again after the next print.

The five-analyst process

Flagship work — the Stock of the Month and head-to-head comparisons — is argued by five roles before a verdict is allowed:

  1. Screener (quant) — runs the screen, certifies the scorecard edition, and lists every gate result. No opinions.
  2. Business & Moat — what the company sells, why it is essential, market share, installed base and recurring revenue.
  3. Growth & Financials — the growth record and the financial statements behind it, chart by chart.
  4. Valuation — price against the fair value of record, with the margin of safety stated, never implied.
  5. Bear (red team) — the strongest case against, written before the verdict: what the market is worried about, whether it is temporary or structural, and the explicit triggers that would prove the thesis wrong.

An editor then writes the verdict the evidence supports. The bear case is never written after the decision, and never softened to fit it.

Verdicts, kept on the record

After every earnings print, the report grades the thesis it tested — Strengthened, Intact, Strained or Broken — and the grade stays attached to the company. Stock of the Month picks are logged on the track record at publication with their entry price and fair value, and stay there whatever happens next.

The caliber standard

An edition does not ship unless it passes ten decision tests, among them: every claim is sourced; the ROIC figure is published, not asserted; conflicting figures are reconciled or the conflict is disclosed; the bear case runs before the verdict; invalidation triggers are named in advance; and a missing input is flagged as unjudged rather than papered over. The standard is decision usefulness: a reader should be able to act — or deliberately not act — from the page alone.