Quant models
Six classic models on company reports and Moscow Exchange prices: default risk, price and profitability, financial checks, profit and cash flow, growth implied by the price, and the dividend gap.
A company's assets are shared between creditors and shareholders. Creditors come first: shareholders get what is left after the debt is repaid. If the value of the assets falls to the size of the debt, nothing is left for shareholders. The Merton model treats that state as default.
The model measures the buffer between asset value and debt not in roubles but in standard deviations. One sigma is the usual range of swings in asset value over a year: 24-39% for companies with little debt and 17-30% for heavily indebted ones (debt swings less than shares, so the more debt, the calmer the assets). The more sigmas fit into the buffer, the lower the probability of default: at three sigmas it is close to zero, at half a sigma it exceeds 30%. The buffer is calculated for 69 companies out of 114: the rest have negative net debt or lack a debt or volatility forecast.
- market cap
- net debt (estimate: forecast EBITDA and debt/EBITDA)
- assets
- share volatility
- asset volatility
- key rate (the model's risk-free rate)
- 1 year
- standard normal distribution function
- buffer in sigmas (distance to default)
- one-year default probability
Model assumptions
Asset volatility is not observed directly and is estimated from equity volatility. The direct conversion σV = σE·E/V understates it under high leverage: when debt is several times the market cap, assets come out almost risk-free and a heavily indebted company looks more stable than Sberbank. The Bharath - Shumway adjustment gives debt its own volatility of 0.05 + 0.25·σE. The second model assumption: the expected return on assets is set equal to the key rate. For highly leveraged companies it makes up most of the buffer, so when the rate falls the estimated risk rises.
EUTREuroTrans
0.60 σ
27.5%
2
SMLTSamolet
0.61 σ
27.0%
3
MTLRMechel
1.18 σ
11.9%
4
WUSHWhoosh
1.25 σ
10.5%
5
ETLNEtalon Group
1.32 σ
9.4%
6
MGNTMagnit
1.41 σ
8.0%
The model picks companies that combine a high return on capital with a low price for the business. Profitability is measured by ROE and price by EBITDA to enterprise value (EV): the higher this ratio, the cheaper the business. The model adds up not the metrics themselves but the places on each one - otherwise a single extreme value would decide the whole result. The place is calculated for 83 companies out of 114: the rest lack one of the two metrics.
Model assumptions
VSEHVI.ru
32.9%EBITDA / EV
72%profitability
2
AFLTAeroflot
38.8%EBITDA / EV
34%profitability
3
NMTPNMTP
63.2%EBITDA / EV
21%profitability
4
MRKPRosseti Center and Volga
76.1%EBITDA / EV
20%profitability
5
ELFVEL5-Energo
44.9%EBITDA / EV
24%profitability
6
MRKVRosseti Volga
52.8%EBITDA / EV
21%profitability
The Piotroski model separates cheap companies whose financials are improving from cheap companies whose financials are getting worse. Each check is a yes-or-no question: is there a profit, is cash flow positive, is revenue growing, is net debt no more than two EBITDA. Each "yes" scores a point; there are eight checks, so the score runs from 0 to 8. A single check proves nothing, what matters is the total.
Model assumptions
Reported profit is not the same as cash received: goods shipped on deferred payment count as profit, but the money has not come in. Richard Sloan showed that companies whose profit exceeds cash flow year after year systematically do worse in the following years: the part not backed by cash eventually has to be written off. Here we use a simplified metric - the share of profit backed by cash flow in 2025.
Model assumptions
The metric flags not the quality of the business but the gap between profit and cash flow, and it errs both ways. A high share proves nothing by itself: cash flow also exceeds profit when capital spending is cut. A low share is not necessarily a problem: free cash flow is counted after capital spending, so for developers and companies with large investment programmes it is naturally negative.
LSRGLSR Group
-1323%
GLRXGlorax
-684%
AFLTAeroflot
-575%
SOFLSoftline
-546%
EUTREuroTrans
-416%
RAGRRusagro
-267%
A standard discounted cash flow (DCF) calculation starts from a forecast: the cash flows are discounted to give a fair price. Rappaport and Mauboussin proposed turning the problem around. The market price is known, so the expectations built into it can be backed out. The model finds the cash flow growth rate at which today's price is fair.
This number proves nothing by itself: it only means something next to the company's actual growth rate. A price implying 30% a year for a company whose revenue is shrinking is a gap you can see at once.
- the growth rate we solve for
- the company's free cash flow
- value of the cash flows beyond the forecast horizon
- beta to the Moscow Exchange index
- 10-year OFZ yield
- credit risk premium based on the debt load
Model assumptions
The growth rate g is found by trial: the present value rises with it, so there is only one solution. Beta is calculated from the stock's price history. The risk-free part of the discount rate comes from the current OFZ yield curve, and the credit risk premium rises with the debt load. Without it, a company with debt of five EBITDA would get the lowest rate and look the most undervalued.
An answer is found for 72 companies out of 114. For another 14 the price requires growth faster than 40% a year, for 4 - the flow shrinking faster than 20% a year. 18 have negative free cash flow or none in the forecast: with a negative flow the model values a company higher the faster its loss grows, so such stocks are left out. 6 lack debt data or have a negative enterprise value.
DELIDelimobil
39.6%implied
—growth in 2025
2
ENPGEN+ Group
35.6%implied
—growth in 2025
3
PRMDPromomed
34.8%implied
—growth in 2025
4
LSRGLSR Group
34.7%implied
—growth in 2025
5
NVTKNOVATEK
34.4%implied
115.3%growth in 2025
6
AKRNAcron
33.9%implied
—growth in 2025
NMTPNMTP
-13.4%implied
42.8%growth in 2025
2
FEESFGC Rosseti
-11.7%implied
—growth in 2025
3
HEADHeadHunter
-6.8%implied
-15.4%growth in 2025
4
HNFGHenderson
-6.3%implied
—growth in 2025
5
DATAArenadata Group
-6.3%implied
80.6%growth in 2025
6
VSEHVI.ru
-5.6%implied
—growth in 2025
On the record date the share price drops by roughly the size of the dividend. This drop is called the dividend gap. The calculation shows how long it takes the price to return to its old level and what that time depends on. The sample is 1190 payouts on 107 stocks since 2013.
The main factor is the size of the payout: the larger it is, the deeper the drop and the longer the price takes to recover. Time to close counts only gaps that closed, and for 13% of payouts the gap did not close within a year, so the median is understated for stocks with many such payouts.
Model assumptions
The gap date is calculated rather than taken from the data: the database stores the record date, and the price used to drop the day before it until August 2023 and on that date afterwards - that is how the exchange settlement cycle changed. If the register closes on a weekend, the gap falls on Friday. Weekend sessions count as part of Monday, so the days here are business days. Payouts before September 2013 are excluded: no gap shows up on them with either date.
| Yielddividend | Payoutsin the sample | Declineshare of the dividend | Closedwithin 20 days | Closedover the year | Recoverymedian, days | Leadvs index before record date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| up to 3% | 452 | 0.73 | 74% | 95% | 5 | +0.67% |
| 3-6% | 378 | 0.76 | 49% | 88% | 16 | +2.12% |
| 6-9% | 200 | 0.81 | 27% | 79% | 35 | +3.23% |
| 9-15% | 134 | 0.85 | 23% | 76% | 44 | +4.93% |
| above 15% | 26 | 0.89 | 8% | 60% | 108 | +1.98% |
The lead grows with the size of the payout: +0.67% at a yield of up to 3% and +4.93% at 9-15%; for payouts above 15% it is lower, +1.98%. So by the record date the dividend is already priced in.

































































































